Is your brand fueling your growth, or is it holding you back? If your message no longer resonates, your visuals feel outdated, or your audience isn’t connecting the way they used to, it might be time to refresh, reposition, or completely rebrand.
In this episode, Samantha Riley sits down with rebranding expert Jim Heininger to unpack what makes a brand unforgettable and how strategic branding can accelerate business growth. From major corporate pivots to small business transformations, they explore what it really takes to build a brand that stands out and stays relevant.
Whether you’re considering a subtle update or a full scale rebrand, the key is ensuring your brand consistently reflects the promise you make to your customers. Make 2025 the year your brand makes a lasting impact.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- What defines a brand beyond colours and logos (00:50)
- How authentic interactions can turn customers into loyal advocates (01:29)
- How to decide if it’s time to refresh, reposition, or completely rebrand (04:27)
- Why companies rebrand and the opportunities it creates (07:18)
- How Jaguar successfully pivoted its brand image (09:30)
- Where small businesses should start with rebranding (12:32)
- Why even established businesses need to reassess their branding (15:19)
- How to create a rebrand that thrills your clients and ignites your team’s energy (18:58)
- A quick assessment to determine if your brand needs a refresh, repositioning, or total rebrand (27:05)
- If your brand isn’t working as hard as you do, it’s time to rethink your strategy (28:26)
RESOURCES
QUOTES
“Companies that want to get out ahead of their growth and put a jetpack on will look at rebranding as the solution to it.” – Jim Heininger
“Is that brand working hard enough for you? Does it distinguish you from your competitors? If not, then do you refresh, do you reposition, or do you rebrand? And it’s interesting because the smaller the organisation, the easier it is to make the change.” – Jim Heininger
“That promise of what we wanted to do in terms of rebranding and helping customers get through that whole process, that hasn’t changed from when we started doing it originally. So really commit to your promise, and then how you present that can be refreshed as you need to and as you grow.” – Jim Heininger
“If your team is just chomping at the bit and they’re so excited and they’re so proud to be part of that, the energy that that puts out is far greater than any amazing branding colours.” – Samantha Riley
“It sounds to me like, if you’re thinking of a gift, the piece in the middle, your promise, whatever that gift is, doesn’t change. But the size of the box might change. The wrapping might change. It might have a bow or you might have something different on it.” – Samantha Riley
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ABOUT JIM HEININGER
Jim Heininger is the Rebrand Man. He leads the efforts of The Rebranding Experts, which he founded in 2017, after 30 years of business and brand strategy experience for P&G, McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch and others. Rebranding Experts was purposefully designed to be the only agency with the comprehensive services necessary to rebrand organizations. It starts from a fundamentally different viewpoint than traditional branding firms that see rebranding as a marketing strategy. His team believes rebranding should be a strategic growth accelerator, creating a forward-facing organization ready to grasp new opportunities. It’s a jetpack to your success.
Jim has designed the methodology used by the firm and merged the many disciplines necessary for successful rebranding, including research, brand strategy and planning, creative naming, design/identity, corporate and leadership communications, change management, employee engagement and internal marketing, customer experience design and marketing/public relations.
Jim coaches CEOs through the rebranding process, aligning their executive team, and helping to execute complete name changes and new customer promises. In the last two years he has led rebranding efforts for Bravanti (formally BPI group), 1Concier (formally T-Y Group, Riegel Linen, Harbor Linen), BlueCross Blue Shield and ReUp. He regularly speaks at national conferences and is a frequent contributor to Forbes.com on the topic of rebranding.
WHERE TO FIND JIM HEININGER
- Website: http://www.rebrandingexperts.com/
- Twitter: @RebrandExperts
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rebrandingexperts/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebrandingexperts/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:00
Welcome to today’s episode. I’m really looking forward to this. We’re going to be talking about rebranding, what exactly that is, who should do it, especially here at the beginning of the year. I think it’s a lot of what’s on people’s minds. So I’ve invited Jim Heininger onto the show, and he’s going to explain to us who should do it, why they should do it, some of the things that we need to look out for. So if that’s you, then stick around. But welcome to the show, Jim. It’s great to meet you.
