#4. Rebranding is HOT: when is the right time for you, & how to make it work for staff, customers & shareholders

Darren Moffatt: 00:08

Hi there and welcome to the nerds of business podcast. My name is Darren Moffatt. I'm a director at Webbuzz, the Growth Marketing Agency. And I'm your host. We're about to get into episode four of the branding series. But before we do, I've got some really exciting news. We're celebrating the fact that Apple podcasts have featured Nerds of Business in their new and noteworthy section. Now for a new podcast, this is a really big deal. We've picked up thousands of new subscribers, and we now have a global community of listeners that spans 37 countries. If that's you, if you're one of our new listeners welcome, it's great to have you with us for a nerd like me. I'll admit this is all very exciting, but it's not the point of the podcast. The reason this show exists is to help you crack the code to growth in your own venture.

Darren Moffatt: 00:58

If we're going to achieve that, if we're really going to make a difference to your life as a leader or business owner, I know our content needs to be amazing. It's why we seek out top entrepreneurs and experts for our panel of nerds and why we're so focused on solving the key challenges. All businesses must overcome with a mix of stories and insights. You simply won't hear anywhere else, but this show is young and we're still developing, which is why I need your help. If you have any feedback on how we can improve nerds of business, I'd love to hear from you go to webbuzz.com.au/nerds that's webbuzz.com.au/nerds. And you can leave a comment or engage with us on social media. You'll find all the links there too. Tell us what you want more of or what you want less of. I'm keen to make this a collaboration with you, our listeners. Let's see if together, we can build this podcast into a resource that makes the entrepreneurial journey a little easier for everyone. There's a bit of a theme going on with today's episode and it starts with our opening story in the era of big hair, fluro and MTV. Yes, of course. I'm talking about the magnificent 1980s.

Darren Moffatt: 02:22

The year is 1985. Modern consumer culture is exploding. It's the golden age of brand advertising across TV, radio, and print. The disruptive force of the internet is still just a futuristic fantasy. And it's the height of what has become known as the Cola Wars. Back in the late seventies, the Pepsi corporation harnessed the power of TV to amplify a new marketing campaign called a Pepsi taste test challenge. These ads showed real people who seemingly preferred Pepsi over Coca Cola in a blind test. It was hugely successful with Pepsi stealing serious market share from their arrival. By the mid-eighties, the marketing team at Coca-Cola panicked, they've watched their market share decline 15 years straight from 60% down to just 24%. So, they hatch a radical plan. They decided to rebrand the company, not just to refresh, but a complete rebrand of the logo. The name, the packaging, even the product itself is updated with a different taste formula known as new Coke.

Darren Moffatt: 03:32

It's a bold gamble. The Coca Cola leadership go all in and bet hundreds of millions of dollars of brand equity. On April 23, they launch the rebrand and it's immediately a complete disaster. It turns out consumers hate the new product with a passion. The head office is soon flooded with 1500 complaint calls a day. People start hoarding their old product. A man in Texas buys $1,000 worth of the old Coca Cola protest groups and rallies of angry Coca-Cola drinkers spring up around the country, even songs I've written to honour the old taste by July, just three months later, the company relents. The old taste formula is returned to store shelves as Coca Cola, classic consumers applaud the decision in just two days after the announcement, the company received 31,000 positive telephone calls. That's the whole, sorry. Saga goes down in history as the most epic rebranding fail of all time.

Darren Moffatt: 04:40

The Coca Cola debacle is really quite famous, but what's less well known is the postscript. What actually happened after is perhaps the most interesting part of all by the end of 1985, Coca Cola classic was substantially outselling, both new Coke and Pepsi six months after the rollout Coke sales had increased at more than twice the rate of Pepsis. So, it actually served to reengage the public and drive sales growth in the product line, which is exactly what a rebrand is designed to do today. The Coca Cola brand is valued $50 billion higher than the Pepsi brand. So, although they bungled the implementation, the outcome was exactly what they were aiming for all along. If your brand is getting style or you're losing market share to a new sexier competitor, a rebrand might be just what you need to get back in front. These days, rebranding is a bit like sex. Everyone's doing it, but when is the right time for you and how do you rebrand to make it satisfying for everyone involved

