Over the past few decades, Integrated Marketing Communication has rapidly transformed into any and all aspects of communication from an organization. How do businesses measure the success of their communication? Engagement.
Engagement is in every comment, like, share, reply, and retweet out there. Consumers are voicing their opinions about products. Brands are looking for approval of new lines. There is a constant flow of communication and immediate reactions to an organization’s decisions. Smart businesses listen to their consumers, what they want and what they don’t. Glamour Magazine, YouTube, and Old Spice are three brands that have all redesigned themselves after engagement identified the desires of their consumers.
One of the most popular magazines, Glamour Magazine, has been around for many years. Naturally, after a period of time they knew it was time for something new and fresh to keep attracting readers to their product. They wanted to make sure that their print product was being fresh, new, and intriguing to read. This is what initially sparked the idea to redesign their brand. They wanted to also make sure that they were as modern as possible in order to stay up to date with other competing magazines, and also to create a consistent identity throughout all of the magazines channels they use. With the recent boom of technology and social media platforms, they knew that they would have to make their online content completely up to date and as appealing to the eye as possible since majority of its readers are via mobile phones. While they are posting and keeping up to date with all of their different platforms now, it makes the content that much more important to always hold good value in the content they are sharing more frequently. They knew it was imperative to actively change as the world around us does, and it ended up being a great change to the magazine and allowed for even more success!
The largest video sharing website on the Internet, YouTube, has gotten a whole lot simpler. Redesigning its brand, YouTube is making everything more user friendly. With a flatter web design featuring less text and more images, YouTube’s redesign not only uses more negative space, but also gives each channel a nice splash of color. Another redesign feature is a new interactive homepage that gives users the ability to create their own YouTube experience. An exciting new logo that uses brackets, bearing a similar resemblance to that of a camera frame, also makes the user feel as if they are the director of their very own videos! YouTube now allows users to easily share their favorite videos with others through social media or email. With a new ‘My Channel Page,’ YouTube gives users an intriguing new experience, allowing them to customize their own personal YouTube channel equipped with dynamic backgrounds. Reaching as many as a billion users, YouTube has successfully redesigned its brand through the process of engagement. By listening to the demands of its customers, YouTube’s redesign fits the needs of its users and continues to attract more and more YouTube-goers.
Old Spice reengineered its marketing strategy in 2010. The 75-year-old company introduced the now-famous “Old Spice Guy” in an online commercial during the Super Bowl. The video itself was a clever, polished, 30-second spot perfect for sharing, as the one-take video made viewers do a double-take. Old Spice’s ad went viral, but the brand’s strategy didn’t end there. When its next ad generated a similar number of shares and retweets, the company’s YouTube channel uploaded over one hundred video responses to tweets about the ad. These didn’t just interact with celebrities that talked about the ad; the average consumer also got a personalized response from Isaiah Mustafa, shirtless and in character as the debonair “Old Spice Guy.” The personalized responses sent a message to consumers: Old Spice cares about your thoughts. Taking the time to craft individual clips that addressed the commenter with witty dialogue proved the brand’s commitment to developing a relationship with consumers and giving them fun, interactive content. This was the first step in a campaign that redefined Old Spice’s image and engaged consumers in an unprecedented way, giving them an experience to remember.
The redesign of three well-known brands shows us that it is crucial companies use this era of engagement to hear what their customers really want. As your audience evolves and expands, so must your brand. Integrated Marketing Communication is a diverse and fluid field, one where introducing new ideas and tactics is always a necessity. Sometimes going back to the drawing board, really is the best move you can make.
-Morgan, Emily, Aris, & Addison
IMC Hawks Blog 
I completely agree with your opinions on keeping these well known and trusted brands up to date. Last week, we watched a video for class that highlighted a similar point. These brands do what they have to do to stay modern, while also altering themselves to draw the attention they need to from certain buyers. When brands such as these advertise, they use help from social media meaning they re-design themselves to target certain age groups. Needless to say to continue to have the modern generations contribution many brands have to re-design depending on the latest trends.
I loved your input in this post. I believe it is important to continually “re-design” your brand, whether you are an individual or a business. By not redesigning yourself, you are allowing people to lose interest in your company and you personally. A “re-design” catches people off-guard and will easily catch their attention. Even sometimes, it will receive some negative press, but you know what they say, “any press is good press,” and I would definitely agree with that in this situation.
On another note, I think it is important to redesign yourself as a college student often. You should be a completely different person (in some respects) from when you come in as a freshman, to when you graduate. I think by redesigning yourself, you are abel to re-orient and re-focus on what you want to achieve in life.