Jim Heininger 0:31
Thank you. Glad to be on.
Samantha Riley 0:34
Let’s start off, what defines a brand, because I know a lot of people think brand, logo, colours, and sort of that’s where it ends. I don’t think that’s where it ends, but I would love to hear in your words, how would you define a brand?
Jim Heininger 0:50
A brand is that total set of experiences that a consumer of the product or the service has with that. So it’s well beyond just the logo and the colours. It’s the experience, the interaction that they have every day with the company. It’s the quality of the products and services. It’s the associations that come to mind when they think of that particular brand or run into it somewhere. So it’s much more expansive than just simply the visual trigger that we think of as a logo.
Samantha Riley 1:29
You mentioned experiences. This is something that I’m super passionate about. I believe that in this world of AI that we’re leaning, or we need to, as business owners, lean even more into experiences to stand out. Are you seeing a shift in the market in that way?
Jim Heininger 1:50
Takes a lot of companies time to really understand the importance of experience in their overall business success. And you know, it’s a human experience. You know, that really makes the difference. AI and technology enables the quick and easy interaction that you have with a company or product. I just returned something on Amazon, and it’s super, you know, just click here, answer a question, back it goes. But when I have trouble with something and I have to talk to an individual, to a person, how that person responds to me, helps me through the experience, that’s what matters most to me, and that’s what’s going to make me decide if I ever go back and buy or use that service again, versus some of those technical interfaces.
Samantha Riley 2:38
Totally. I think that if I, my husband and I go out to dinner a lot, we love to eat out. We love good food. We love good wine. And a few years ago, there was a, I’ll call it a restaurant, but it was quite a casual place to eat. And we used to go there every Thursday night, and we started to get to know one of the hostesses, or servers, or, you know, whatever you want to call her. And it got to the point where one night she came in and she pulled up a chair, which is, you know, not allowed technically in the services industry, but she pulled up a chair and she just sort of leaned on the table and went, Well, what cocktails are we all ordering tonight? And it was just for us. It was such a memorable experience, and to the point that we had such a good laugh together, that she served us every week without fail, until she left. We went back there and she’d left. And funnily enough, we actually haven’t been back there again. But to me, that is a brand, that’s a branding exercise that goes over and above what most people think of as a brand. But I just wanted to sort of throw that in there, because these are the experiences that we remember. And, you know, four or five years later, I’m still talking about that exact same place for that exact same reason.
Jim Heininger 3:56
Yeah, and you want your brand to be memorable. You want it to be remarkable in people’s minds, so that it, you know, branding is all about differentiation. It’s about what makes you stand out from your competitors, and it becomes the reason that somebody will choose your product or service over the competitors. So it has to have that emotional attachment to it that makes you keep coming back and feeling good and feeling special every time you bump into that brand.
Samantha Riley 4:27
Absolutely. Now, I did mention it’s the beginning of the year, a lot of people are thinking, Okay, where do we want our businesses to go this year? What are our goals? And a lot of people have been, that I’ve been speaking to, are thinking about, you know, giving their brand a bit of a sloosh. But what I would love is for you to explain, what’s the difference between a rebrand, a refresh, you know, a pivot in the positioning. Can you kind of, like, break that down for us?
