The decision to rebrand a business is, without question, a significant and far-reaching one. But how does it happen?
Do you simply wake up one day and say “We need to re-brand”? Do you suddenly realise that the reality of your corporate identity has moved on and is not represented correctly through your words, actions and products?
In my experience, not generally; it’s more a creeping awareness that there’s a divergence from the way we describe our business to the way the business is operating. In our case the trigger for change came about through product innovation that extended our capability to solve a much greater range of problems that our customers are facing.
When customers continuously say that the story you’re communicating does not reflect their experience; then you know it is time to take action.
The oldest commercial brand is considered to be Bass & Company, the UK brewer, whose red triangle has been used since its creation in 1777 and was awarded the first registered trademark in 1876. Since that time a great deal has been written about brands but there is still a general lack of understanding about what constitutes a brand and how to build and manage one. Wally Olins in his definitive book ‘The Brand Handbook’ suggests this is because ‘…branding can encapsulate both big and important and apparently superficial and trivial issues simultaneously’.
This is, of course true, and one of the reasons why, helpfully, everyone in a business feels as though they are a brand expert.
So, here is a practical definition:
- Brand is the tangible manifestation of corporate personality.
- It makes the strategy of the business visible and meaningful for every audience to experience. This has never been more relevant or important in our information-rich but time-poor lives. Cutting through the noise by delivering clear and consistent messages in words as well as actions.
- Business and commerce have people at their centre as does any communications infrastructure. It makes sense then, that building secure communications networks will also have people at its core.
Our ‘Core Idea’ – our ‘Why’ (if you are a Simon Sinek fan) – has never changed, as it shouldn’t, from the inception of the business: to provide a protective security layer for people simply trying to get their jobs done. Humans drive business. They are creative and innovative; they build relationships and connections; they transact and build value.
But humans are fallible. They make mistakes. Egress has pioneered the use of contextual machine learning (ML) to augment human decisions and eliminate misdirected emails and files; eliminating human error and malicious actions carried out via email.
That’s why we are pioneering Human Layer Security, through innovative use of ML to deliver very practical solutions to real-world problems. We think this encapsulates the challenge faced by our customers succinctly and accurately. We also think that the visual representation is compelling and references protection as well as connection.
Our thanks to @koto for brand concept and @Octopusgroup for their help bringing it to life on our website.
Check it out. Tell us what you think. www.egress.com
