Written by: Vickie Sullivan | November 02, 2021
When It’s Time to Rebrand
Heads up: political example ahead. Over the summer, Qanon believers decided to rebrand their “secret war.” According to an NBC New column, “Q ordered believers to ‘drop all references re: ‘Q’ ‘Qanon’ etc.’ to avoid being banned on social media. A month later, Q declared that ‘there is Q, there are anons, there is no QAnon.’”
The organization also changed its strategy to focus on smaller areas where it would have greater impact.
And more recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to rebrand his company to separate it from the bad reputation it has acquired. Its new name: Meta.
Regardless of your beliefs, these are great examples of how to pivot when negative attention moves a brand from asset to liability.
While you likely won’t ever face the negativity those organizations face, you can still use two strategies that they employed for your next evolution:
• Drop the toxic label. With Qanon, the shift changed the focus from the community towards the ideas. This works when the brand name has been redefined.
• Show up in low-risk environments. For Qanon believers, they decided to focus on local elections rather than national races. Shifting to focus on local elections such as school boards provides the best of both worlds. It has high-impact to introduce the ideology, and the races are easier for them to win than big media-driven Congressional races.
Listen: How to Find Low-entry, High-impact Environments
The moral of this story: You don’t have to do a major overhaul. You can make small adjustments to your brand and messaging. These cost less to do and can often create better results.
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