Darren Moffatt: 06:12

So, the problem we're trying to solve, and the title of today's episode is rebranding. When is the right time and how to make it work for customers, staff, and shareholders, we'll hear from our panel of nerds in a minute, but for today it's a feature story we've got something a bit different. If you're a property or real estate enthusiast, you're in for a real treat. I talk with the chief operations officer of LJ hooker, Ruth Truwhella. LJ hooker is Australia's best known real estate company and in a bit of controversial rebranding, they've recently dumped a famous tagline they've used since you guessed it the 1980s. So that's almost 40 years. He's a sneak peek of my chat with Ruth.

Ruth Truwhella: 07:01

It's great to have heritage taglines, but that doesn't mean it doesn't mean you're moving away from the past. It just means you're constantly looking at where you are still relevant.

Darren Moffatt: 07:19

We'll get to the full interview soon, but first, just a quick reminder that if you're enjoying Nerds of Business, to please hit subscribe on your podcast player, it means you'll automatically receive each new episode every fortnight, and it makes it easier for us to stay in touch. So, if you're a business that's been going for a while, there are some warning signs you should be looking for that will indicate if it's time to rebrand. But before you can do that, you need a mechanism to capture data in the first place,

Rachel Bevans: 07:52

Small to medium businesses, rarely have any sort of formal brand tracking in place. So, it's a bit difficult to, um, get the sentiment of consumers towards your brand and whether you are actually relevant to all customers anymore. Um, but if you have some sort of, you should do some sort of research or tracking too, and it might just be customer surveys, or you might have a customer panel of some sort, a consumer panel of some sort. Um, and it might be just a measure of, you know, your customer complaints and, um, some, some very little experience surveys in a store or something like that, where you can actually see whether you're being relevant to your consumers. And if you're not that also maybe a time to look at a rebrand, there's also the, um, I guess, identity look at it from an identity perspective. So, every quarter I would say you should be looking at, you know, how you've expressed your brand across all those different touch points. And if it's starting to, as soon as it's starting to look a little bit higgledy, piggledy and all over the place, and it's not working anymore, and your designers go, I can't work this through because we're not, we don't have enough breadth and stretch in the, in the brand identity. Then that's another key signal for now's the time for a rebrand.

Darren Moffatt: 09:10

How often typically would an established brand need to refresh it a bit? Like, is, is there a particular, I know it would vary from industry to industry, but would it be every sort of 10 years, five years? What would be the typical cycle then?

Rachel Bevans: 09:23

Yeah, well, we normally say we do, we're working on a brand positioning for five to 10 years, and then the brand identity should, you know, you should live up to that as well, or do you need to be very careful? I think the thing is that, um, and I remember one of my bosses said once upon a time that as a marketer, you get bored of your brand way, way quick, more quickly before your customer does. And you have to remember that. And again, this is all about consistency and trust over time. So, you need that element of consistency. So, you really do have to be very careful when you are refreshing and revitalizing and rebranding, um, to hold onto the pieces that you really need to hold onto and to be as consistent as you possibly can whilst making yourself relevant.

Darren Moffatt: 10:07

That's Rachel Bevans from the Healthy Brand Company. She's one of our two branding experts for this series. And she's worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. I asked her, what are the practical steps to rebranding and the benefits that a small to medium size business can expect.

Rachel Bevans: 10:26

So, it's going back to square one essentially, and saying, who are our customers? What's the category and competitors that look like, you know, what do we offer now? That's different, better, special to anybody else. And therefore, what do we stand for? And how is our, how is that being expressed in our identity is our identity being, um, communicated consistently across everything that we do. Uh, what do we need to keep? What do we need to shift in order to represent the brand, the revitalized brand positioning in order to, um, to then design create the new brand identity and move.

