The internet is full of “ah ha” moments and “here’s the thing” insights. 

I don’t have one of those. 

There was no lightbulb flash when I realized that my old brand was holding me back. No spark of insight that Eat, Drink, and Write Copy—my original brand name—wasn’t connecting with me or my target audience. 

It was a slow shift. A growing discomfort. Like a hangnail. 

But it eventually became clear—it was time for a complete overhaul. 

In March, I unveiled a new brand: Last Call Copy.

Today I’m sharing what the rebrand process looked like from start to finish. (Well, almost-finish. As you’ll see, there are still some steps left to complete.)

You’ll learn about each step of the process, the challenges that made me want to shelve the whole thing, and how much this entire project set me back. 

The TL:DR? It ain’t easy or cheap to rebrand. 

How I Knew It Was Time for a Change

The Problems I Couldn’t Ignore

1. Clunky brand name

I actually liked Eat, Drink, and Write Copy. I thought it was cute, and I got compliments on it pretty regularly.

But at five words, it was long, unwieldy, and hard to remember. When I said it out loud, I usually had to repeat it at least twice for people to understand it. And man, was “kate@eatdrinkandwritecopy.com” a long email address. 

As a copywriter, easy is the name of the game. My brand name missed that memo. 

2. Unprofessional appearance

My old branding was a DIY affair, and it showed. A logo I made on Canva. Stock photography. As I tell clients all the time…I’m no designer. But that “homemade” look didn’t do much to boost my credibility. If I’m going to ask people to pay me 4-figures to write their website, my visuals need to support that price point.

3. Not attracting enough of my ideal clients

My website is my primary source of lead generation. While my old site did bring in clients, inquiries weren’t as frequent as I would have liked. 

Now, the main reason for this is that the idea of self-promotion makes me want to retreat into a dark cave like Shelob after Samwise Gamgee gave her a sharp sword to the thorax. 

That being said, I do get site traffic. And I want MORE of those site visitors to get in touch with me about how we can work together.

What Success Would Look Like

1. Professional polish

I’m a firm believer in the power of first impressions. A well-designed brand, professional photography, and a top-notch website layout are more than pretty. They tell people whether they should take you seriously. And while I’m pretty unserious as a human, I’m very serious about my work. 

2. A brand that resonates with hospitality industry

My brand needs to instantly tell hospitality folks that they’re in the right place. That means a name that speaks their language and visuals that reflect their spaces. 

3. A cohesive visual identity 

Having a clear brand guide will allow me to create united content across my website, email, and (admittedly sparse) social media channels. So when you’re on my corner of the internet, you’ll know it. 

4. Better lead generation

What should all this lead to? A better connection with my target audience and stronger lead generation. 

So here’s how I went about it. 

The Rebranding Process

Phase 1: The Name Game (aka My Year of Indecision)

It took me one year from the time I decided to rebrand to actually choose a new name. 

A year. 

I wrote down hundreds of options. I asked my husband for input. I sent top contenders to my siblings in our group chat. 

Finalists included Prickly Pear Copy and Good Time Copy. I liked both, but Prickly Pear was too “southwestern” and Good Time was overused. I also liked KM Copy Studio (ol’ reliable initials) but alas, one already exists. 

Finally, in an attempt to force myself to choose something, I started working with my designer before the name was finalized, hoping the process would shake something loose. 

She and I emailed back and forth about it for a while in the lead up to my project, which I found so helpful. Honestly, one of the best part of working with any kind of marketing pro (beyond their actual service) is having someone to validate your ideas and share their thoughts. 

I’d almost settled on Last Call Copy. I really liked it, and I felt like it would speak to my target audience. The only hangup? There’s a boozy connotation, and I haven’t had a sip of alcohol since July 2021…which was a pretty major life change for me. 

My designer helped me out here. She suggested that our angle could be less “last call at the bar” and more “having such a good time that you stay until the very end.” Think a dinner party with sparkling conversation that goes on until they turn the lights up.

I loved it. 

(And yes, I do see the irony in a writer taking a year to come up with three words.)

I’d suggest: Really take your time with picking a name. Yes, it holds up the rest of the process. But if you have to change your name later, it will cost you a ton of time, work, and money. Better to go slow up front and make sure you’ve got it right the first (or second) time. Sit with the name for a while. Write it down. Say it out loud. If you feel silly when you say it, you’re gonna hate it. 

Phase 2: Brand Design (aka Bringing the Pretty)

Once the name was finally chosen, we could move forward with the brand design process. 

