Do you remember Global Hypercolour Tee-shirts? 👕 The ones where heat would make the tee change colour? 🥵 They are making a comeback. Why? Nostalgia!

Nostalgia is a big thing in creativity, think of Stranger Things, the love of the Yellow Walkman (cassette player), the Nintendo 64, among SOOOOO many more. These are products and creations that stir things deep in our souls. Because we recognise them, we remember wanting them as kids, and they make us feel safe (now).

Nostalgia also lives on our street too here at Outrageous. We are rebranding. Well good for you. Who cares? Move on. Next.

We will be changing our name – from Outrageous Impact to….Outrageous Insight. We will have a new brandmark that draws on counter-culture, anti-authoritarianism, and yes even the aforementioned teeshirt.

Again #YDY (You do You) but why should I care? Here are 6 lessons from our rebranding journey so far:

1) Before you decide if you need to rebrand, research. We have done five rounds of research with clients and former clients. Plus civilians. Their feedback was at times lovingly brutal. A key learning, & reason for our rebrand, nobody understood why we were called Outrageous IMPACT.

2) Get your positioning right next. As well as the name not being instantly understood, neither was it clear to clients and potential clients, what category we were in. I remember chatting with the ace Cassandra Stavrou MBE and Rebecca Harper when I was mentored at PROPER. They told me how adding the word ‘Popcorn’ to their popcorn packaging led to a big sales increase. Hence why we are doubling down on ‘INSIGHT’.

3) Learn from others in your category. We collaborate daily, weekly and monthly with other insight businesses. Our biggest competitor will NEVER be other firms. It will be the STATUS QUO. The perception that insight research is too difficult to do. Too expensive. If you believe the opposite, we will help you!

4) Don’t be afraid to stand out. An apology to Rachel Bhageerutty, Emma Cownley, Andy Briscoe, Lee Chan, FRSA – I have been TOO SCARED. A few months ago, I tried to tone down our proposed strapline.

Now we are going to go all blazing on our new mission “To change the world faster through explosive insight training and research”. 🚀 🧨 Listen to your EXPERTS!!!!!!!!!!!

5) Think about products but most importantly remember people BUY a personal transformation. We will be selling three research and training products, but ACTUALLY what we will be selling is:

– Helping charity, nonprofit, purpose organisations’ marketing and comms leaders be smarter
– Helping the same change the world faster
– Supporting them to retain & motivate staff through training

6) Finally, be intentional about who you want to serve & how. We now know that we work best in longer term partnerships with larger charities & purpose businesses on insight research & training. Want to chat? Text me +44 (0)7809 240021.

Now the only question is what colour tie-dye t-shirt merch we need? Thoughts?