Darren Moffatt: 11:04

Great. So, rebranding really at its core, you could say is about keeping the business in touch with its customers. Would that be right? Yup. Yup. And on rebranding, um, how can I, uh, business implement rebranding for best effect so that it works for all stakeholders? What are the key things that a business should do to successfully rebrand?

Rachel Bevans: 11:28

Yeah, again, it's, I think, you know, alignment actually comes here through here as well. So if you're rebranding and you want to now be person, you want to be friendly, open, approachable, and innovative, you're going to have to take that across your whole, everything that you do for all of your people are going to need to understand that your suppliers are going to need to understand that whether, you know, busy, supplying you packaging, like how do we now express innovative? You know, what sort of innovative things can we do through packaging or the bottle supply or whatever that happens to be. So, through your suppliers, through your partners, through your distributors, in your, how do we then reflect that brand? Um, and so that it does work for us, so involve all those key stakeholders.

Darren Moffatt: 12:17

So, so it's gotta be, it's gotta be very strategically planned. It's gotta be all aligned across all stakeholders. Um, and again, it goes to that thing of cascading down for all the content and the messaging consistently. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And so, I guess you would say that rebranding is worth the hassle. Um, if it is worth the hassle, what benefits to businesses, and again, let's focus on those small to medium size businesses. What do they see? What does, what, what benefits do the business see from that? All the hassle and the cost of rebranding?

Rachel Bevans: 12:56

Yeah. So, one is rallying the troops. Yup. Sorry, everyone's got a new, fresh thing to think about. And

Darren Moffatt: 13:04

So, more energy in the business. Okay.

Rachel Bevans: 13:08

The energy and the business and optimism as well. So over time, you know, things get a bit rusty. So, it's like let's put a bit of energy and optimism and enthusiasm back in the business and the brand. Um, so I think that is, is number one. And that's essentially what then helps you with all of everything else that you need to do anyway. Cause they'll come up with the right products, then the right service attitude, the, you know, the, the, um, your beautiful environment, your store environments, or your website environments or whatever it is, is the customer experience and the user experience that will be on board to create those. Um, are we enthusiastic and energized?

Darren Moffatt: 13:43

So, energy enthusiasm of the staff, but I would guess also another benefit would be, you know, press, uh, distributors, uh, partners that might be a little bit jaded used to saying the same old thing, all of a sudden, like if you're,

Rachel Bevans: 13:59

Yeah, it does. It gives everyone a bit that bit of revitalization,

Darren Moffatt: 14:04

But sometimes a company or an individual has no choice, but to rebrand because of damage to their reputation, their brand becomes mired in a crisis. That's so serious that unless they can reset the public perception, it simply becomes unbuyable for them to continue in the market. For this. I turned to John Michael from the image group. John is our other branding expert. And for over 30 years, he's been a leading image consultant to top names in business sport and entertainment. Jon reveals what really goes on behind the scenes when rebranding is less a choice and more of a necessity. There's so many, but I mean the obvious ones, the big ones obviously is damage reputation. Yeah. Um,

Jon Michail: 14:52

Bad leadership. Yeah. Um, you know, product reviews that really have created all sorts of, uh, drama for the company, um, and standards. Yep. Now you can link that specifically to personal or corporate brands. Yep. Yeah. Uh, also societal expectations. So, for instance, and this is the thing, you know, events in different times in society. Um, so companies for instance, might have to reposition themselves in different areas. That is diversity. Yeah. Doesn't matter what you did 30 years ago, the society expectations have changed. Yeah. So, you gotta keep up with the times. Okay. It's a bit Darwinian by the way.

Darren Moffatt: 15:48

Cool. Of the business and the way that, uh, the people in the company do business, we're talking really about culture here. If the culture is sound, you can rebrand and you can relaunch and you can go on to become a success. But but am I right in thinking that if the core is unsound and if the way those people do business is poor. If the culture is, is rotten, then rebranding over the medium and long term is not going to make much difference. Is that right?

