The COVID-19 pandemic has arguably been one of the most disruptive events in how businesses operate and market themselves. Throughout the last two years, quarantines and lockdowns have caused customers to drastically shift their online behaviors and become much more discerning in their product and service research and buying decisions. As a result, we’ve seen a massive restructuring and shift by many brands in how they serve their customers and clients and the types of products and services on offer. As with any major shift in business models, this has required many organizations to reimagine their branding and marketing in order to recover or retain client relationships and capture the attention of potentially previously untapped client segments who now fall within their target audience.
UpCity partnered with Pollfish to conduct a survey of 600 business owners and brand marketing experts across the United States and Canada to better understand the scramble to rebrand and how it’s been incorporated into 2022 branding strategies. We focused our survey inquiries on understanding how businesses shifted their branding strategy from before the pandemic to now, with special attention given to the major challenges faced by the respondents.
We organized our findings into three major discussions:
- Branding Strategies, Guidelines, and Resources
- Branding Insights by Region: The United States and Canada
- Logo Designs and Branding Budgets
To bolster the statistical findings of the Pollfish survey, we gathered additional commentary from business owners and marketing experts in the field, allowing them to provide their own insights and best practices on how they’ve handled rebranding challenges in the post-COVID economic landscape, and how they have structured their marketing strategies to address those challenges moving into and beyond 2022.
Branding Strategies, Guidelines, and Resources
Most B2B companies rated online web content and social media content as the most important element of their 2022 branding strategy
In both the United States and Canada, outbreaks of COVID-19 caused widespread quarantines and business closures in the early months of 2020. This meant that vast swaths of the population were now relying on eCommerce platforms for shopping and working across digital marketing channels to help their businesses remain in operation. Vendors, service providers, and product teams operating in the business-to-business (B2B) sphere had to therefore shift their marketing attention to the channels where their business clients were spending the most time: online. In the first months after the outbreak, data from multiple sources show internet users have increased their activity across many platforms online, including social media, streaming services, meeting and messenger platforms, and eCommerce sites. Usage has only increased in the last year, even with restrictions easing in some areas, as many businesses have maintained remote work arrangements. With their business clients working outside of the office, engaging them across social channels has turned out to be increasingly lucrative as business owners and decision-makers are increasingly prioritizing personal relationships with the businesses they collaborate with.
With more scrutiny being given to what businesses are seen to be doing in their communities and with their internal teams, marketing efforts have prioritized social channels, but they have also prioritized establishing competitive advantage and personalizing customer experiences as top priorities in 2022 branding strategies. It’s interesting that the other elements valued by our B2B respondents are not only focused on customer experience but also on the visual elements of branding itself to better convey the shift in mission and vision businesses are adopting in response to consumer behaviors.
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most important element)
Online web content and social media content
Standing out from competitors
Developing a more personalized experience for my target audience
Visually appealing logos and designs
Providing stellar customer service
Creating memorable slogans or taglines associated with my brand
Gaining more brand exposure/visibility
Creating accessible designs for users with disabilities
Consistent branding across all digital platforms, products and/or services
Other
Meanwhile, B2C companies placed greater emphasis on providing stellar customer service
Business-to-consumer companies have continued to evolve their own branding and marketing efforts as well in response to the post-Pandemic customer data revealing emerging online behaviors. For this reason, web and social media marketing content and consistent branding across channels and platforms rank highly in respondent preferences. However, in the retail space, the need to improve and perfect the customer service experience tops the list. Customers in the retail space are doing more online research and expect more from retailers than ever before, so deploying artificial intelligence-driven automation solutions to help improve and expand customer service experiences and provide forecasts of future business needs in real-time are an important part of this process, but retailers are also exploring visual changes and improvements to branding to support and communicate their overall reapproach to appealing to customer service needs.
Providing stellar customer service
Online web content and social media content
Consistent branding across all digital platforms, products and/or services
Gaining more brand exposure/visibility
Developing a more personalized experience for my target audience
Standing out from competitors
Visually appealing logos and designs
Creating memorable slogans or taglines associated with my brand
Other
Creating accessible designs for users with disabilities
Different businesses rely on different branding elements and strategies. We approached our community of business owners, marketers, and designers to discover what brand elements were most important across industries, and we’ve gathered some of their responses here.
“Social media is by far the biggest brand strategy for 2022. It’s all about eyeballs on content, a mix of industry news to show authority in the topic, and your own piece to show your company/individual skills in the sector. Likes on content and increasing followers are key to business levels rising, there is a correlation along those lines. SEO driving content for organic searches is getting harder and so social media engagement is one way to drive traffic to your site or socials. Since COVID-19 began and with many people working from home, our online social media engagement has increased. There are a plethora of social media applications to consider, and it’s important that you ensure you are working on the right platform for your client’s needs.