Jim Heininger 4:54
Absolutely, because a lot of people put those three different kind of options under a rebranding bucket, but they really are pretty different. So a refresh, we like to say, is a new coat of paint. It’s a visual makeover to your brand. It might be a new logo, new colour palette, maybe some new messaging, tagline, but it’s really kind of a visual remake of your brand, just to keep it fresh and relevant. Companies do that all the time. Yesterday here in the US, Walmart introduced a slightly new, updated version of their logo, and everybody’s saying, Oh, they’ve rebranded. They’ve rebranded. No, they haven’t. They just changed their logo a little bit. It was a refresh. So that’s kind of the elementary level of what you can do in terms of kind of brand transformation. Then that second level is repositioning, and that’s where your future, you know, requires you to reach out to a different audience. You know, you’re introducing maybe a new product or service or something that you need to kind of get people to think of you differently than that, than they have in the past. Now you may add a brand refresh to that, so that you’re not only changing your positioning, but you’re also updating your look and feel as a way of being more appealing to the new prospective customer that’s going to buy that product or service. That happens all the time as well, too. But it’s really when you rebrand that you change the name of the organisation, you stand up an entirely new brand, a new promise to your customers. And that’s a much more comprehensive effort. So much, takes longer time to do, it really is an opportunity as well to kind of reset your company, to be able to take anything that’s no longer working and fix it and get it out of the way so that you can have a better experience for your customers, that you can be perceived differently than you ever were in the past. It’s a rare opportunity, and companies shouldn’t rebrand frequently, because it is a kind of a complete pivot of your whole brand. But for those organisations that need it, it’s a great strategic solution.
Samantha Riley 7:18
Okay. Why would a company decide to do such a big pivot, a rebrand? What are some of the symptoms that they’d be noticing or experiencing that would make them even begin to start to look at this as an option?
Jim Heininger 7:35
Yeah, so no. The overarching reason is really it needs to be a strategic growth accelerator. So you’re needing your brand to work harder for your growth. But it falls into a couple different buckets that we’ve noticed is a lot of organisations need to rebrand. So the need bucket includes maybe a merger or an acquisition, and you’re putting two companies together, and you either have to go with the one of the two brands, or you want to create a whole new brand for this new company that represents the totality of your kind of product offerings now. Or perhaps they faced a crisis, or they’re in a tough, you know, marketplace that their brand that they have right now is just not cutting it. It’s just not working hard enough to deliver the kind of growth that they need. The second bucket is opportunity, and that’s where through, you know, your strategic plans, through your future kind of growth efforts, you’re realising you need a new brand and able to achieve what you’re wanting to accomplish. It’s, you’ve got a new growth strategy. You’re expanding globally for the first time. Something is an anchor to your ability to grow and you want to achieve that opportunity. So you need a new brand to be able to do it. So it’s all about growth at the end of the day, as I started out and really what the cause of that need is, is what’s different in different organisations. The majority of rebrandings are actually mergers and acquisitions, because you’re forced to make a branding decision.
Samantha Riley
Yeah, that makes sense.
Jim Heininger
Companies that want to get out ahead of their growth and put a jetpack on that will look at rebranding as the solution to it.
Samantha Riley 9:30
Oh, I like that. I like the jetpack.
Jim Heininger
Don’t we all?
Samantha RIley
Yeah, totally. What are some, or have you seen a company go for a rebrand, and it’s been because, obviously they’re thinking, we want this strategic growth, and it’s gone horribly wrong? Because my guess is that it doesn’t go right all the time.
Jim Heininger 9:51
Yeah, so there, there’s actually an example out right now. It’s very fresh in people’s minds that is getting debate on both sides of that discussion. And that’s Jaguar, the automotive company, the luxury autos out of Europe. They, few months ago, announced that they were going to be rebranding, and they came out with a couple videos that were very striking and different in terms of how they had ever presented themselves. It’s always the heritage of the Jaguar design and the brand and so forth. These were very mod, futuristic. Didn’t even include cars. It was mostly models walking around in very colorful outfits and so forth. And it was, it was teeing up the idea that we are going to do something dramatically bold and different than what we’ve done in the past. Oh my gosh. Lit up the internet, people, you know, like, what is this? And what’s happened to Jaguar, and so forth. And then about two weeks later, they introduced the new model cars and the new positioning at an art show in Miami, really different kind of setting to introduce a new, you know, car model. And they were very futuristic looking models in pink and kind of a metallic blue colours. So completely different. And they explain we need to reinvent ourselves. Our market is shrinking. Our customers are aging out. We need a new affluent, urban customer that’s interested in EV models, the electric models now, and this, and we’re going to pivot our company, and we’re going to present ourselves as the new Jaguar. When you look at it, what people were objecting to was the colours and the models and the fact that they made such a dramatic pivot. If you look at the business strategy, they had to do it. They had to change the organisation’s focus. They had to be able to go fully into electric models and really needed a new customer that’s going to buy Jaguar cars in the future. So they needed this rebranding to help fuel that. So people are, you know, there are a lot of armchair marketers out there that are so quick to criticize rebrandings when they see them, and I don’t think they’re looking deeply enough at what’s the business strategy that this rebranding is supporting, and does that make sense for their future success.
