Why New Year Might Not Mean 'New Look' For Your Business

We hear some pieces of marketing advice repeated so often, there is a danger of them becoming ingrained in business practices, when in fact they are entirely subjective. Take that old chestnut ‘new year – new look’, which has been doing the rounds for some time, and encourages companies to unveil a new brand image while heralding the upcoming new year which marks the end of the festive period.

For many organisations, it might be that a refresh, rather than a rebrand is required. And for some, nothing more than a few tweaks may be needed going forward into the next 12 months. Whichever is most applicable to you, there is no doubt that January is a good time to stop and check you are doing things in the right way. If your business can become a runaway train at times, this point of the year represents a good time to take stock, so how to go about it?

Check and tick
Integrated marketing strategies do a good job of allowing our campaigns to increase their visibility through a number of means, but disparate activities can often lead to initiatives which are unaligned with branding guidelines. For this reason, you could use January to create a marketing & branding checklist, if you haven’t already created one. This will allow you to juxtaposition the checklist with the marketing objectives and stipulations in your guidelines, and make sure all your activities are singing from the same hymn sheets in terms of delivery.

Filling the holes
Once you have created and completed your check list, you should have a pretty clear picture of how much your campaigns match up. If you’ve discovered that your marketing is a lot more out of sync with your brand values than you expected it to be, there are some holes that might need filling in your marketing strategy. But be aware, this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to tear it up and start again, regardless of the time of year. Your marketing results over a period of time should enter your thinking in terms of what needs changing. If some marketing strands are proven to be working, but are falling outside your original branding vision, maybe it is time to alter your brand guidelines accordingly?

Perhaps a more pertinent saying to bear in mind going into 2017 should be: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?