For example, LinkedIn was considered a professional network prior to COVID, but recently it’s become more like Facebook and has too many fake profiles and scammers on the platform to consider it high level. Reddit, Quora, Medium, and even Tik Tok are considered brand awareness channels these days. YouTube is amongst these types of tools, as you can easily and quickly get ranked on page one quickly for video. Businesses have become more creative with the likes of Canva coming onto the scene, allowing for graphics to be pulled together in no time with high-quality results.”
—Spencer Campbell, Director, SE Asia Consulting Pte Ltd
“I am a big fan of Content Marketing and Social Media which are great ways to build your brand, increase your visibility more broadly, raise your profile and ultimately attract more clients. You do not need to be everywhere, it does not matter which platform you choose, just pick one or two that are authentic to you. It should look and sound like you and the brand you have built. Whether yours is polished or more informal, chatty or academic, humorous or snarky, it is a way for your personality to come through. Start small and build as you go.
For me, I started with small publications and then moved up the food chain to reach bigger audiences. Blogging is a big responsibility, you have to have a constant stream of fresh content to keep it active and interesting. Given my other responsibilities as an entrepreneur, I get a lot more bang for my buck by making smart comments on popular blogs and then including a link back to my site so they can learn more about me if they are interested. You do not need to blog or be on all social media platforms but make sure you are active on the ones where you are. If your customers do not use Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to find you, then you do not need to make them a priority. For many professional service businesses like mine, LinkedIn matters the most and it is easy to publish there. This has not changed throughout the pandemic.”
—Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder & CEO, Mavens & Moguls
“Customer service is one of the most important branding elements we are focusing on in 2022. We want to be known for our great customer service as this can help us to increase consumer loyalty as well as increase our chances of widening our customer base. Through our website and social media, we are able to connect faster and more efficiently with our clientele. Although email is a great resource for connecting with customers, it is not always the most effective. We want to provide quality customer service and hope that this is one of the main reasons why people trust us to help them with their SEO needs. The pandemic has caused more people to be online, which means that people want convenience and efficiency when it comes to customer service. This is why we have expanded the ways in which we can talk to customers as well as encourage them to leave feedback on social media platforms.”
—Sean Chaudhary, CEO, Alchemy Leads
53% of businesses are confident that they currently have the right tools in place to enhance their brand
While a little over half of our respondents feel equipped with the right tools to enhance their branding in the coming year, the remaining 47% feel they need to take additional measures to improve their branding or identify the tools necessary to accomplish this. For small business owners, having a fully functional in-house marketing team with the skills and tools to fully execute a rebranding can be a cost-prohibitive undertaking, and so it makes sense that such a large number of our respondents are looking to expand and enhance their available marketing resources and expertise in order to tackle the challenges facing their brands in the coming year.
53% – I’m confident that my business is well equipped to enhance branding in 2022
35% – I’m somewhat confident but there’s room for improvement
12% – My business doesn’t currently have all the tools we need to effectively enhance our brand
50% of respondents handled their branding projects in-house Pre-COVID-19. In-house branding remains more popular than outsourcing in 2022 at 48%
This is an interesting dynamic to explore in the marketing and advertising space. While 50% of our respondents did maintain that they were handling their branding with in-house resources, and it appears that only 28% outsourced to a third-party agency, the remaining respondents were still working with outside sources either in the form of freelancers or a consultant to guide and execute their branding needs. This is an important distinction as taking this approach balances an organization’s needs to expand its branding expertise with the benefits of keeping those efforts in-house.
In-house teams and consultants or freelancers working directly on-site with the decision-makers of a business provide some benefits over the idea of fully outsourcing those activities. The advantages of executing these tasks directly in-house include the fact that your in-house team is more familiar and comfortable speaking to your brand’s mission and vision.
In the case of a freelancer or consultant, they are taking ongoing guidance from your decision-makers and strategic management team to craft the necessary branding assets and messaging, rather than handling these tasks with a degree of separation and independent action agencies are more apt to adopt. In-house teams working on branding directly also ensure decision-makers and strategic planners have direct access to the creative teams in order to guide and direct their branding efforts and ensure that the team remains focused on the company’s needs, which in many ways helps to shorten the project execution cycle.
| Pre-COVID | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| An in-house branding/marketing team | 50% | 48% |
| Working with a third-party branding agency | 28% | 31% |
| Working with branding freelancers or consultants | 22% | 22% |
“My reaction to in-house branding being more popular is honestly shocking. First, the future of work is using more data, being more decentralized, and being more automated through advancements in technology and AI. This massive shift in knowledge, expertise, and experience with new ways of working means putting more pressure on existing teams to recruit, hire and increase staff to stay competitive.
