A Rebrand That Worked

We don't know why 99% of businesses exist.

We know what they do—they fix cars and deliver vegetables to your door—but we don't know why.

Simon Sinek says that to get people to care about what you do, they have to know why you're doing it.

I used this concept to communicate our gym's rebrand; the results were unexpected.

We were renaming and rebranding a gym that had been a mainstay of its city's health and fitness industry for 30 years.

It had served over 15,000+ members and generations of families. It sat at the top of Google and was one of the most well-known businesses in Dunedin.

In just two months, the new name/brand is getting more Google searches per month than the old brand, and we've received feedback from hundreds of people, both positive and negative.

Ironically, no one cares if you do a really poor job of rebranding. That's what happened when we rebranded in 2018. This time, we made such an impact that we lost members because of it.

For the first time in 30 years, people know why World Fitness (now Compound Gym) exists.

And what we did to achieve that was disappointingly simple. Here's how we shared our why.

We told our story by breaking down our brand into three components.

• Brand - logo, fonts, colours etc.

• Name - pronunciation, meaning, inspiration, associations

• Why - mission, vision & values

Then, for each component, we storyboarded ways to discuss them in digestible ways on each social media platform.

For example - to explain the meaning and associations behind our new name, we created a graphic that mimics a dictionary's explanation of a word.

Over seven days, we methodically drip-fed this content to our socials, website, newsletter, etc. Brand visuals and collateral first, then our new name and finally our new why.

For a tiny business, our rebrand content got a lot of reach and engagement. Something like 20,000 impressions and 100 or so new follows across that week.

Being about something matters.

Why Read When You Can Listen?

Most days, well-meaning friends send me articles, blogs, or news, and often, they are unread because of the time it takes me to consume them.

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3. You’ll land on a screen like this

   

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