EPISODE 68

Derek Welcome to Brands Made Meaningful conversations with the team at Sussner about how purposeful branding inspires unity, identity, and powerful change for growth-minded organizations. We’re back. We’re back in our new platform, Tucker.

Tucker Yeah, it’s interesting to do these kinds of conversations because we talk so much in person, and then doing it all recording at home is weird. I think I’m excited about the conversation today. In the last episode, we talked about how to launch a brand or maybe the steps of launching a club brand. Today we’re going to talk about when and how that comes into play. When a general manager or director is thinking about, Hey, I really want to rebrand, Well, when do I want to do that?

Tucker Last time we laid out a nice roadmap that people can follow, the very specific considerations, and we specifically avoided the when to do a club rebrand so that we could get deep into that today.

Tucker So what I want to talk about is just overall consideration, knowing every club is different, knowing every situation that people are going through is different, but just some things that we’ve run into to say, I really considered doing this or launching at this time. What I’m thinking of is someone at a club saying, How do we decide when to do a club rebrand and is there a perfect time for our club to launch this brand? So overall, that’s what we’re going for.

Tucker Well, spoiler alert, but there is no perfect time, right? There are probably better times. There are instances where it’s going to be more effective than others. And I know we’ll get right into that. But there isn’t a perfect time. We’re going to look at the next best ones that make the most sense, that give a club the best reason, the thing to align it with, and the other considerations for timing. So let’s jump right in.

Tucker When we think about club events or activities or things that are going on, think of major events. That’s the thing that I would gravitate towards most. So maybe you’re redoing your clubhouse, or maybe you’re redoing your course, or maybe there’s a big facility upgrade going on. Aligning with the launch of that is a natural platform to allow you to have this conversation. Say you’re redoing your clubhouse and that happens in the spring of next year. You would say, Wow, we have a really great opportunity to welcome all of our members back to this great clubhouse. And while we do that, to tell them the story of our next generation, of where we’re going and how this facility and our brand is now evolving to tell that broader story of the club.

Tucker Another one that would fall under major events would be anniversaries – clubs celebrating milestones 25, 30, 50, etc. Oftentimes, clubs will host a celebration along with that type of event anyway. And to piggyback on that with the launch of a brand update or a brand initiative is a perfect way to tie into that celebration.

Tucker When some people ask us about timing, there’s also the opposite. So there’s a lot of great times to do it like we’ve been talking about. There are also a lot of times that I would advise not to do it. So maybe you have a big member-guest tournament coming up and you’re like, Well, that’s a big event. Maybe we should do it on something like that. I would avoid those really hectic, busy periods. It’s just not a great time to have a thorough conversation with your membership about transition and how you’re doing. So I think about those things when you’re busy or your club has an excess of people in it because there’s a lot of stuff going on. That can be a really hard time to launch a brand. Just generally.

Derek We talked to GMs about some of these timing considerations and conversations. A lot of times when the high season is on and when a club is in the middle of a season, if it’s in the summer if you’re up north, if it’s the middle of the winter if you’re down south, you’re swamped. You’re swamped with running your club and doing all of your normal everyday types of activities, which especially for a GM is more than a 40-hour commitment. So to tack this on on top of that during that time probably will just stress you out, spread you a little too thin, and there’s probably a better time to set it up.

Derek So aside from events, aside from major milestones that are happening, another thing I would consider would be your operational readiness. Does your staff have the capacity to prepare for something like this? Does your infrastructure allow you to have access to all of the different spaces and how you’re going to use all of those? Just thinking about the operations and going, Wow, can we get this done? It’s a lot of work in the back end. And I think that’s what surprises a lot of our clients when we work with them on these rebrands. They don’t realize, Wow, we have to deal with food and beverage and now we have to deal with all the pro shops that have to turnover. So there’s just a lot that happens. And if you’re busy operationally across other areas, it’s going to make it really hard for you to successfully launch that brand.