Secondly, with hybrid and remote work-forces, the lines between in-house and outsource partners are more blurred than ever. This means the impact of leveraging agencies and contractors to drive innovation and augment your talent pool is much less disruptive. Outsourcing also allows growing teams to scale up or down more rapidly and avoids the high overhead of recruiting, hiring retention, and culture matching.”
—Travis McAshan, Founder & CEO, GLIDE LLC
There’s a growing propensity in many industries to embrace outsourcing to managed marketing services agencies or consultants and freelancers in order to fill the gaps of streamlined operations and businesses that cannot fill roles due to challenges across every industry in hiring and employee retention. We reached out to our community to find out whether they’ve established a strong internal team of marketers, or if they have established relationships with agencies or consultants and freelancers.
“We primarily handle branding by outsourcing it, because it’s a more cost-effective option than to go for in-house branding. Outsourcing enables us to pay less than paying in-house, permanent, or part-time staff. It also decreases the workload for the rest of my team. Outsourcing is quick, easy, and a time saver, and doing so with branding work ensures that the work is being done by experienced professionals. So we get the best result within projected time constraints for project delivery. We primarily shifted to outsourcing throughout the pandemic, as COVID-19 restricts traveling. It has hampered the whole idea of handling branding work in-house by imposing social distancing and other restrictions. These restrictions caused a lot of problems working in-house because employees have not been able to work together face-to-face, but instead have to deal with working outside of the office.”
—Lyle Florez, Founder, EasyPeopleSearch
“Here at SERP we have always handled branding in-house, from when I did it all on my own when I was first starting out to now having an internal team focused on that aspect of my business. This has been my policy because on the surface it saves costs, but the deeper answer is it plays a significant role in garnering buy-in from the team. They’re empowered to play a role in the look and feel and image of the company they work for. Since COVID-19, our in-house team has become more focused and purposeful. People have gained perspective in these trying times, and it seems to make this type of collaboration more meaningful.”
—Devin Schumacher, Founder, SERP
“We handle all our branding initiatives in-house, including those of our clients as well as for our own agency. Aside from it being the most cost-effective way for us, the biggest benefits of doing things this way are that we get to build up our body of work, grow our agency’s skills, and keep up with branding trends and best practices. This was always the case for our agency even before COVID. However, we did observe many of our clients opting to work with third-party providers to beef up their overall campaigns. This was partly due to the need to cut down on costs, but the general shift towards outsourcing remote talents also played a role.”
—Jonathan Kelly, SEO Manager, 1st on the List
38% of businesses that have been operating for less than a year plan to create formal branding guidelines for 2022
For business owners who bravely opened their doors for the first time in 2021, the economic landscape they’re diving into is rife with competition as businesses scramble to regain their footing. However, these new businesses have the advantage of being able to start with a fresh perspective on current conditions and the luxury of having built their brands to meet the challenges of marketing to the highly discerning consumers that have emerged in the wake of COVID-19. This tracks with the 38% of businesses that plan to formalize their branding guidelines this year in an effort to reposition and gain a competitive advantage.
55% of respondents overall have formalized written/verbal branding guidelines that their team follows. 66% of them noted that they enforce their guidelines regularly
The post-COVID consumer is highly interested in your brand’s online messaging and how you present your mission and vision across multiple channels, as it helps them better trust your brand. Brand trust is bolstered by brand recognition, and the formalization of branding guidelines helps establish this trust by presenting a consistency in how your organization is seen, regardless of the channel where a customer might be learning about them.
Formalization lays out fonts to be used in branded assets, approved color schemes, logos, and other visual elements, as well as how and where logos can be used and standard language and verbiage to be used around the company’s vision and mission. In laying these elements out as guidance in an official document, formalization of branding standards improves the efficiency and results of your organization’s branding efforts, as your team will spend less time figuring out details that are laid out clearly in those benchmarks. Formalization also helps your brand to avoid confusion in an extremely crowded and competitive business landscape.