Samantha Riley 12:32
And you’re talking about something that isn’t working. So you know, the old traditionals are obviously going to have a problem with that. But if Kodak had have done that, if Blockbuster had have done that, then they probably would be around, right? So, yeah, I think that’s really interesting. What needs to be considered then to do an exercise this large, because you know you’re talking about Jaguar, then obviously the majority of us aren’t that sort of size, but there’s still considerations to be taken into account. So where, where would one start?
Jim Heininger 13:15
So I think it’s important to realise, every company, every organisation, has a brand. It might be a brand that you purposefully designed and developed, or it might be one that just kind of happened by chance and that, you know, is that brand working hard enough for you? Does it distinguish you from your competitors, and if not, then do you refresh, do you reposition, or do you rebrand? And it’s, it’s interesting, because the smaller the organisation, the easier it is to make the change. Large organisations that have a lot of representation and assets, we call them being, you know, if it’s an airline, they have to change their planes, they have to change their gate signage, they have to change their uniforms, all those things. It’s a big effort. Smaller companies are a little bit more nimble when it comes to doing something like a rebranding and what I have found consistently is a lot of companies start out with an entrepreneur who had a great idea, and they weren’t as experienced in branding as they were their good idea. And so they just kind of said, Here’s what it’s going to be, here’s the name, and maybe it’s my name, and, you know, it has something, you know, they just put enough together to be able to have that brand, and then they go about into business, and 10 years later, they’re looking at that brand and their name and going, oh, you know, why did I choose this it? You know, it’s no longer relevant to the success that we’ve achieved 10 years later, and it might be time to freshen that up. Might be time to change that brand. And your customers will kind of let you know if, if it’s that important to hang on to your existing brand, you know, have conversations with a few of them, and if they say this isn’t working, you know, then let it go and move forward.
Samantha Riley 15:19
I think, and I’m, you and I were having a little conversation in the green room. We’ve both been doing this business thing a really long time, and I’ve started multiple businesses over the years, and every time for me and I’d love to hear your take on that, I’ve always just gone, okay, I’ve got an idea. Let’s just go on it. And whilst I haven’t just sort of, you know, I’ve put some effort into my branding. I haven’t put a whole lot of effort because, as from being around for so long, I also know that some things work and some things don’t, and that we learn and we evolve and we start to learn what our brand is. We can start with something, but we’ll start through, through servicing our clients. We start to learn where we sit in the market, what our strengths are. And then I always sort of do a refresh along the way. I would love to hear your take on this.
Jim Heininger 16:20
You know, the one thing, regardless if you’re starting out couple years into business and so forth, is that fundamental question of, what’s the promise to customers? What will our customers experience, or what’s the outcome to them of working with our organisation or buying our product or our service? That shouldn’t change a lot over the years, that brand promise is really kind of key to things, and then what people don’t do as well or spend as much time doing, is saying, Okay, now, how do I represent that? How do I convey that? How does it stand out? How do I, you know, how do I answer questions that I’m going to get from people with that brand in mind? It’s interesting. When we, so I had another marketing communications business, and we got called upon to do some rebrandings, and did really good work on them, but we were kind of flying without a whole lot of, you know, experience or necessarily know how, we just get by our guts. We said this is what we should be doing for this client. So after we did a few of them and developed a really sound methodology, I said, We gotta spin this off to a separate business, because it needs to answer that question for a prospective company of who’s the expert when it comes to rebranding? So we named it Rebranding Experts, and bought that domain way out ahead of anybody else. And so now the business leads are inbound to us, because we’ve got our thought leadership out there, and we got our expertise out there that when people are searching and, you know, when somebody says, I think I need to rebrand, and they Google it, boom, guess who pops up first without having to pay for it? So it, you know, but that promise of what we wanted to do in terms of rebranding and helping customers get through that whole process, that hasn’t changed from when we started doing it originally. So, so really, you know, commit to your promise, and then how you present that can be refreshed as you need to and as you grow.
