White Paper.
Building a Brand that Lasts: A Strategic Guide
A successful brand is more than a logo—it’s your story, your promise, and your presence. In this guide, we explore why rushing the process can lead to failure and outline LMD’s evidence-based approach to building brands that resonate, evolve, and deliver measurable impact.
Contents
Rushed Rebrands Lead to “Gaps” in Understanding
In 2010 Gap’s sales were falling quickly. The brand wasn’t resonating with younger audiences. A rebrand seemed the ticket to modernizing the brand and recapturing the spark it had in its 1990s heyday.
However, the company prioritized a fast turnaround of a shiny new logo rather than taking the time to define a purpose for the rebrand and engage with their audience to understand their needs and motivation. The new “brand,” which hinged on a new logo, was quickly developed with little to no research and not formally tested. Instead, they tried the new logo in the court of public opinion, and within a week, the massive backlash and mockery had them pulling it.
What’s the Lesson?
Certainly not that rebrands or new brands are bad moves. There are endless case studies of brands hitting their stride with a new look and feel. The takeaway from Gap’s mistake is that a brand is more than a logo; it’s how you speak to your audience.
Your brand is your message, tone, values, and “vibe.”
Research would have shown that the classic ‘90s logo was loved. It was the surrounding brand messages, tone, and offerings that a young audience wasn’t clicking with. With audience insights, Gap could have built a new brand on the nostalgia of the old, bridging the gap between the ‘90s logo and the desires of the 2010s audience.
Building a Brand Takes Time
You want a new brand. Maybe it’s for an entirely new organization, or maybe your old brand just isn’t cutting it anymore. You work with a marketing agency, and they give you a longer timeline and many more tasks than you expected.
It’s an important–perhaps the most important–investment in your business. And important investments deserve time, attention, and a thoughtful process that uses best practices and a multi-disciplinary approach.
LMD uses proven, evidence-based strategies to build brands that resonate with your audience. Brands that last, evolve, and deliver. Every decision is guided by research, shaped by insight, and crafted with intention. The end product is visually compelling and strategically aligned to your mission and goals.
An often debated topic in branding is which comes first, business strategy or brand strategy? At LMD, we believe it doesn’t matter as long as your business strategy and brand strategy are aligned.
Our comprehensive approach, illustrated, builds strong brands from the inside out, starting with business strategy and flowing through brand strategy to brand activation.
At the foundation, business strategy defines vision, mission, values, goals, and audiences, clarifying what the organization stands for.
Brand strategy translates that foundation into a clear identity, encompassing intangible elements (purpose, promise, personality) and tangible components (visual identity and key messages).
Finally, brand activation brings the strategy to life through culture, expression, and promotion, aligning every interaction with the brand. This approach creates consistency and strengthens trust. It also turns strategy into measurable impact by moving beyond abstract planning and making the brand tangible through real-world actions that influence outcomes.
Here’s the Path to your Brand-New Brand
STEP 1: Research
Every brand starts with discovery. We talk to your internal team, stakeholders, and audiences. We conduct market and competitive research to understand the full picture of your organization’s current state, goals, and market position. Our goal is to understand what’s working, what isn’t, and where there’s opportunity for positive change. This is often a combination of workshops, focus groups, interviews, surveys, and audits that inform the steps to come. What we learn from these efforts informs the steps to come
STEP 2: Strategy Brief
We distill everything we’ve learned into a framework that defines the way forward. The strategy brief captures your vision, values, goals, and audience, and connects them to strategic messaging and brand objectives. It confirms everyone involved is aligned and moving in the same direction, serves as the north star for creative development, and guides messaging, design, and brand identity decisions.
STEP 3: Messaging and Visuals
Now comes the creative heart of the process. Using the strategy brief as our foundation, we develop brand concepts that reflect your unique identity. Our creative work includes:
Messaging platforms that tell your story with clarity and purpose.
Voice and tone recommendations tailored to your audiences.
Logo design and identity systems, including color palettes, typography, and symbolic elements that give your brand visual impact.
STEP 4: Testing
Depending on your brand’s scale and audience, we may recommend testing concepts with stakeholders, leadership, or external audiences. This could involve more focus groups, surveys, or internal workshops to validate that your messaging and visuals are resonant, meaningful, and on target. It’s a chance to gain alignment and build confidence before you launch, so there are no surprises ahead (like Gap’s consumer response!).
STEP 5: Launch and Activation
A successful brand launch starts from the inside out. Internally, we support your team with training, resources, and rollout materials so that your whole team knows how to use and live the brand.
Externally, we help you introduce your new brand to the world with updated websites, collateral, social content, events, and swag. We’ll plan the launch so your audiences experience a cohesive and compelling brand from day one.
STEP 6: Evaluation
Your brand launch is just the beginning. We stay close to your brand to support refinements as needed and help it evolve as your organization grows. Our partnership doesn’t end at the delivery of your new brand—we’re invested in your brand’s long-term success, with performance tracking, ongoing audience engagement, social media listening, and additional research to keep your brand healthy and dynamic.
How We Launch Your Brand
Internal Launch
We start with brand training and launch events within your organization. This generates buy-in and excitement among your team, your best brand champions. In addition to promoting your brand, they can help identify what materials need to be updated with the new brand identity and messaging.
External Launch
A new brand is a chance for your organization to make a splash. It’s important to invest time in a coordinated rollout to your external audiences—including clients, customers, and stakeholders—for a successful brand launch.
What Sets Us Apart
-
Decades of experience across federal, state, and local government; non-profit; and commercial sectors.
-
A holistic approach to brand development that ties brand strategy to business strategy.
-
Expertise in brand messaging, stakeholder engagement, and culture alignment.
-
A commitment to evidence-based, insight-driven branding.
-
Proprietary frameworks like Vitamin P8™ and integrated brand experience models.
-
Our award-winning creative.
LMD Rebrands
As the only military branch that’s part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard’s structure, mission, and lifestyle are unique. The fresh, modern recruiting brand reflects this, along with compelling messaging that informs recruits about the Coast Guard’s central mission: to protect, defend, and save.
The SBA has supported the success of small businesses since its creation in 1953, but in today’s dynamic marketplace, it must stay current and resonate with new generations of entrepreneurs. LMD used research findings to develop a reinvigorated brand strategy, messaging platform, and visual identity that reflects the passion and energy of America’s small business community.
Accounting Seed was poised for growth beyond its current Salesforce-based customer base. To support this strategy, Accounting Seed needed a brand that supported their future goals for expansion and leveraged the power of the Salesforce brand while establishing an Accounting Seed brand presence that’s independent and powerful.
Are You Ready to Tell a Stronger Brand Story?
At LMD, we’ve spent decades helping organizations do more than just “rebrand.” Your brand has the potential to inspire action, build trust, and set you apart. Let LMD help you unlock that potential. We’re here to help.