Derek So you can actually launch this too soon. If you launch your brand when you are not truly ready and when you don’t have certain steps in place, that can make the launch a lot harder to succeed. Like you said, if the staff isn’t ready, if they’re not wearing the new brand, if they don’t have the language in place so when members and other staff ask them about what did you do, why did you do this, what’s going on, and if they haven’t been trained and updated as to how to respond to that in a consistent and effective way, it’s going to stress them out and it’s going to cause questions. So members, especially ones who weren’t involved in the rebrand or brand update initiative or process, the uninitiated and the uninvolved are going to have a lot of questions, even if you’ve brought them along, if you’ve brought your whole community of membership along throughout the process in some nice touch points along the way to keep them updated, they’re going to have questions and you have to be ready to thoughtfully and consistently answer those questions. And you have to look the look. If you launch the new brand and the pro shops are not stocked with logo merchandise and gear, it just lets a little bit of air out of the balloon too.

Tucker A well-timed launch demonstrates thoughtful and strategic leadership of the club. So if this is done poorly, it really reflects the management. It really reflects the leadership of the club to say, we can’t do this well. We’ve rushed it. Or maybe it just took too long to get done. There are a lot of really interesting factors. When we look at external factors thinking about maybe another club has launched a rebrand recently, or maybe there are other people in your current market, maybe it’s competitors, maybe it’s not. They’re doing a lot of really interesting stuff. When would be a good time for you to consider other people or other clubs in your rebrand plans?

Derek If your neighboring club is launching a club rebrand and you are planning one also, it might be good for you to wait six months to do it or it might be more strategic to do it at the exact same time or even smarter to get it set in motion right before they do it. There’s a timing to make sure that the opportunity to do this, to have this celebration with your membership, whether that’s internally or even to the public, that somebody else isn’t taking your steam, taking your momentum, or making it look like you are just piggybacking on what somebody else is doing and you look like you’re following the lead of another club.

Tucker You definitely don’t want to land in the me-too bucket saying this club rebranded and if you had waited six months or a year after that and you came out with something that was maybe a little similar or however you want to perceive that, that can push back on members saying, So we’re just going to do what everyone else is doing. I’m not understanding what’s going on here. So looking at external factors, understanding if anyone’s planning anything, if anyone’s doing anything, or what people have done in the past that’s been successful or not successful can really help when you look at the timing and rolling this stuff out.

Derek Market conditions are super, super important. Hopefully, people don’t experience this as often. But think about Covid and the start of the pandemic. Launching a rebrand during a time when you’re in survival mode or when all efforts are shifted to something else during a recession, during a stock market crash, during, I don’t know, an election, during any time when other things are going on if that affects how the membership might receive it. Because whatever that is that’s going on is close and near and dear to the people at your club. We had this happen with a club we worked with in Florida. We were in the process of working on their brand update and a hurricane hammered them and all efforts paused from brand work, as it should, to cleaning up the community and putting the community back together and making sure that all of the people that were now without a home while their homes were being repaired, that all that was being taken care of. And obviously to forge ahead with a rebrand wouldn’t make sense when something like that takes priority. So we put that on pause, and fortunately for them and for us, we were able to pick that momentum back up to help them have a successful launch.

Tucker There are things out of the club’s control sometimes that say this is a little bit more important than what we’re talking about here. This shifts for me – it goes to seasonal trends. So most clubs that we deal with have a seasonality to them. They have memberships that maybe go north for the summer or maybe they are the opposite and they go south for the winter. There’s this level of seasonality that you can then plan your launch around either the kickoff or the wrap-up of that season. That can do one of two things. So kicking off would be great when you’re getting everybody excited, getting everybody to say, hey, here’s where we’re going, have a great season. This is all great stuff, kind of a rah-rah thing. There’s also a benefit for doing it at a wrap-up, too, to say, hey, great season. Here’s what you can look forward to coming up next year. This is the stuff where we’re going forward. By the time you come back, the whole club has been turned over and allows you to have a little bit more of a gradual controlled rollout when you have a lower operational need over maybe the winter, let’s say. And that can be a huge benefit too. I think it just comes back to what’s your membership, what gets them excited and, you know the seasonality of the people around your club. What works best for you is really the question.