55% – My team currently follows formalized verbal and/or written guidelines for our brand
26% – My team plans to create formalized branding guidelines in 2022
19% – My team doesn’t plan to create formalized branding guidelines in the foreseeable future
Frequency of enforcing branding guidelines
66% – Regularly
28% – Occasionally
6% – Rarely
“Based on our branding work with hundreds of clients over the past 10 years, these statistics don’t surprise me. Although most business owners understand and value the importance of their brand, there are many urgent needs in a business that often take precedent in the day-to-day activities of marketing and business development for their business. We recommend carving out 2 hours a month for re-focus and clarity on the overall purpose, messaging, and consistency of their brand. This small investment of time has proven to pay off huge dividends for our clients. By providing a consistent message and visuals across all platforms, clients see an increase in lead generation, customer retention, and referrals. Branding can often seem like the “softer” side of marketing, but it is actually the foundation.”
—Jennifer Christensen, Co-Founder + CMO, Beacon Media + Marketing
The data from our respondents and the insight from the marketing community reveal just how important it is to reevaluate your branding in 2022. Establishing branding standards, formalizing your branding guidelines, and working through an in-house team provide important advantages in the strategic execution of your business’s branding strategy. In the absence of an experienced in-house team, your small businesses could also get results by leveraging third-party agencies or bringing in a consultant or freelancer to augment your team in order to recraft your branding around the evolving needs of B2B and B2C clients. Not all branding trends are created equal, however. In the next section, we’ll look at trends in the creation and implementation of strategic rebranding initiatives at a regional level.
Branding Insights by Region: The United States and Canada
51% of U.S. and Canadian businesses have changed their branding strategy since the COVID-19 pandemic
Here and across other marketing articles on the UpCity marketing hub, we’ve talked extensively about the impact COVID-19 has had on how marketing specialists are executing in their roles to support businesses in recovering from the closures and quarantine measures in 2022. In this Pollfish survey, respondent data revealed that small businesses are responding to consumer trends by shifting their branding strategies. This could entail anything from revising your brand’s color palette to redesigning your logo and messaging to match the new direction you might be taking or repositioning yourself to sell to a new target audience. Whatever the impetus, just over half of our respondents felt that in the post-COVID economic playing field, it was necessary to reinvent themselves in order to remain competitive.
51% – My branding strategy has changed since COVID-19 started
32% – My branding strategy remains the same as pre-COVID
18% – We are in the process of evaluating or revamping our branding strategy now
21% of U.S. companies focused on adjusting the branding platforms that they use
Revising or changing actual branding assets and visuals as well as the language and written materials used to describe a brand are priorities for many of our respondents. However, the majority were more concerned either with enhancing or modifying the brand platforms being used or the types of products and services being offered by the brand. The pandemic forced a major pivot for many brands to expand the products or services available in order to attract a broader spectrum of customers, but it also pushed many brands to embrace eCommerce platforms as solutions in order to fulfill orders and meet customer needs. Only in Western states were brand visuals prioritized over these other elements in the United States.
U.S. Overall Breakdown
16% – Our logo design and/or other visuals
13% – Our brand slogan/catch phrase
16% – Our brand mission statement
18% – The types of products/services we offer for our brand
16% – Our target audience types
21% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.)
1% – Other
U.S. Regional Breakdown
| Northeast | South | Midwest | West |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.) | 24% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.) | 21% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.) | 18% – Our logo design and/or other visuals |
“The fact that 51% of American and Canadian businesses have changed their branding strategy since COVID isn’t surprising at all. Our dental practice clients are highly reliant on word-of-mouth referrals, and COVID severely hampered the in-person social interaction that feeds those referrals. It was a natural leap to move their branding strategy to social media. Many of our clients joined local online mom groups or became active on platforms like Nextdoor to create a digital version of the in-person interaction that had dried up. As COVID lifts, I expect those who have seen success will stay active on those channels.”
—Xaña Winans, Owner & CEO, Golden Proportions Marketing
The pandemic has had a widespread impact across every aspect of carrying out business in every industry since it hit the shores of North America in early 2020. Aside from the outsourcing conversation above, we wanted to explore the other ways COVID-19 has impacted branding strategies for our community of United States-based owners and marketing professionals.
“In my opinion, the pandemic situation has increased the pressure on businesses to earn consumers’ trust by building brand value. Consumer behavior changes are playing a significant role in increasing this pressure. Almost everyone is attempting to deal with and survive the COVID-19 situation as effectively as possible and is going above and beyond to foster brand conscientiousness. While the majority have used this opportunity to provide assistance, resources, and assistance to the needy in order to fulfill their corporate social responsibility, a few others are using innovative awareness and promotional campaigns to raise awareness about COVID-19.