Samantha Riley 18:35
So it sounds to me like if you’re thinking of a gift, the piece in the middle, your promise, whatever that gift is, doesn’t change, but the size of the box might change. The wrapping might change. It might have a bow, or you might have something different on it. So am I on the right track here?
Jim Heininger 18:52
That’s a good analogy. I’ve never heard that one before. So you just created something. You got a new business.
Samantha Riley 18:58
You’re welcome. You can use it. Let’s, so we talked about, a little bit about Jaguar. I’d love to hear the story of a rebrand that went exceptionally well. Like, where was this company? I don’t mind if you use the company or not, but sort of, where were they? What were they experiencing? What did they go through and what ended up happening on the other side? Because I think that that helps the listeners to really be able to see and put themselves in that position to understand.
Jim Heininger 19:33
Yeah, so a good example is a professional service firm here in the United States. What’s actually was a global firm by the name BPI Group, and those were the initials of the founder in France who originally created this business. And they focused on, kind of talent management. So their customers were CEOs and C-Suite representatives of companies, and they went in and coached them on leadership skills and managing their people and talent and so forth. The US team did a managed buyout of this geographic area to be able to run on their own, and they said, we need to, we need a new name, because we can’t use the previous owner’s name, since we’re now disassociated. So we went through a process with them of, you know, really getting to the heart of, what is it that you do for your clients? What is the, you know, what’s the outcome of this work? And into the emotions of it all. And, and it got really to the point of, we create more courageous leaders for these businesses. Okay, so what happens when those courageous leaders do their work? Well, it means a better outcome for the company. And I said, well, better outcome, better isn’t, kind of a weak word. What else can we, well, it’s a bolder outcome. And I said, well, so it means a bolder future, right? That you’ll get a bolder future if you use our consultants to provide you services. They said, Yeah, yeah, but we, but the way we go about it is we bring a lot of energy to it and so forth. And so we said, You’re igniting bolder futures. Then they’re like, yes, that’s the creative way for us to be able to express who we are and how we differ in the marketplaces. We ignite bolder futures for our clients. So with that as the promise of the new brand, then we went about coming up with name options that would kind of represent that or illustrate it. And we were, we were toying around with a bunch of different names, like things that had to do with brave and bravery. And there’s a term, bravura, which was kind of interesting to the leadership team, and then we were saying, but it’s also about taking action. And there’s a fun word that’s Italian in its origin, called avanti, which means, onward, let’s go. And so the idea came up, what if we merge these two together to create our own unique name, called Bravanti? And what’s very smart about coining your own name and your own term is that, first of all, then you own the definition of it, which is great. But also, trademarking of names can be a real challenge, because every, literally, every word has been trademarked out there. So you have to be very clever of working around trademark regulations. So Bravanti, we could own, we could trademark it right off the bat. And so that became the new name of the company, the promise of it was, was igniting bold futures, and then created a really dynamic visual identity to it that was pinks and oranges and light greens, and very unlike what most companies saw in the professional services industry or in the talent leadership kind of industry, and used imagery and pictures of things that were just dramatically different. Launched that. And first of all, the excitement internally was incredible, because all of a sudden, all their employees, all the consultants that worked with their clients, said, We got something nobody else has. We’re fresh, we’re different, we’re distinct, you know? And then the clients responded equally by saying, Okay, what else do you do? You know? What other services do you have? And it started to open up conversations that allow cross selling of different kind of products and services that they hadn’t in the past. Their new business numbers took an immediate leap in the first six months. They’ve got more opportunities to go in to speak to people. They had new news to talk about, which is always an exciting outcome of a rebranding as well. So it, to us, it’s one of the classic examples of how this can all work. There were literally no objections to it as well. There were no Jaguar, you know, people stepping out and saying what, they didn’t like it and so forth. Everybody loved it and it really helped propel their success.
