Reposition. Redesign. Relaunch.
A defined engagement with a beginning and an end. In, done, and out, with the work standing.
Who it is for
- Established businesses whose market, audience or offer has moved on.
- Companies whose public identity has not caught up with what they have become.
- Leadership teams preparing to commission a rebrand and wanting to decide the right things first.
What it covers
- Diagnosis: whether the problem is actually the brand.
- An equity audit of what the market already recognizes, before anything is thrown away.
- Repositioning, and the name and identity decisions that follow from it.
- The relaunch: what changes publicly, in what order, and what has to be true twelve months later.
What you leave with
- A diagnosis of the real problem, in writing.
- A repositioning and the equity worth keeping.
- Direction for the identity, site and launch materials your team or partners produce.
- A relaunch plan with the budget to carry it, not just to build it.
- Who does what: Stephen owns the diagnosis, the strategy and the creative direction. Designers, developers and your agency produce the identity, site and materials under that direction. Your leadership owns the rollout decisions and the budget.
- How this differs from brand strategy: strategy decides what a brand should be before it exists. Reinvention starts with what already exists, what the market already recognizes, and what it will cost to change.
How it starts
With a conversation about what you are building, who it needs to reach, and where the direction is missing. If it is a fit, the work is scoped; if it is not, you will hear that instead.
Stephen, directly. The strategy and the creative direction are his work, not a team he hands you to.
The production and day-to-day execution, in-house or through the agency and partners you already have. He works with them, not around them.
Availability, fees and terms go through the talent's authorized representatives. He is engaged and paid by the brand.
Bespoke, and set after a first conversation. Scope is shaped by four things: how many decisions are in play, how many audiences the work must reach, whether the engagement ends at a recommendation or runs through launch, and how long senior involvement is needed. There is no price list on this site.
When does a business need repositioning rather than a redesign?
When qualified buyers walk away for reasons the look cannot fix. If they do not understand the offer, that is positioning and narrative. If they chose someone cheaper, find out whether they could not see the value or could not afford it. Diagnose before you redesign.
What should a rebrand keep?
Whatever the market already recognizes and rewards: a name customers say out loud, a colour that owns a shelf, a line someone quoted back. Founders are the worst judges of this, because they tire of their own brand years before customers do.
In 2009 Tropicana replaced the image on Pure Premium, shoppers stopped recognizing the carton, and Ad Age reported unit sales down 20 percent in seven weeks.
Related work
Decide what stays before you change anything.
A reinvention is a set of decisions made in the right order. The first conversation is about which ones matter.