The post-COVID-19 era would see an exponential increase in the number of digital channels available for offering and serving commercial offerings. In times like these, it has become critical for businesses to exercise extreme caution with the messages they are attempting to convey in order to raise awareness through promotional campaigns. At the very least, they should avoid spreading false or unreliable news and information; they should also avoid appearing opportunistic; and finally, they should avoid tarnishing the reputation of other brands through inaccurate or condescending comparisons.”
—Bram Jansen, Chief Editor, vpnAlert
“There is little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on how many people are attending webinars and other digital events. Virtual events, on the other hand, are here to stay due to a shift in consumer behavior. The utilization of digital event platforms like Google Meet and Zoom, as well as Go To Webinar and Microsoft Teams, by marketers, is helping businesses remain resilient throughout the epidemic. When many of their greatest target clients aren’t buying because of frozen budgets, businesses may nevertheless provide value to their customers with solutions like these. After the coronavirus is extinguished, this strategy of investing in connections and creating value is likely to persist.”
—Justin Caldwell, Co-Founder, All Home Robotics
“SEO and paid search have been significantly altered as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Consumers’ purchasing habits are shifting as a result of the present health issue. A growing number of people are searching for products online rather than risking exposure at the store since they can no longer dash to a store for every little thing they need. As long as there is a minimal initial expenditure, search engine optimization (SEO) has always been an important part of getting free online traffic. As a result of the coronavirus and shifting consumer habits, search engine optimization (SEO) has never been more critical. This involves both local SEO and local marketing. Although many companies will be unable to survive the epidemic, clients will be eager to check online to see whether they are still operating before coming out in public to ensure their safety. There will be a slew of new enterprises, and customers will use search and paid search to find the ones that are worth visiting in person.”
—Benjamin Stenson, CEO, Norsemen Home Remodeling
A majority of U.S. businesses noted that their biggest branding challenge is adapting to changing customer needs from COVID and/or other timely events
While many businesses have worked to expand their services and product lines and open up eCommerce channels, it has been a struggle to pivot fast enough to meet the needs of existing and new customers over the last two years. This is largely because of some of the other top concerns impacting that ability to pivot, including how many brands are experiencing limited resources and personnel in order to properly carry out daily operations. Another issue emerges from a combination of crowded industry segments and difficulty establishing brand visibility and awareness without the necessary resources to focus on marketing tactics.
(On a scale of 1-6, 1 being the biggest challenge)
Adapting to changing customer needs due to COVID-19 and/or other timely events
Limited time/resources for branding-related tasks
Too many competing brands
Not enough brand visibility/awareness
Negative online reviews
Other
We also explored what challenges United States companies are facing because of COVID-19 and other subsequent global events that have impacted marketing tactics and consumer behaviors.
“The biggest branding challenge that I have experienced due to COVID-19 is managing & shifting our strategy fast enough to adapt to behaviors by consumers in the most relevant channels. Before the pandemic, how much you exposed your service or product to the market impacted the chances of the target audience being successfully reached. Now it is not possible because there are fewer people on the street, and it’s harder to gauge the impact of our marketing efforts. And like others, there was a lot of failure and stress caused before our team was fully able to adapt our strategies.”
—Steven Walker, CEO, Spylix
“Since the pandemic started, we’ve struggled with reduced budgets due to declines in new customers. Marketing and branding are not viewed as the most critical functions in a business, and hence they are often undervalued. Considering this, they have become the first thing to be cut when budgets were adjusted due to interruptions from COVID-19. This has been extremely challenging because branding officials are now forced to drive the same amount of sales or even higher, but with a reduced allocation of funds. The more the days pass, the more companies must push themselves into digitizing, or else their sales would be even more greatly diminished. Because of the role they play in sales generation, the pressure has fallen heavily on the marketing and branding personas rather than the other aspects of the business because they are expected to adapt themselves to the changing marketing landscape.”
—Steve Anderson, CEO, Junk-Yard-Near-Me
“The biggest branding challenge we’ve faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic is trying to reconnect with our target audience. The pandemic caused a widespread shift in consumer behavior as the preferences and priorities of customers changed. We realized they were more conscious of what they bought and who they purchased it from than before the pandemic. We had to shift our image and content to meet changing expectations.”
—Rodney Warner, CEO, Connective Web Design
In contrast, 20% of Canadian companies revised their target audience types
Canadian companies responding to our survey have taken a different approach. While many addressed logo and visual branding assets in their rebranding efforts, the majority of our respondents from Canada have focused their efforts on shifting their focus to new audience types. As consumer needs have shifted in response to the pandemic, they have changed their purchasing patterns. Capitalizing on branding and audience targeting in conjunction with one another ensures your team will attract new leads and bolster a struggling bottom line during this period of recovery.
