Even a masterly information campaign outside the company will never be 100% successful if you first don’t have complete and clear internal communication that reaches all your employees. In Aude we’ve been through many rebranding actions which the companies and brands of our clients have gone through.

It usually starts at one of the regular meetings about a current project, when all of a sudden we’re bombarded with the news about the company’s logo/brand about to be refreshed (of course, it’s only sudden to us, because the client knows about the plans in advance). For us, this usually means we have to work simultaneously on two interrelated areas.

First, we develop the concept for the entire information campaign, decide on the communication channels (whether it’s a newsletter, posters or both, and if so – how many posters, and so on) and finally we prepare the materials informing employees about the changes. Second, we must simultaneously rebrand all the ongoing projects, e.g. the layout of the magazine for employees. There are also technical challenges, as we need to face the new brand book, formats, fonts and we also have to explain on and on why something cannot be done – because, for instance, the new brand book does not accept grey background under the logo, but we think it looks best on the poster; or the new logo is higher than the previous one and it no longer fits the websites designed before.

Sometimes we learn about rebranding plans much in advance, because the changes come as the result of other multistage processes, e.g. a merger – this was the case with the merger of two banks (for which Aude had been providing services for many years) into one organization currently functioning as Bank BGŻ BNP Paribas. This is the situation when we do have time to prepare, but the key moment is still very emotional.

Both our client and we are aware of how important it is to run the entire information process smoothly. Our head Ula Radzińska keeps saying that a company’s best ambassadors are its employees – and in this case it is twice as important: an employee has to know what is about to change in the company to be able to explain this to customers and associates. The worst case scenario is when an employee learns from an advertisement that his or her company has changed  the logo… The information must have its source inside the company.

Agnieszka Zyśk-Pożoga, Internal Relations Manager Provident Polska S.A., a client we have cooperated with for many years and we’ve been through a change of the company’s visual identification more than once, points out the most important matters when it comes to a successful action communicating the change and introducing new branding:

• The most important thing is to explain clearly to employees why the logo is being changed. The staff needs to understand what advantages the change brings to the company. And contrary to what you may think, this is the greatest communication challenge. It is often the case that on the “x” day information is sent to employees, or there may even be some additional actions inside the company informing that there is a new logo from now on, but the problem is the staff won’t identify with it. In order to advocate for the change they must understand its causes.
• Another key element is cooperation between all the departments involved in the process, such as marketing, internal communication, PR. The message must be coherent; meanwhile, each department has its own priorities that must be linked together. This isn’t always easy
• You need to choose the time when the change is introduced wisely – it must not collide with other important events.
• In large international corporations it can often be a challenge to meet the expectations of the head office, especially when the process is carried out in many markets simultaneously. The head office wants the process to be coherent, but the differences on the markets, often cultural differences, can be quite an obstacle – it is also the internal communication department’s task to prevent this, because they know their employees best.