Brandversations Africa.

Head of Strategy, Dave Blendis and Marcel Jacob, Strategy Director chat with the folks from Brandversations Africa about our Everton F.C. rebrand. Here are some of the highlights:

What is the difference between a brand refresh and a rebrand?
We began by discussing the nature of the project and whether it constitutes a rebrand or a refresh.

In truth, the language of branding changes depending on people’s views, which can confuse things. For DixonBaxi, it’s far less important to argue over the semantics of these terms. Instead, it’s about defining the opportunity in the brief and how brave we can be with our thinking.

Nevertheless, we shared our broad perspective on where the divergence lies – continuity vs discontinuity.

A brand refresh aims to revitalise or reframe the brand to resonate with people in a different context. This can be a small change (a ‘facelift’) or a more radical evolution. The critical point here is that the brand idea remains essentially the same.

Whereas a rebrand is about a new direction. The goal is not to re-energise but to change course. This often involves a change of key brand assets such as the logo or name. The idea here is that there’s recognition that the existing brand holds no valuable equity moving forward.

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Is heritage something important for every brand?
A goal every brand shares is the need to stand out, and what is more unique to a brand than its own story?

Heritage is an excellent source of brand distinctiveness as any other brand cannot copy it. The trick here is to use the values, history, founder stories, archives and older assets through a new lens that is modern and resonant with the actual context that the brand lives in. It’s not a history lesson.

Our work for Everton F.C demanded that we find a thread that was not only unique to the club but honoured millions of fans across the globe that are deeply passionate about their club.

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Was there any connection between this brand work and the needs of the business?
We believe that a brand that overlooks the needs of the business is like a game of tennis played without the net. It might be fun, but it lacks any meaningful measures of impact.

One of our goals was to create a brand that would attract new fans from across the globe. So we looked at this challenge as one to reframe Everton F.C from a football club to a lifestyle brand that would be desirable to people that are not hardcore fans.

This has obvious implications for the business, as it substantially expands Everton’s potential market. But another benefit was to free the club from depending solely on their success on the pitch by engaging with audiences interested in Everton’s culture and fashion and the ethos of doing the right thing.

Thanks again, Brandversations Africa, for hosting us, and we look forward to the next chat.