Rebranding is not an endeavor to take lightly. Do it too often and you’ll confuse your audience. Fail to do it at all and you risk looking outdated, irrelevant or no longer representative of the work you do.
It’s important to know when it’s time to refresh your brand. And for us, now was that time.
Reasons We Rebranded Our Business
Why now?
There are a few key reasons why we decided now was the right time to refresh the Blue Kite brand:
1. We have shifted our focus.
When I started Blue Kite 11 years ago, we billed ourselves as a digital marketing agency. We spent a lot of time building and implementing marketing plans for clients. We also worked heavily in the social media space.
But over time, our work has evolved to focus more on brand strategy, branding and brand development. Our old brand didn’t speak to that. Not only was the “marketing” in our name misleading, but also the style and design no longer reflected our emphasis on strategy and branding.
As our focus shifted on developing a strong brand strategy and cohesive identity, it became clear that our brand no longer reflected who we are or what we do as a company.
2. We have narrowed our audience.
From day one of launching the company, our mantra has been to work with people we enjoy and businesses we believe in.
And while that remains true today, we have more narrowly defined who we want to help––socially conscious and mission-minded organizations. In other words, we work best with social enterprises and companies that have a strong emphasis on social impact and social responsibility.
We felt a rebrand would better help us speak to this audience and better reflect our emphasis on elevating the work that impact organizations do.
3. We wanted to refresh our style.
While this isn’t the most important reason to rebrand, we felt our previous branding no longer reflected our style or the high-level of work product we provide to our clients.
And as a company that focuses on branding, we wanted to make sure our brand identity reflected the level of strategic thinking and focus that goes into our client work.
As the saying goes, the cobbler’s kids are often left without shoes. And that was the case for us for a long time. We were so focused on our clients that we neglected the fact that our branding no longer felt as fresh or strategic as the work we do for others. It was time to change that.
Get our free brand implementation checklist to ensure the style of YOUR brand is consistent everywhere your business shows up!
Get our free brand implementation checklist!
MailChimp - Brand Checklist
4. Our website needed an overhaul.
When we began this endeavor, our website was more than six years old. While that’s not ancient when it comes to the web, it had some critical features that needed to be reworked or completely overhauled. And when that level of work is required, it’s often better to start fresh. Plus, our old site no longer felt consistent with web design best practices of today.
There was a point where we considered keeping the previous branding and simply updating the website. But it wasn’t long before we realized that everything needed to be completely refreshed.
How We Approached Our Rebranding
Rebranding is not just about a new logo. It’s about more clearly defining your brand strategy and then building an entire brand identity that reflects that.
Just like we do with clients, we started by building the strategy first. Once we had revised our strategic direction, updated our mission, vision, values and key positioning, we partnered with our friends at Honey Creative to build our new brand identity.
They took our strategy and creative direction to create a design palette and mood board that reflected our style––elegant, elevated, bold, confident and fun.Together, we also opted for a brand pattern instead of a brand icon. The idea being to make our imagery less literal and more engaging and energetic to better reflect our brand strategy process. 
From there, the Honey Creative team built out the identity. We love partnering with them because they are thoughtful and strategic about every little choice.
The font.
The typeface was chosen, in part, by the story behind its development. It was created in 1990 using entirely straight lines to solve screen display problems of the era. This gives a nod to Blue Kite’s creative problem solving chops. And stylistically, it feels classic, yet creative––which describes us to a tee!
The colors.
We notched up our color palette to be more creative and artistic, while still giving off an elegant feel.
The design.
The word “kite” was elevated to give a nod to our goal of helping organizations elevate their brand and ultimately reach new heights. The dot in the “i” gives a nod to the kite shape with the editor’s mark for deletion to serve as a tail to the kite. 
In addition to the primary version of the logo, we have an alternate emblem and simplified typography-only version to give us flexibility across multiple media and formats.
The pattern.
In addition to the organic shapes, the design includes editor’s marks. This is a subtle nod to my background in journalism, while also invoking the imagery of a kite string.
Once the brand identity was completed, we worked together to create the website and brand marketing materials to use to promote Blue Kite. The result is a striking and flexible brand identity package that works well for the web, print and social media. 
Now we finally have a brand that truly reflects who we are as a company and we’re excited to show it off to the world! We hope you love our new look as much as we do!
Implementing Your Brand
Once you’ve completed a rebrand, your job is not done! You have to make sure your brand is implemented consistently everywhere your business shows up.
Brand consistency is key to getting more awareness for your business. Download our free brand implementation checklist below to make sure you have a cohesive identity that represents your business in the best way possible!
One reply on “Why We Rebranded Blue Kite and How We Did It”
I liked this read on rebranding. I am looking forward to the list.