Setting your brand up for the year ahead: why refinement often beats reinvention – Epigram
As a new year begins, many law firm marketing teams are reviewing priorities and considering where brand investment will have the greatest impact in the months ahead.
At this point, rebranding often enters the conversation.
That instinct makes sense. Rebrands are visible, strategic and, when the timing is right, can be highly valuable. They signal intent, change and confidence in a firm’s direction.
But at the start of a new year, the question is rarely whether rebranding has value. More often, it’s whether it’s the right place to start.
The issue most firms are actually facing
In practice, most law firms don’t suffer from weak brands. They suffer from brand drift.
Over time:
- Templates multiply and evolve under pressure
- Presentations are rebuilt slide by slide
- Fonts, spacing and hierarchy subtly change
- Different teams adapt assets to meet deadlines
Individually, these decisions are practical responses to time pressure. Collectively, they lead to inconsistency, inefficiency and a brand that’s harder to apply with confidence, particularly in high-stakes situations such as pitches, credentials and campaigns.
The brand still exists in theory. It just isn’t working as hard as it could in practice.
What brand refinement really involves
Brand refinement is not a diluted version of a rebrand, nor a compromise solution.
It is a focused piece of work designed to strengthen how an existing brand performs day to day. This typically involves:
- Reviewing how the brand is genuinely being used across core outputs
- Identifying friction points that slow teams down or lead to inconsistency
- Refining layout systems, typography and hierarchy rather than replacing them
- Tidying and standardising the templates teams rely on most
- Making the brand easier to deploy under real-world time pressure
In many cases, refinement ensures a brand is operationally sound, whether as a long-term solution in its own right or as a foundation for larger-scale change later.
Why refinement often delivers clearer value early in the year
From an investment perspective, refinement often delivers clearer, faster value than reinvention for three reasons.
1. Speed to impact
Rebrands can take time to meaningfully show up in live outputs. Brand refinement improves the quality and consistency of work almost immediately, from proposals and pitches to presentations and campaigns.
2. Stronger cost-to-value ratio
Refinement typically requires a smaller investment than a full rebrand while improving a greater number of everyday touchpoints, making it a pragmatic way to maximise existing budgets.
3. Lower adoption risk
One of the quiet challenges with rebrands is not design quality, but adoption. Refinement works because it improves tools teams already use, rather than asking them to relearn systems from scratch.
Building a delivery model that supports the brand
Setting a brand up for the year ahead is not only about how it looks, but how it is supported operationally.
For many firms, this means reconsidering how marketing and design work is commissioned and delivered. Creative-as-a-Service (CaaS) models offer an alternative to project-by-project commissioning by allowing firms to agree scope, priorities and budget in advance.
This approach can reduce the need for repeated individual approvals, remove procurement friction, and give marketing teams faster access to consistent design support. When paired with brand refinement, it helps ensure that improved brand assets are applied correctly and efficiently across the growing volume of work firms are expected to deliver.
When reinvention is the right answer
None of this is to suggest rebrands lack value.
They are often the right choice when:
- a firm’s strategy has fundamentally changed
- there has been a merger or major structural shift
- the existing brand no longer reflects who the firm is
When grounded in clear strategic change and supported by effective rollout, rebrands can be transformative. But these conditions are less common than many firms assume.
More often, the challenge is not strategic misalignment, but execution.
Creative-as-a-Service (CaaS)
If you’re reviewing how your brand and marketing support is set up for the year ahead, our Creative-as-a-Service (CaaS) models offer a more streamlined, flexible way to deliver consistent design without the friction of project-by-project approvals. With multiple tiers, from light-touch template support to fully embedded creative teams, the model flexes to suit different investment levels and priorities. Whether you need to tidy up pitch decks or roll out a full firmwide brand toolkit, CaaS can scale to meet your needs.
Epigram works with law firms to help them assess where brand investment will have the greatest impact, whether that means refinement, reinvention, or something in between.
