April Mason on Violet PR’s Bold Rebrand and Market Evolution Strategy

1. How can PR firms effectively communicate their new brand identity to stakeholders and clients?

There are numerous channels that PR firms can leverage to communicate a new identity. These include a revamped website, a news release, dedicated e-blasts, a series of videos and social media posts. Teams should also bundle news about their rebrand into communications with both existing and potential clients. At Violet PR, we issued an e-blast and linked back to our new website and blog post. We have a bold, new logo and tagline: ‘We Write the Future,’ which effectively encapsulates our unique ability to help clients shape their futures, economies and skylines. The rebrand has been an important step for us as leaders in the economic development public relations space, and we’ve already garnered some incredibly positive feedback.

2. What challenges do companies face when transitioning to a new brand identity, and how can they navigate them?

I can certainly speak to our experience: prior to this year, we didn’t emphasize the Violet PR brand in a big way. In fact, we’d been using the same logo since I started the company 15 years ago and didn’t have a tagline. I saw an opportunity to create a new brand that was bold and exciting, and what we landed on was exponentially “bigger” and more memorable. But, with these overhauls comes related challenges, including the complexities of fully relaunching a website. While it ended up only taking six months from start to finish, we still had to rework our site copy and visuals, shoot a new video, and migrate our blog – plus 30+ case studies – in a new format. It’s straightforward but can be extremely time-consuming. Now that we’re on the other side of our launch – with new features on our back-end – everything has become easier to manage. So, while the site migration was a heavy lift, it’s much more efficient and effective now.

3. How does a refined brand strategy enhance a company’s ability to drive innovation and thought leadership?

An effective brand will help a company look innovative and current, enabling it to more easily market itself and its services, and it can give the business more confidence as a market leader. For Violet PR specifically, the brand essentially followed our growth: In recent years, we’ve won several big industry awards – including 2024’s ‘Best Boutique Agency’ from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), our largest industry group. So, if you combine that with all the exciting clients we work with – nearly a dozen cities and regions, four U.S. states and the country of Switzerland – we suddenly had national name recognition as a top economic development public relations firm, and badly needed a bolder brand that could represent that strength.

4. What are the best practices for maintaining brand consistency across digital and traditional marketing channels?

First and foremost: use the brand everywhere. Make it “circular” – with related copy, logo and the new color scheme appearing in employee email signatures, press release boilerplates, employee handbooks, business cards, banners, office walls—everywhere. This also means across social media pages, on new merchandise, sweatshirts, notebooks, pens and event ‘swag.’ This helps to ensure immediate engagement with the new brand, which can drive new business activity and ultimately ROI.

5. How does rebranding help a company realign with evolving market demands and industry trends?

In a fast-moving world, and even faster news cycles, it’s vital to have a brand that is both accessible and current. For companies with dated visuals or logos that do not necessarily communicate your strengths, it may be time to consider a change. For my agency, when our old logo was displayed alongside others, especially on a more crowded backdrop, it was difficult to read because of its horizontal design. We can now use a simplified but recognizable ‘V’ version of the logo – marked by a distinct single quotation mark – in those instances, whether it’s at conferences, in pitches, or on business cards. A logo can truly speak volumes, and ours has already helped elevate us in the economic development and public relations worlds.

6. How can businesses leverage PR and marketing to amplify the success of their rebrand?

Teams should do several things: a news release to officially launch the brand, e-blasts and social media posts, and even print pieces and signage. I strongly believe in the power of earned media. For instance, after we launched our brand this year, we generated favorable stories in both New Jersey and industry publications, and these have generated buzz among our clients and several prospects.

Have a clear strategy to tell people about the brand. Don’t just update a logo and leave it; make sure you share the narrative behind it. As Adam Taylor, founder and CEO of Splendor – which partnered with us on the rebrand work – said: “This project became a strong step in the evolution of Violet PR. It helps the agency retain its boutique feel, but also puts its world-class results front and center.”