The success of a rebrand relies on many factors to consider. The team that will take charge of this subject is one of the most important. Indeed, its constitution aims to involve the company's departments, to manage internal management and to enable coordination of all stakeholders with the aim of controlling the schedule and budget.


It obviously depends on the structure and context of the rebranding. We will remain within the framework of the complete rebranding of an entity within a group.


First, a steering committee is needed for each level of organization involved. If the company is part of or acquired by a group, several levels of decisions are put in place. Also, there will be a group steering committee that will have a more strategic vision of the brand change.

He will have decided it and will have given it a framework. The local steering committee will have the task of precisely defining the timetable, the forces to be involved, evaluating its cost using different scenarios and ensuring monitoring of the project.


Constitution of the group steering committee (at group level)

The group steering committee includes a minimum of four people: the manager closest to the company concerned, or as the case may be, the group CEO or the division general director with decision-making power over financial commitments, the head of the communication and/or group branding, the person appointed to lead the project and the external pilot, who will act as a link between these two committees.


Constitution of the local (company) steering committee

The local steering committee must include the CEO of the company, the CFO, the internal project director, the project manager (external project manager), the resource person at group level (often the brand director). and/or communications).

The steering committee must be able to define the strategy, monitor operations as closely as possible and make decisions each time a choice presents itself to it.

He has all the steering and implementation powers. When points need to be resolved, he either makes decisions alone, works with the extended executive committee or requests arbitration from the group steering committee.



The enlarged Executive Committee which regularly takes stock of the work is made up of members of the executive committee (ComEx), department directors and members of the steering committee. Some may belong to more than one of these groups. It is within the enlarged ComEx that arbitrations can be made which involve all directions: a postponement of product launch, the reallocation of resources between services, the cessation of operations until the launch, etc.


Two critical positions to consider:

Two actors are essential to carrying out the brand change, one internal and the other external. Their cooperation results in a change on time, respecting the budget.


The internal project director.

The appointment to this responsibility of a high-level company employee with a global vision of the company and the trust of the highest management is a guarantee of the success of the rebranding. He must be respected by his peers, be empathetic enough to listen to all departments and have the skills to make decisions on the actions to be taken. He must also have organizational skills because he will lead meetings, prepare the schedule based on those of the streams, ensure deadlines are respected and defend the points of view of both the departments and the ComEx. He generally occupies a strategic position in the company, which allows him to understand all its components.



The rebranding pilot

In order to succeed in the exercise, another pillar must be put in place. This is the driver of the brand change, the real project manager. He must be external to the organization because his expertise is crucial to the success of the brand change. He is the alter-ego of the internal project director, in contact with all external stakeholders (agencies, consultants, developers, etc.) and internal directors. He guides them throughout the project and is both the guarantor of the brand's codes and its deployment.


Often proposed by the agency in charge of the brand change, he is appointed by the CEO and the ComEx, he has the legitimacy to organize the project and put it into action. He will be the transmission belt between all the actors.


It is therefore a team made up of 5 to 6 people in charge that is in place. It will rely on the teams necessary to implement the brand change.


12 streams of activity to mobilize and activate.

In order to successfully complete this project, it is necessary to organize the project into streams (which generally correspond to large departments of the company). The department director is named responsible for the stream. If several are brought together, only one is chosen to implement it. Each department of the company will thus be responsible for its own changes within the large project. The department head is directly accountable for the actions to be taken. It is he who participates with his colleagues in listing the changes to be made, in validating the schedule and in making the project a success. He is necessarily part of the extended Steering Committee which meets once a month to take stock of progress.


Here too, each organization adapts its streams to its reality. However, the following twelve have proven themselves and they correspond to the majority of the questions to be addressed. Also, it is recommended to group some of them together if they are treated together, but not to forget any.


The twelve are: Regulation & Legal, BtoB Marketing, BtoC Marketing, Communication, Human Resources, IT, Web & Apps, Sales & Stores, Finance, Customer Service, Network (resellers, partners). To these first eleven, I add “Customer experience and project” which is transversal to all and allows us to make the link between them. The project manager is included in this stream with his team.



Each stream management will have to determine the teams it dedicates to rebranding. This step cannot take place before the big census (which we will talk about in the next topic dedicated to the organization of the project) and during which the tasks to be accomplished will be determined.


The choice of team assignments or recruitment must be included in the budget and validated by the CFO and the CEO. It is necessary to take into account the schedule of operations to be carried out excluding brand change and all the subjects to be dealt with.


In addition to this internal organization, it is necessary to surround yourself with skills useful for brand change. Here too, depending on the format, objective and scale of the rebranding, the team, the stakeholders and their roles will vary. It is possible to surround yourself with one agency or several as long as you clearly delimit the interventions of each.



- The agency in charge of the new brand (or the one that will replace the current one)

- The brand creation agency which will be the guardian of the rebranding codes

- The brand architects who will present the brand for each subject

- The local communications agency (responsible for messages and launch campaigns)

- The PR agency, in charge of relations with the press

- The App/Web design agency which could be in charge of UX\UI and development if no one internally has these skills.



Internal or external?

If the skill exists internally, involving it and making it act is imperative. So, if we have the choice, we would prefer to have the existing team work on the rebranding and set up a (temporary) replacement team to manage the day-to-day. This can apply to many topics like customer service, application or website development. This will motivate employees, which will not be the case if they see what they consider interesting happening without them.


Whether for a small project (modification of invoices) or a major subject (redesign of the company's e-commerce site), a project manager must always be appointed for each project registered for rebranding. He is integrated into the recruitment within the departments concerned.


All stream managers will be in daily contact with the internal project director and the rebranding manager who form a successful tandem.