Jon Michail: 16:17

Yes. Yes. And again, um, you're spot on, but I still have a caveat on that. Yeah. Okay. So, for instance, Weinstein right. Is finished. Even if it comes out is finished. Right. And he had a lot of money and power, but in my experience, there's, you know, there is guys that are what I'll call a sacred cows. Okay. So, um, for South, what I mean by that is the amount of done all sorts of stuff, but they're all protected. Um, you know, I don't know how your listeners are gonna react to that, but for somebody that's had the experience in part of that world, um, that's the one,

Darren Moffatt: 17:08

That's the way it works there. You know, if you've got the money and you've got the influence and you can, you can buy the protection, you can pay people off. And I think, you know, did the Weinstein, um, scandal is a great insight into that world because it has lifted the lid for everyday normal people to say how things really roll at the top, you know? And, you know, you're, you're, you're part of that world. You know, some of, you know, some of these movers and shakers, maybe not directly in, in, in the American film industry, but locally in Australia.

Jon Michail: 17:41

Well, now I haven't slept in there and I've done Broadway and Hollywood. Well, it's bottom line, man. It's power and money. Yup. That's the reality, you know, and that's why I have an insights in what's going on right now. Right? Because it's always about that in the end and a little bit of fear thrown in.

Darren Moffatt: 18:02

So, you might be getting a sense that there are dozens of reasons why companies rebrand often it's just a refresh, but sometimes a complete name change is required due to mergers or reorganizations of internal divisions. And this was a case with $250 million internet business Finder.com.au. Their co-founder Fred Schebesta shares the story of why they rebranded and how auditory or sensory elements played an important role in bringing it all together. Creditcardfinder.com.au was obviously the starting domain. And then we registered Homeloanfinder.com.au and personal loan finder.com.au and savingsfinder.com.au mobile phone finder. There's like a stable of finder’s domain. Um, when, but when we moved to just saying, 'Finder' for the first time, it was very uncomfortable, actually very uncomfortable. Everyone was like, oh, I'll find out like, who, what is that? And, you know, we just say, oh, you know, we're like X, Y, and Z, and say some other brand name that they know.

Darren Moffatt: 19:07

And over time we got, we sort of couched it. And I think what solidified it for us is when we made that jingle. Yeah. And I have this theory about transitioning a brand. I have this theory that if you haven't got something to say, it's interesting, go and sing it. And, and that's where that, that, that's what the whole thing came from. There was actually a whole Finder song, by the way, if you go on Spotify and look for beyond compare extended nerdy, that is very nerdy. That's really going down into the, into the, into the, find a brand rabbit hole. I love it. Okay. I'm going to seek that out. There's a reveal for you. Um, and it's, um, it's a actual rap song. Um, are you rapping for it? No, I, I can't rap, and I don't know. I'm not, I don't have a skill like that.

Darren Moffatt: 20:07

When we first played it, everyone sort of lost it and I made it by ringtone tone, and I knew this was the one. And I started really spamming and people who lost it and they, but they were like, I went home last night for him. And just before I went to bed, I sat on the jingle. And that was the moment in time where I thought, okay, this is, this is more than something. This has become an ear worm. Right? Yeah, exactly. And I think that's when people got comfortable internally. So, you see, I think the first tip about rebranding is you've got to be comfortable internally, cause everyone's got to live it and then you can go out to market and start to explain it. Right? So, the PR team tend to talk about it with the media, the advertising, what we're going to write.

Darren Moffatt: 20:46

We'll have, we're going to write on the, how we brought about our sales, our, about us page, new critical parts homepages. So once that became kind of fun and cool people are Hey, I'm gonna own this. And then I think it, then I think the change management, I think that's what you're referring to slightly as well. It became a lot more comfortable. And the, the, the, the, the, the moment in time when we actually folded creditcardfinder.com.au into Finder was less painful because we felt, hey, this gives us a great platform for the future.

