Thinking
May 2023 · 4 min read
What the Newstalk Rebrand Actually Taught Me About Brand Strategy
The brief that came in wasn't unusual. A major Irish media brand, strong heritage, strong shows, strong audience loyalty. The ask: refresh the brand, make it feel more modern.
What the research told us was a different story.
Qualitative work with listeners, non-listeners and the station's own team revealed a perception problem that no visual refresh was going to fix. The brand was seen as a particular kind of voice - confident, opinionated, established - but also as a voice that wasn't speaking to a significant part of the population. Younger, digitally-native audiences didn't feel addressed. The content existed that would resonate with them. The brand signals weren't pointing at them.
The strategic question shifted. This wasn't a design problem. It was a positioning problem. And the answer wasn't in the logo.
The lesson that keeps coming back
Most brand problems that arrive as design briefs are actually positioning briefs in disguise. The visual discomfort - the logo that feels dated, the palette that feels wrong - is usually a symptom. The thing driving it is a brand that has drifted from what it actually stands for, or that has never been clear about it in the first place.
The work on Newstalk started with workshops - not with a moodboard. Two days of structured conversation with listeners, programme-makers and the commercial team. The question wasn't "what should this brand look like?" It was "what does this brand genuinely stand for, and for whom?"
The answer that came back was consistent across every group: Newstalk is the place where Irish people have difficult, necessary conversations. Not the safe version. The real one. Challenging, intelligent, inclusive - and interested in opinions, not just facts.
That became the strategic foundation. Conversation that Counts - a platform that was honest about what the brand was and who it was genuinely for.
The visual identity followed from that. Not the other way around.
What this means in practice
If you're thinking about refreshing your brand, the first question to ask is whether you're dealing with a design problem or a strategy problem. They're not the same thing, and treating one as the other is expensive.
A design brief without a strategy brief is a new coat of paint on a house that hasn't been surveyed. It might look better for a while. It won't fix what's underneath.
The most useful thing you can do before any brand work is to get clear on what the brand actually stands for - in plain language, without the jargon. If you can't say it in a sentence that a person outside your industry would immediately understand, the strategy isn't there yet.
That's the work. The visual stuff comes after.