Is it a rebranding? museums context

One of my pet peeves is when people kept saying they have just done a re-branding of their organisation, and when you asked them what they have done, they would say “Our logo is now orange with a bit more swish into it”

No…

Re-branding is about allowing your brand to evolve with time, development and the need of your audiences.

It is not just changing your logo, colours and other ‘look and feel’ – Changing your logo and colours is just a refresh of your Visual Identity.

Re-branding = Changing or developing your offering as a museum, this includes the attitude of your staff, perhaps even the vision of the museum, the orientation of your museum, positioning in the market.  In a marketing jargon is about looking at a different approach of your 5 P’s: People, Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Some organisations even create a Brand Standards; the document specify for examples: the greeting staff must give to customers when they first arrive, when they leave, how many soap each toilet needs to have and specific brand of soap, and on and on and on.Sure, changing colours and logo contributes could contribute towards the re-branding, but it does not necessarily completes it. You need to conduct a research on your audiences, competitor, market; then make a strategic decision on where do you want to move forward to and so forth, to re-brand your museum.

For example:

You want your museum to be esteemed as an environmentally friendly museum. So to re-brand your self you change your logo from Red to Green. However your staff is seen to the public to not recycle, or you print a lot of marketing materials or your cafe don’t serve organic food and so forth. Would changing the colour help you to be seen as an environmentally friendly museum?

What do you think would have more impact to your brand, if you want to be a family friendly museum?

A logo with illustrated/cartoon character of it or regularly having activities for children and have a baby changing facility?

Have you done any re-brand? or a change of visual identity lately? Did it create any impact? Does people think of you differently? How different?