Darren Moffatt: 21:20

And people got excited about that. Yep. I've got a big problem, but with it, and I'll share that, and it's very hard to sing, Finder.com. So, in the U S when I'm there, I was just there. I just came back in. And so, you can't seem to find it out contrary to you. And so anyway, so it doesn't quite have a less of a sing song. Right. It's Finder.com.au. I don't know. You know, you could get Sia, she's great at stretching the syllables in words. And if you listen to her music, she's so she would probably do something like, and I've got a terrible singing voice, but I find a dot dotcom, like something like that really stretches it out. Um, so yeah. I'm sorry. I don't have his number, but, you know, I'm sorry. It's an idea.

Darren Moffatt: 22:01

Yeah. I'm sure. You're friends with her on Facebook. So, you know, and now for our feature story, if you grew up in Australia or New Zealand in the eighties or nineties, you'll recognize this iconic ad jingle for maximum returns on your investment property, but nothing last forever, apparently. And in March 2020, LJ hooker refreshed their brand by announcing the new tagline. When, you know, you know, I spoke to chief operations, officer Ruth, Truwhella about this. She generously shares the story of how her company has made this work across a vast network of offices, business units, staff, and franchisees. For anyone thinking about rebranding. What you're about to hear is a short master class in how to do it well. The first mystery I wanted to solve though, was if the old tagline has been so successful in making LJ, hooker such a loved real estate brand, why replace it?

Ruth Truwhella: 23:11

Well, look, there's no denying that 'nobody does it better' and also 'LJ hooker you're the best' have definitely made us one of Australia's most iconic brands. And I guess at taglines are, um, a bit like mini mission statements. And each of them successfully spoke to that. So, I think they left the viewer with a positive feeling about our brand. And I think consumers are still nostalgic for them today. And, you know, you don't need to tell someone and what you do when you say you worked for LJ hooker. People often say to me, when I say I work for LJ hooker, or thank you, Mr. Hooker, or, um, you know, nobody does it better. So, it's definitely something that resonates that, um, over the years. And I guess it's a key indicator of a strong and successful brand. And, and that has sort of stood the test of time.

Darren Moffatt: 23:58

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, from one perspective, it's a pretty brave move to retire, such an effective piece of messaging. What led you to the realization that it was time for that change?

Ruth Truwhella: 24:10

Yeah. So, I guess we don't really view it as having retired them more, so we've evolved. And I think as a brand, you always have to grow and evolve to stay relevant with customers. I mean, there's a lot of a lot of consumers in Australia who didn't grow up with these ads, me being one of them. And so, we've got to make sure that we're, you know, we're, we're staying relevant to the consumer of today, whether they know our brand from the past or not. Um, and just making sure that we're, we're still relevant

Darren Moffatt: 24:39

What was the process for coming up with the new tagline?

Ruth Truwhella: 24:41

When we reflected on nobody does it better and LJ hooker, you're the best. And it's very much spoke to us and not necessarily to the customer. And, you know, we firmly believe that the customer is at the centre of everything we do. And so that was the turning point. And that was the background with which we kind of started the process. So, we made sure to add that we involved our, our network. So, we am worked with a small group of our business owners within the network and some of the, um, the offices that do marketing and in, in a really great way. And, and who've been successfully using and the taglines from the past and we got them together and we did a series of workshops, um, around what those taglines meant to them back then, what they might mean now and what a tagline might look like in the future.

Ruth Truwhella: 25:30

We also did a lot of work around what our values are and what we, what we live by day to day. And, and also the values that are particularly unmistakable as LJ hooker. And as part of that, kind of came up with one statement, which was this starting point for coming up with the actual tagline. And we almost centered around one, one statement. And that was that we place people trust and results at the heart of everything we do. And it’s kind of just built from there. So, we then, and we worked with it with a creative agency and kind of workshop through all those values until we kind of came up with that last statement. And obviously there was multiple iterations of that to get to the final tagline. And then we have to kind of sit down and make sure it worked in every scenario because we're not just dealing with buyers and sellers we're also and dealing with landlords and tenants. So, it's got, we had to make sure that it was reflected in every market in Australia, because it's got to work in Darwin, it's got to work in Double Bay, it's got to work in rest of Australia. So, we had to do quite a bit of work to make sure that that resonates and, and, and then we brought everyone back and gave them a preview of where we got to