Derek We’ve seen both of those pre-season, post-season, the before and the lead-in, and the wrap-up that people then take home or take back north or back south with them during the offseason. We’ve seen that work really well in both scenarios.

Tucker The last thing would be to consider member engagement generally. So if you’re sitting here and you’re listening and you’re going, I have no idea. There are a lot of things I should consider – when is a good time? I don’t know. And you’re just totally baffled about when to do this. You can lean into some member insights. You could try to get some feedback. You could have some conversations. You could also do a little bit of surveying. So if you do an end-of-the-year survey, just kind of fill in a little piece of that survey that says, hey, if we’re ever going to announce something large, maybe it’s a renovation or maybe it’s a rebrand or something like that, when should we be doing that? We’ve seen success in the past with people just kind of asking more generic questions of when would you like to hear big information about the club? That allows leadership to understand what time of the year works best for their membership and when do they receive information best. I think of when you were growing up as a kid, there was always a good time to ask your mom a question and not. So there’s this level of you kind of have to feel it out. But that’s true with memberships too, in my opinion. There is this level where they receive information better at certain times of year versus other times of the year. You don’t know that getting that information can be helpful, aside from even thinking of a rebrand, but just thinking about all of the announcements you guys do moving forward, and how that all works out is going to be big.

Derek And I would take your staff into consideration in the same way. I don’t know that you need to survey the staff, but at least have a pulse and an understanding of their readiness and anticipation. We talked about preparedness in one of our earlier points, but there may be a conversation with the staff about rolling this out at a certain time of year or a certain week or even a certain day of the week. That will just make it something that the staff can get on board with to make it more successful. And then the last point is, and we talked about this before, some of the ongoing communications that you do with membership throughout this whole campaign and to back up what we mean by that. We’ve shared other examples where clubs have taken on a brand initiative without saying anything to members and without including them in any way, a committee has just proceeded to redesign the club’s logo and unveil it and launch it with new merch. And without having some strategic key touch points along the way to keep members informed, those tend to be the rebrands that are the least successful and that don’t work because people didn’t know what you were doing and they didn’t understand why you were doing it. So then looking forward to the opportunity to get people excited, to tease them a little bit, to know that something’s coming, to be communicating with them at the right times and giving them the right messages, not only so that they feel involved, but that they’re excited so that when you do have this event – whether it’s a loud event or a quiet event – they’re ready. They’re crazy excited, hopefully excited, maybe a little bit nervous. But they’re ready for it.

Tucker We had a great conversation in our last episode. Episode 67 was all about those steps and how you get people involved and how you build anticipation. I think that’s huge. Timing is a huge part of it as well. There’s this level of if you do it at the wrong time, no matter how great it is, it probably won’t work. But there’s also that other side. Even if you do it at the best time, if you do it in a terrible way, it’s not going to happen. So those are great things to consider. Overall, if I’m talking one-on-one with a GM or director and they say, why does this even matter? Can’t we just launch it at any time? I go through one, it really demonstrates your ability to manage and perform at a high level for the club. Like you were saying, there are a lot of clubs that go through this process and do it wrong and then have to revert back to where they were. That’s embarrassing if you’re a leader. You can’t just admit defeat on that. You should figure out what success looks like and build towards that. And you also have to be focusing on maximizing impact. Launching at that right time can really make sure that things kind of jump off that platform and go forward in a great way, amplifying the whole usage of this. It’s an expensive endeavor. It’s a journey that takes not only time but a lot of effort and a lot of financial backing to make sure this does really well. You want to give it the best opportunity to succeed. When we’re looking at minimizing disruptions or minimizing operational issues, thinking about those things, every club is different. Every club has a different situation depending on what your staff is comfortable with. What is their workload? What can you get done? What is possible? Also, think about what all the touch points are. Some clubs are bigger than other clubs, so that requires more areas. There are more corners of that club that need to be covered on those bases and then figuring out what’s a great phase one, phase two, phase three, when rolling it out is going to be really important too to say, where’s our impact and where’s our not? But overall, you’re looking for long-term success. You’re looking for what are we going to do to make sure that we don’t have to revert back to our old self. Because this is about moving forward, not just changing for the sake of change and then changing back. This is about trying to communicate to membership and potential members, Hey, we’re about this. This is why we’re unique and here’s where we’re going.