16% – Our logo design and/or other visuals
12% – Our brand slogan/catch phrase
15% – Our brand mission statement
14% – The types of products/services we offer for our brand
20% – Our target audience types
17% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.)
7% – Other
Canada Regional Breakdown
| Atlantic Provinces | Central Canada | Prairie Provinces | West Coast | Northern Territories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18% – Our logo design and/or other visuals | 24% – Our target audience types | 19% – Our brand slogan/tagline | 20% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.) | 18% – The branding platforms that we use (Website, social media, signage, labeling, etc.) |
“This data seems surprisingly low to me. I would’ve expected such a significant shift in the world and corresponding behavioral patterns to lead more companies to say they’d adapted their branding strategy and platforms. That said, it’s possible some respondents didn’t consider every touchpoint and/or platform they utilize to fall under the “branding strategy”. I wonder if these numbers would’ve been any greater if companies considered a broader perspective of a branding strategy to include how they adapted other messaging and communication efforts outside of any marketing efforts.”
—Marc Hernandez, President, XXIIBrands
With branding and marketing statistics provided by our respondents in Canada showing a different approach to branding being taken, we wanted to give more Canadian professionals the chance to speak about the impact of COVID-19 on their branding in 2022.
“We formed a marketing team right before COVID-19, but had to delay our plans to invest in a role on the team that would have been focused on brand strategy. As a result, we focused on our web presence – specifically on third-party review sites in the interim because it directly impacted the brand and we wanted to do what we could in the absence of the ability to hire for the role intended to focus on guiding branding efforts.”
—Joe Kevens, Director of Demand Generation, PartnerStack and Founder, B2B SaaS Reviews
“One of the crucial elements of my brand is content. It’s not only a way to share helpful information and communicate with the audience. Content can also help raise brand awareness and build a reputation on the market (by creating truly helpful content and using content marketing to employ more channels). Since COVID-19 began, we did have to adjust the content to the new realities. Since we help people shop for good sleep accessories, we had to explore online markets more to provide relevant information. After all, the pandemic caused an impressive increase in online shopping. We also learned a lot about the connection between sleep and COVID to help infected people sleep better. All in all, the content had to be adjusted to all changes: market demands, people’s shopping habits, and our readers’ general health.”
—Alex Savy, Founder & CEO, SleepingOcean
“As a brand marketing firm with a primary focus on small business, our brand strategy hasn’t changed all that much. Success for us has always revolved around connecting with customers on an emotional level. Building relationships. The change has been that relationship building has become almost exclusively a digital endeavor. Our marketing strategy has also remained the same – utilize smaller, targeted campaigns with a focus on supporting small businesses with more tips and advice. We find this creates a higher level of engagement as we’re able to address concerns and issues of specific audiences.”
—Paul Bies, President, Mystique Brand Communications
Canadian respondents said that limited time/resources for branding related tasks is their biggest challenge in maintaining their brand
Canadian companies responding to our survey primarily cited that they struggle with a lack of time and resources to dedicate to branding-related marketing efforts, as lower revenue and limited staffing continue to plague Canadian businesses. Extreme levels of competition and the struggle to adapt to changing consumer expectations also topped the list for our Canadian respondents.
(On a scale of 1-6, 1 being the biggest challenge)
Limited time/resources for branding-related tasks
Adapting to changing customer needs due to COVID-19 and/or other timely events
Too many competing brands
Not enough brand visibility/awareness
Other
Negative online reviews
As with American companies struggling to keep up with the changes that are necessary for a post-COVID economy to recover, Canadian companies made it clear that they were facing similar challenges on the road to recovery.
“The major challenge we’re facing is that our target audience changed. There is a big difference between returning to a post-pandemic business and finding everything the same as before. It’s not only that it’s difficult to define post-pandemic. A lot has changed in the last several years in terms of the identities, segments, and mailing lists you’ve painstakingly built throughout the course of a lifetime. The buying habits of consumers have shifted dramatically during the past few decades. We’ve been living in a world that’s changed for more than 1.5 years now.
Now that we’ve had some time alone at home, away from normality, we’ve had time to reflect on our life and make some significant decisions. Many people in their late twenties and thirties no longer desire the hedonistic, fast-paced lifestyle of the city, preferring instead to settle down in the suburbs or rural areas, acquire a home, and start a family. Not only because they’re getting older, but also because lockdowns have a psychological effect that makes them yearn for more room. And this has had a significant impact on the brands they have partnered with.”