Darren Moffatt: 26:45

Ruth that's such an, uh, uh, a really great insight into the process. And what I find so interesting about that is that you started with the staff. You started internally sounds to me like it was a fairly organic real process before you inevitably got, uh, an agency involved. And I can see that in a way, you know, how you've applied that, um, the tagline across the different offerings. And, and, and there's a real nod to the, to the history of the brand, because it's very much about the, the experience and the length, you know, the length of time that the LJ hooker has been in, in, in the market. And why did you settle on this particular one? So, I mean, as you alluded to, there was a, it was an iterative process. There was no doubt, any different options along the way. Why did you choose 'when you know, you know'?

Ruth Truwhella: 27:33

So, I think, um, there was a couple of things that came out as, as a brand through this process. So, we're clearly a trusted, and heritage brand. So, we didn't want anything that was too crazy. It needed to be simple and yet resonate. And people are obviously at the heart of everything we do, as I've said, and that we're innovators. So, we've been an innovative brand for the last 90, almost 92 years. And I guess with these things in mind, we wanted a brand statement that was strong, but also flexible. And at the end of the day, when you're particularly when you're buying or selling a home is one of those massive life moments. It's often the biggest asset that you'll ever own. And therefore, it's an incredibly emotional decision. So, we wanted to refer to that emotional side of decision making. So that gut instinct. So when, you know, you know, um, and we felt that that would, um, you know, put that human element and into the statement and put also that, that nod to the past, around being an incredibly knowledgeable brand, that the test of time. And that's how we landed on that. Yeah.

Darren Moffatt: 28:39

Yeah. Well, look, as I said, I, I'm quite a fan of it. I think it's really strong. And the other two things I really like about it, that's very clever. The first is that when, you know, you know, it's part of the vernacular, you know, so in Australia, people often use that term, you know, you know, when, you know, you know, so it's part of the everyday language. So that's, that's one thing that I really like about it. But the other thing that's very, very clever is that any copywriter will appreciate this is that you've got the personal pronoun in there twice. So when, you know, you know, so I'm getting very technical here and maybe that was not a deliberate ploy, but it didn't escape my attention that the personal pronoun is in this tagline twice. So, it's, it's got that, that sort of double punch of that emotional connection, if you will. So, it's established brands, you know, regularly need to be refreshed and I can see LJ hookers, you know, um, touched up their, their branding, um, quite regularly, sort of every five to 10 years or so why is this important in particular for real estate brands? And when you dealing,

Ruth Truwhella: 29:42

I guess, with someone's biggest assets, they want to know that they can trust you. So, we just, I guess we look at the brand over time and make sure that that statement is still relevant for the current real estate market. Obviously, the market goes up and down over time and how people view it can change over time as well. So, we just wanna, we, I guess we look at it as an opportunity to remain relevant, but always stay true. You know, it's great to have heritage taglines, but that doesn't mean that you can't evolve those. And it doesn't mean you're moving away from the past. It just means you're constantly looking at where you are and where you want to go and make sure that the tagline is still relevant.

Darren Moffatt: 30:29

What plans does the business have for rolling out this latest refresh to the market?

Ruth Truwhella: 30:36

Yeah, so we started, um, a bit of a pre-campaign I guess, with our offices, just getting them across all of the different taglines and how they could introduce them to some of the new creators, because it's really important that they understand how to activate it in the market and in their local markets as well. And then we moved into, um, um, a national campaign. So, we used, um, digital ad displays in over 250 shopping centres around Australia. And we backed that up with a, with a, an online campaign as well, just with that overarching national segment. Um, so when, you know, uh, when, you know, home is where the heart is, for example, and then with phase two, we've actually localized this. Um, and we started to hyper localized that with our, with our offices so that they can leverage it in their own marketplace.