Samantha Riley 24:11
Do you know what I really love about that story is the team, the internal team, getting really excited about it. And I don’t think enough companies really think about that as a huge part of the growth. Because if your team is just chomping at the bit and they’re so excited and they’re so proud to be part of that, the energy that that puts out is far greater than any amazing branding colours.
Jim Heininger 24:39
It’s necessary. Yeah, we actually had one, one client that was, they served the luxury resort and hotel market. They were a provider to that industry, and their success was really dependent upon their sales team, you know, that had the relationships with the, those different chains of resorts and so forth. And we’re getting ready for the rebranding. And all of a sudden it became pretty noticeable that the sales team was dragging their feet, and they weren’t, they were kind of getting a little dowdy and, you know, and asking questions and so forth. And so we had a meeting and just said, what’s going on? And they said, we’re afraid we’re going to lose sales if we have to, you know, approach our customers, if we have to, you know, tell them our new name and present our new branding and so forth. And it was really good stuff. So it would have been a very positive outcome, but they’re compensated on their sales and their commissions and so forth. So they got very nervous. So we spent a lot of time working with them, training, getting them comfortable with it. Here’s how it’s going to happen, you know, here’s how customers are going to be communicated with. Here’s the role you need to play, reinforcing it with your customers. And I had the idea, what if we reached out to one or two of their clients and told them, in a, you know, confidential discussion, we’re going to be rebranding. Here’s what it is, here’s why, we had, they had three companies that were being merged together into one, and there’s a chance to come up with one new single brand for the whole company, and we videotaped the discussions with two clients, and both clients were like, This is awesome. This is great. I really like what you’ve done here. Makes sense to me. I wish you good luck. It’s going to be terrific. And we played those videos for the sales team, and they learned, Oh, okay, I guess we’ll support the rebranding, because now they had evidence that the clients were not going to respond negatively to it. They were going to embrace it. So it’s, yeah, so getting, sometimes you run into obstacles, getting your internal team to support it, but figure out ways to break down those obstacles. It’s important that they all be 100% as ambassadors.
Samantha Riley 27:05
I love that so much. Now you have an assessment that you use with potential clients or people that are thinking about rebranding. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jim Heininger 27:18
Yeah, so we, you know, we have a set of nine questions that we traditionally ask in someone who’s talking about the rebranding process. Number one question is, what problem are you trying to solve? Because if there’s, if somebody’s come to us to say, we want to think about rebranding, or something that’s at work there. So if you go on our website and just complete the contact form, we’ll walk through that with you, that exercise. And it kind of asked you to, you know, to pull up, pull up numbers, too, you know, sales numbers and so forth, to be able to, you know, say, our sales being impacted by a brand that is not necessarily working as hard enough for us as it could. And it becomes pretty clear when you walk through this assessment, that, yeah, there’s something here that needs to be fixed and, you know, is it a refresh? Is it a repositioning? Is it a total rebrand?
Samantha Riley 28:11
We’ll pop the link for that in the show notes right below wherever you’re listening to this. Okay, Jim, what is one thing that you want to leave listeners with that have just listened to this conversation today?
Jim Heininger 28:26
So, organisations of all sizes, make sure your brand is working as hard as it can for you, and if it’s not, there are solutions and identifying what you have to solve or problem you’re solving, but then, you know, look at a refresh, look at a repositioning. Consider a rebranding. If that’s the kind of jolt of energy and excitement that you need going forward, and reach out to us, we’ll be happy to walk you through an assessment to see if that’s right.
Samantha Riley 28:57
So good. I love this conversation. This is something that I find really fascinating. When we really tap into the experiences that we can give, not just our clients, but what you tapped on our team as well, because it’s such a big effort to bring the energy of your company into the world, and it impacts and involves so many people. So thanks for breaking that down for us, it’s been fabulous talking to you.
Jim Heininger 29:23
Appreciate it much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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