For many beauty brand founders, their brand is more than just a business – it’s an extension of themselves. So the process of a brand refresh can be more of a personal journey. As they've evolved as founders, it's natural that where they want to take their brand evolves too.

What Inspires a Beauty Brand's Refresh
From experience working with indie beauty brands, there are two common themes that spur a brand founder to kick off a refresh. Firstly, the branding that cut it at Day 1, may no longer be doing them justice. And with aspirations to scale into new retail channels and attract investment partners, a captivating visual identity achieved through a brand refresh can serve as a critical differentiator, providing the necessary cut-through to set their brand apart.

Secondly, as their brand matured, so has their core audience. But for many beauty brands now venturing into TikTok, they’re also starting to draw in a younger crowd. With ambitions to scale their reach amongst Gen Z, they find their brand visual identity or message needs to be refreshed for more relevance. Their quest to refresh can help them answer the burning question of - "How can we stay true to who we are as a brand, while resonating with both Gen Z and our longstanding customer base?”.


Steps to Master your Brand Refresh

1. Retain What Works:
A brand refresh doesn't mean starting from scratch. It’s about identifying and preserving the elements of your brand that you and your customers already love. This will be important for ensuring continuity and maintaining the essence of what made your brand successful in the first place.


2. Gather Visual Inspiration:
Almost every founder I meet has a creative streak. They’re constantly collating images and videos that inspire them. If this describes you, it's essential to consolidate all these elements in one central location. (Yes, you’ll need to dig through all those screenshots. It’s painful, but you’ll thank me for it later).

Reflect on whether there's a consistent theme across the content. This will become a valuable reference, highlighting the visual language that most resonates with you. Although this step isn't compulsory, it helps in clearly defining your preferences, enabling an agency to develop a more aligned creative brief that pays respect to your vision and aesthetic style.


3. Leave Room to Be Surprised:
If you’re working with creative partners, allow them to bring their unique perspectives to the table to help bring your vision to life. Niche beauty branding agencies will bring deep category expertise, to deliver new ideas and direction that you may not have previously considered.


4. Beyond Aesthetics, Message Matters:
You’ll need to ensure that your new-look visual branding includes a robust messaging strategy that translates into every brand touch point to reinforce your position in the market. Consider this: If your visual identity is evolving, do elements of your brand story need to be evolved too?

To avoid the trap of having a visually stunning brand that lacks depth of personality and storytelling, leverage your brand story as the foundation to breathe new life into your content pillars (here’s a handy how-to guide). Your beauty branding agency should provide you with a storytelling implementation system, that helps your team to consistently amplify your refreshed story across your digital content and campaigns.


5. Engage your Tribe Across Platforms:
To build a brand that does more than just look good, you’ll need to speak directly to the hearts of your customers by actively engaging your tribe with your brand story and values. Through brand-building content series, partnerships, or community-building campaigns crafted around your refreshed content pillars, you’ll position yourself to make your content that much more meaningful.

In my recent blog: 7 Beauty Marketing Strategies: How to Build a Deeper Connection With Your Beauty Brand Audience, I explained that by making your content a beacon of your brand values, you attract a loyal tribe more effectively. It’s the customers who connect with who you are, not just what you sell, that tend to stick around for the long haul.

If you’re on the beauty brand refresh journey and looking for a little guidance, we can certainly help you with that! You're welcome to reach out and get in touch.

Author: Effie Asafu-Adjaye
Effie Asafu-Adjaye is the Founder of Beautiful Sparks. Beautiful Sparks helps beauty and fashion businesses get more fanatics in love with their brands, by refining their brand strategy, messaging, branding, content storytelling, and community-building strategy. Read more about Effie here. Linkedin | Youtube