Derek When I shared the example of another club rebrand that launch unsuccessfully, that’s not to say that they weren’t doing it with all the right intentions and for all the right reasons. But I think these four points that you just talked about were points that they missed. Maybe just because they didn’t know any better. Maybe it was because the GM or the pro or the committee was just so excited about what they were doing they just didn’t think through some of these other potential roadblocks. So to do it right and to be aware of the whens – when to do it and why to do it at those times – not only does it make you look good like you said, it makes you look like you know what you’re doing. And I think then when the rollout finally happens, the second-guessing will be less because you’re going to have the confidence to have known that you’ve checked all the boxes and thought through all the right steps which make the impact bigger, which sets this up, not just for now, not just the short term success, which is the day of the launch or the week or the couple of weeks after, but for the next several seasons and hopefully the next several years following.

Tucker What you said about excitement is absolutely a challenge. It doesn’t sound like it would be a challenge, but when we’ve worked with committees in the past and if you’re a committee member and you’re listening to this, there is a true problem with getting really excited about all the stuff you’re seeing and saying, God, I really want my other members to see this. This is super great and I’m hearing people talk and ask me, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? And you want to be the person that just says, here, look at this. Isn’t this amazing? Now be quiet. But there’s this level of timing is everything. And if you rush this out, it can be a big, big challenge. There are committees that are thinking about how to release it to the membership. And then there are the internal leaders, the managers, the directors thinking about how to even make sure this happens in the first place, not only make sure that it’s this big thing, but that it goes off smoothly. And so pairing those two things is really hard and it’s really important stuff.

Derek I was at a golf event with a committee member whose club we were working on a rebrand, and at that point quite a bit of it was complete. The logo had been selected by the committee and by the board, and the date for the launch event had been set and actually announced to the membership. One of the other members that we were with at this golf event was trying really hard to get a sneak peek at what it was that we were going to present. The committee member’s response was, Do you tell your kids what’s inside the boxes, in the gifts that are wrapped up underneath the Christmas tree three weeks before Christmas? Hey, it’s on the calendar, it’s on the books. Love your excitement. There’s an appropriate time of when to tease that out. Maybe there is a little teaser. I’m not sure quite how to do that appropriately yet. Some people let their kids open one gift a day early, but it would spoil it for everybody if, out of your own excitement and that other member’s excitement, something went sideways and unveiled it without the right context.

Tucker Wrapping up – every club rebrand is different in my opinion. There is no one-size-fits-all launch plan. We have gone through this dozens of times with clubs where they come out and they go, Hey, give us our launch plan. It’s all situational. It’s what’s going on here? What were the memberships expecting? It’s the external market. You’re looking at, Well, there’s a hurricane happening. We can’t do it then. There are things that are out of our control. There are things that are in our control. It’s important to make sure that you’re thinking about all of those things and understanding what that timeline looks like up to it and then after it and going, what is the best time for us? And knowing we could do this successfully, making sure it’s a long-term plan.

Derek If you know those things right up front and you’re working with your agency/partner on this branding initiative so that they’re clear about what those intentions are, it’ll help them create a schedule and a timeline for the entire process working backward and to modify that specifically to make that launch at the time that is right for you as successful as possible.

Tucker So for you guys going through a club rebrand, trying to figure it out, good luck. It’s not easy. It’s really rewarding, but a hard task ahead.

Derek Good luck. If you have any questions, give us a call. We’d be happy to share some insights. And if there’s another topic that you would find helpful that we can talk about in future conversations, please drop us a line and let us know. We’d be happy to add it to our queue. Sussner is a branding firm specializing in helping companies make a meaningful mark, guiding marketing leaders who are working to make their brand communicate better, stand out, and engage audiences to grow their business. For more on Sussner visit Sussner.com.

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