When is the right time to consider a brand identity refresh or a new website?

At High-Rise, we’ve had the same brand identity since our PR agency first launched back in 2016. So, five years later, a new look was long overdue.

Our old logo featured our beloved Toast Rack, one of our favourite Manchester buildings.

Our new brand still celebrates our love of all things modernist. But, also shows more clearly who we are and what we’re all about. Working with purposeful clients, as we do, we wanted a brand that was bolder, brighter, optimistic and would get us noticed. We think it does exactly that and hope that you agree!

We also decided to bite the bullet and revamp our website so it puts our work for purposeful clients first.

We’ve learned a lot along the way too. So, here are some of the top tips we’d like to pass on if you’re thinking about revamping either your brand or your website – or both!

High-Rise’s top ten tips

  • If you are going to have a new website, consider if your brand identity is still working for you. If not, it might be better to tackle both at the same time. Otherwise, you are probably just giving yourself more work in the long run.
  • Be realistic about deadlines, make sure you’re leaving enough time to listen to other opinions and take feedback on board. After all, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it right rather than rushing. 
  • On that note, have someone who will hold your feet to the fire if you’re delaying things. Think about having an internal project manager, responsible for working with you to get your brand or new website live. There’s a lot to get through and you need someone who is going to make sure that work is getting progressed on time.
  • Involve the whole team – or as many people as possible from different parts of your organisation – so that everyone feels like they’ve had a say and have been able to feed in their thoughts and ideas. 
  • Think about how your brand is going to look on web and social platforms. Is it going to be easy to spot and make you stand out? We’re proud of how different we look compared to most PR agencies – because we are!
  • Choose the agency that you work with carefully and make sure they get your organisation and what you’re all about. We worked with Brand Ethos who did a great job and share many of the same values that we do.
  • Consider a soft launch. We quietly launched our new brand identity at the end of last year so we could make sure that we tackled any teething issues. There’s always going to be some niggles. Also launching near to Christmas worked well for us. Things naturally quieten down at the end of the year, which gave us more focused time to concentrate on our own communications for a while.
  • Think of your brand as a business investment. It needs to be affordable, but don’t try to do it on the cheap. You have to live with it every day after all!
  • Once you’ve launched ask people what they think – it’s a great way of getting some social engagement and interaction going.
  • And our last word comes from our Account Executive, Vicki Phillips: “This was the first time I’ve been involved with a brand identity refresh and the whole process was so enjoyable. It really brought the team together and we had a lot of fun with it.”

In 2021, we also helped our client, CarShop, launch a purposeful brand refresh. So, if you’re thinking about relaunching your brand and looking for a PR and Communications agency to help you make a splash, then get in touch. We’d love to speak to you about the ways we could help!