—Jamie Opalchuk, Founder & CEO, HostPapa
“We’re under much more scrutiny now at the business level from consumers. People are watching how companies respond to and act throughout the COVID-19 situation with bated breath. Protecting brand sentiment and perception requires listening, reporting, and promptly adapting to customer issues. Customers also no longer have simple access to their networks or support ecosystems, resulting in overburdened call centers that may be unable to meet demand. Using social media, forums, chat, and in-product features to handle customer relationships with subtlety, empathy, and mindfulness can assist manage brand reputation during these isolated periods.”
—Jenny Ly, Founder, Go Wanderly
The similarity in the challenges facing companies across the United States and Canada reveal just how universally disruptive the COVID-19 pandemic has been over the last two years. While many recognize the need for their branding assets to be revised and updated, the focus for many has remained on repositioning their brands across online platforms and expanding their scope to include ideal new customers that have emerged throughout the pandemic. In order to accomplish this, brands have had to revisit not only their visual assets but with resources and time being a major factor slowing down rebranding efforts, also the budgets being dedicated to rebranding efforts.
Logo Designs and Branding Budgets
22% of both B2B and B2C businesses used blue as their primary logo color pre-COVID. 18% of respondents are still prioritizing blue for 2022, followed by red at 16%
In the logo and branding redesign process, marketers pay extremely close attention to the combination of colors used in all visual assets, as colors play a critical role in how brands are perceived by consumers. Color taps into how customers feel about a brand or a logo, and can even change a customer’s feelings or be influential in how they make purchasing decisions, depending on how color is used throughout the client’s journey.
There are multiple theories and schools of thought when it comes to what feelings are evoked by colors in branded materials, but a common theme with the color blue is that it is often associated with trust, calm, and confidence. These are especially important traits for a brand to be associated with in the post-COVID economy, as consumers are spending more time researching and reading about the brands they buy from and paying closer attention to their mission and vision than ever before. While brands can do much for this by having a strong content strategy in place, building their visual branding around the color blue can work at a subconscious level just as effectively.
Second on the list is the color red, which provides a scientific component in why it’s a popular choice. As the most visible color relative to wavelength, eye-catching red logos are extremely versatile depending on how the red is used and in what shades, but are often used to speak to consumers on an instinctual level to make them make more emotional decisions. Red speaks to brands’ desires to capitalize on more emotional consumer behaviors given how emotionally charged large segments of the population have been throughout the pandemic.
Primary Logo Colors
| PrE-COVID | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| Red | 18% | 16% |
| Blue | 22% | 18% |
| Yellow | 7% | 8% |
| Green | 11% | 11% |
| Black | 9% | 10% |
| Gray | 5% | 5% |
| White | 6% | 7% |
| Purple | 7% | 9% |
| Pink | 5% | 5% |
| Orange | 5% | 4% |
| Brown | 2% | 4% |
| Other | 5% | 5% |
We asked our community the reasoning behind their own logos, and found that color theory relative to corporate branding is very heavily leveraged across most business segments.
“The logo of VIP To Go is composed of two major colors: orange and dark navy blue. While an almost-mustard-looking dark orange blends really well with dark blue, each color defines and represents a particular aura. Orange blends the vigor of red with the joy of yellow. It’s linked to joy, excitement, attraction, creativity, and good health. The color navy blue is connected with depth, knowledge, and stability in men. It’s the corporate world’s favorite hue.”
—Abe Breuer, CEO, VIP To Go
“Our logo’s primary color is orange. We’re also having a dark blue present around our primary color, which helps the orange stand out. On the color wheel, orange and blue are opposite each other. The contrast between their exposures is higher than any of the other complementary color combinations. We chose this color as orange can be a very strong and energetic color, just like our team at Nillia PPC. We felt it greatly encompasses our team dynamic, and we’ve been running this color combination since early 2019.”
—Daniel Birta, Founder, Nillia PPC
53% of businesses currently have a brand name comprised of made-up words and/or acronyms
There’s an interesting dynamic in play with this portion of the discussion, as our respondents lean heavily on using made-up words and acronyms as a short-hand for communicating about what a brand does, what it’s about, and often as a way to stand out in the previously discussed crowded economic landscape. However, there are significant disadvantages to this approach, as customers could misconstrue what an acronym might stand for or lose the thread of your branding and forget your company name if you use nonsense words or phrases rather than a naturally occurring set of words, but instead made-up words with no intrinsic meaning. Care should be taken in establishing company names, logos, and taglines so that the messaging and brand are clear, easily remembered, and well-positioned versus competitors while remaining as unique as possible in order to not run afoul of trademark or copyright concerns.