Ruth Truwhella: 31:32

So, for example, when, you know, um, when, you know, your local cafe is the best place for coffee, but you don't see in sir, whatever the local cafe name is there to allow them to hyper localize it. And then we'll go even further with more of a, with more localized, I guess, uh, statements. So, you know, when you know, Newtown is where you belong, when, you know, Sydney feels like home, you know, it's time to upgrade when, you know, it's time to change. So, we're just gradually rolling it out and looking at which ones resonate best through our digital campaigns. Then we feed that back through our offices and let them know, look, this is working particularly well in your state or your locality. We recommend you localize it further. And that was the idea with when, you know, you know, as well is that it has so much flex, so we can use it in so many different ways for multiple life moments or locations or even, or even agents, for example. Um, and so we'll just gradually continue, I guess, to get deeper with the message, but always do and taking a test and learn approach what's working, what's resonating, what's not. And then we retire those and I'm pushing out the, at the messages that are working the best in whatever particular region we're looking at the time.

Darren Moffatt: 32:58

So, the problem we set out to solve in this episode was: 'rebranding - when is the right time and how to make it work for staff, customers, and shareholders, our branding experts, Rachel from the Healthy Brand Company and John Michael from the Imagegroup revealed how it works and the main reasons why companies rebrand. And we've also heard some compelling, true stories from our guests, Fred Schebesta from Finder.com.au and Ruth Truwhella from LJ Hooker. I hope that wisdom and insights have given you some ideas to crack the code to growth in your own venture for me. However, there are three important conclusions we can all draw from this episode. Firstly, you need to involve your staff suppliers and even customers. You need to make the protests as organic as possible. Remember brands, aren't abstract, they're a collection of people and human processes.

Darren Moffatt: 33:53

So, the more you involve key stakeholders, the better. Secondly, you should have some basic mechanisms in place to alert you to when it's time to rebrand, sometimes brand damage or crisis drives rebranding, but more often it's because the brand has lost relevance or meaning in the current marketplace. Finally, flexibility in your rebrand is essential. Going back to episode one, you might recall Rachel Bevins talked about fix and flex as the most important aspect of any brand identity. And this was very evident in the LJ hooker example, too. As we heard in the Coca-Cola story at the top of the episode, rebranding can backfire when handled badly, but if it's done well, like at Finder, it can be the making of your company as for LJ hooker. It's still early days. But what this story does show is that even the biggest strongest brand need to regularly refresh in order to stay relevant to customers. And that's a message that all businesses, no matter how small should heed when planning for the future. We're coming to the end. But before we go, it's time for our regular segment Nerd Under Pressure where a guest has to share one killer hack or tip, they recommend for you. Our listeners let's find out who is our nerd under pressure today. We've got a recurring segment at Nerds of Business, called...

Darren Moffatt: 35:26

So, nerd under pressure Ruth today, you're our real estate nerd. You know, obviously, you know, a lot about the marketing and the branding within the real estate industry. Um, uh, what is one killer hack or tip that you could give, you know, a smaller, medium sized business out there, perhaps in particularly, uh, for rebranding or refreshing the brand. I'm going to give you five seconds thinking time. Okay. Over to you.

Ruth Truwhella: 35:58

Okay. Um, I think it's, don't take things too personally, rebranding and refreshing at the very parts of kind of time becomes a very personal piece of work, especially if it's your own business and that you're rebranding or refreshing. Not everyone is going to love what you come up with but stick to your guns and try not to be too emotional about it. Always have that perspective of is it going to work in the marketplace is going to work with my consumers and not everyone has to love it straight away.

Darren Moffatt: 36:29

Fantastic. I think that's a wonderful insight. So, thanks for listening to the fourth episode of nerds of business. If you've enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps us to climb up the ranks and become more visible to other people. We want to help as many entrepreneurs and businesses as possible. If you've got a question or some feedback, we'd love to hear from you, you can engage with [email protected]/nerds. That's webbuzz.com.au/nerds. So, feel free to reach out and say hello. I want to thank all of our guests and the team at Webbuzz by helping me put this show together, we'll be back in two weeks with our next episode, which is a big one it's on brand awareness and the fastest way for even a lazy entrepreneur to get people talking about their business until then I'm your host, Darren Moffatt. And I look forward to nerding out with you next time. Bye for now.