Well-designed visual assets form the foundation for marketing teams to flesh out an effective branding strategy. In this competitive post-Pandemic economy, it’s crucial to set your business apart with unique logos and language, and then support these visuals with established marketing standards relative to color theory and graphic design. This can only be accomplished by dedicating the resources to ensuring skilled marketing professionals are involved, and this requires sufficient budgeting.
71% of businesses with annual revenue of less than $500,000 have a monthly branding budget of $100-$500. Meanwhile, businesses with $3M-$5M revenue spend $501-$1,000 per month on branding
Small businesses often dedicate much less in the way of budgeted monetary resources towards marketing tasks, and the amount is largely tied to revenue streams. The respondent data then makes sense that revenue streams under $500,000 per year only receive budgets between $100 and $500 monthly. However with the number of free, DIY software, apps, and tools on the market today, the smaller budget may only be accounting for the manpower being dedicated to these tasks, allowing smaller businesses to develop much more effective branding materials at lower costs. Interestingly, despite massive revenue streams, larger businesses are still only leveraging upwards of $1,000 to handle their branding needs, which is often only a segment of the overall marketing strategy.
| Annual Business Revenue | 2022 Monthly Branding Budget | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Less than $500,000 | $100-$500 | 71% |
| $500,000-$2M | $100-$500 | 47% |
| $3M-$5M | $501-$1,000 | 47% |
| $6M-$9M | $501-$1,000 | 51% |
| $10M+ | $1,001+ | 41% |
Executing an effective branding strategy requires first and foremost a clean and well-thought-out budget. We gathered some insight from the community to find out how they were tackling budgeting in the wake of COVID-19.
“There has been a change in my monthly budget since the pandemic started. Interestingly, my company managed to save 25% from our normal monthly budget. The pandemic had gotten people to go online; either shopping, searching for services, or even just scrolling through their social media accounts. Therefore, we took this opportunity to create content on our social media platforms. There are a lot of free social media tools that are readily available for content making. With those savings, we added an additional portion of the branding budget that we never had before towards hiring influencers to promote our brand. By embracing a more organic approach, we’ve managed to reduce our monthly branding budget.”
—Emma Gordon, Founder, US Salvage Yards
“My marketing budget has definitely shrunk as a result of COVID-19, due to a variety of factors, the most important of which is that many organizations shut down their operations as a result of government policies, causing us to suffer significant losses, which is why we’ve decided to cut our marketing budget. Furthermore, we have remembered that it is our social responsibility to assist people in desperate need of bread and butter. As a result, we’ve set aside money for those folks to meet their basic needs, and we’ve cut our marketing expenditure by over 40%.”
—Umair Syed, Head of Marketing, WELLPCB
“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it definitely impacted our sales. Regular clients that run mom-and-pop shops and websites had to drastically cut back on their marketing budget, which in turn directly impacted our bottom line. Subsequently, we had to adapt to the critical shift in demand. We adjusted our branding budget based on the potential interest that we derived from analyzing tons of data points that we derived from our CRM. This gave us a better idea of when and how to run promo campaigns – even in times of the pandemic. These days we are approaching normalcy, but sales are still fluctuating a lot more than before Covid19 – the usual baseline stability remains to be seen and as such our branding budget remains quite dynamic.”
—Janis Thies, Managing Partner, SEOLutions
With the number of tools and online platforms available to small business owners that provide free or more affordable solutions for accomplishing branding tasks as part of an overall larger marketing strategy, small business marketing teams are able to create competitive branding materials on par with what larger businesses are creating with much larger budgets. As revenue streams grow, the ability to dedicate more resources towards these tasks means that SMBs can either expand their own teams or afford to look at outsourced solutions in order to streamline operations and further grow revenue over the long term.
Is Your Business Taking Part in the Massive Rebranding Movement in 2022?
With this article’s takeaways, you might decide that it’s time for your company to take another look at your branding strategy for 2022 and beyond. Whether you’re working with an in-house marketing team or you need to identify a B2B marketing service provider, you can find what you’re looking for on UpCity’s U.S. or Canadian online marketplace. Our content can educate your team on how to best put a polish on your marketing visual assets and branding language to help you stand out in the extremely competitive post-COVID marketplace.
UpCity’s Survey Method
UpCity used Pollfish to survey 600 U.S. and Canadian business owners and brand marketing experts on their 2022 branding strategies, budgets, resources, and logo designs compared to Pre-COVID-19.
Twenty-three percent of the respondents are owners or partners, followed by middle managers (8%), C-level executives (6%), and presidents, CEOs, and chairpersons (5%).
Sixty-one percent of the companies are B2B while thirty-nine percent are B2C.