I hired Drop Cap Design to create my visual identity. And I’m just kicking myself, because I can’t for the life of me remember where I first heard of them. (I can tell you that I was on their email list for about four months before I decided to work with them. Chalk up a win for a regular email cadence!)

There was some good back-and-forth work here. A Pinterest board from me about what I liked. A mood board back from the designers that at first, skewed a bit too Texan for my liking. Some European-inspired tweaks that felt more like “me.” 

I got multiple options for primary logos, brand colors, and typography, so I could choose favorites in all three areas. 

The overall vibe was casual but elevated. Think a shared group dinner on a beautiful patio. A little cheeky. Warm and welcoming. 

The color palette we chose is earthy and summery, with shades of moss and sage, plus sun and bronze accents. It actually wasn’t far off from my old color scheme, but it still felt right! 

I got multiple logo treatments, font selections, colors, brand patterns, a signature block, and business card design, all combined into a slick style guide. 

I’d suggest: If you’re a freelancer like me, you can get away with DIYing a lot of this stuff for a while. That’s what I did. My original logo was something I threw together on Canva for the price of free. I picked colors and fonts I liked and that was good enough to get started. Professional designers are expensive and I didn’t have the cash on hand to throw at a design project until I became more established.

But if you’re a restaurant, bar, venue, or any other brand with print marketing materials, packaging, or signage, I’d encourage you to cough up the funds and pay to get it right the first time. You’ll waste tons of money if you make physical assets and then have to remake them in a few years with new colors and logos. 

Phase 3: Brand Photography (aka a Crisis of Confidence)

Before I really dug into this whole rebranding process, I used UserTesting.com to get some feedback on my old site. This is a great tool where you can ask strangers to walk through your site or complete certain tasks and get their real-time feedback about where they’re confused, what the user experience is like, and their impressions of your brand.

(Unfortunately, it’s really designed for enterprise businesses with huge budgets. Little shops like mine can only run a few tests, which is a real bummer.)

The testers shared some valuable insights—one of which was that my visuals were impersonal.

Hardly a surprise—my old website was mostly stock photos, plus a phone selfie and a pic from a wedding I attended about 10 years ago. 

So I hired local brand photographer Alicia Leigh Photography to help me out. 

We created a few different “scenes” for the photo shoot—me at work, at a dinner party, at a coffee shop, and some headshot-style photos. It was a combo of what I do (marketing writing) and who I do it for (hospitality and small business) to address my target audience.

I got the full hair and makeup treatment which was fun, and we spent a fulllll day setting up scenes and snapping photos. This was a huge upgrade from the stock photography and single self-image that I’d been working with before.

I love the photos that we ended up with. They feel authentic and natural, but still polished. I would work with this person! 

I hope to do another shoot with Alicia in a few years where we get onsite in some restaurants and hotels across town! 

I’d suggest: Smartphone photos are great for quick social snaps. You can be more off-the-cuff there. But any static marketing tools (your website, venue brochure, catering menu with visuals) should get the professional treatment. There’s no substitute for the eye, equipment, and editing of a really good photographer. 

Phase 4: New Website (aka What Have I Done?)

This has been, by far, the hardest part of this process. And it’s still not 100% complete. 

While I’m pretty happy with how my site has turned out, I’m not entirely sure that I made the right choice here. 

My old site was on WordPress. And if you don’t know how to code, WordPress isn’t the easiest site for creating an attractive custom design. 

I was willing to switch to a different site builder, since I knew I’d be starting from scratch. I considered the very easy-to-use Squarespace. But I’d seen some gorgeous websites created with Showit, and I wanted in on that. 

I also knew that I didn’t have the budget to hire a designer to build a custom site, but there are many creators that make amazing Showit templates. I figured I could buy a template, add my text, images, and brand design, and be on my way in no time. (This was foolish.)

Another benefit: Showit integrates with WordPress as a blogging platform. And since my old blog was also on WordPress, it would be a pretty simple process to get my old blog on my new URL without having to re-post everything. 

So I committed to Showit. 

What That Looked Like in Reality

I bought a very pretty website template, plus a couple of add-ons, from a site called Tonic Site Shop. Their templates are not cheap. But they are very well done, and include a lot of content for both desktop and mobile. Showit will overwrite the template’s fonts and brand colors with yours in just a couple clicks, so you can get your design started really quickly. 

On the downside: since Showit is so customizable, you have to set up both your desktop and mobile sites natively. If you add an element, like an image, to one, it will automatically add it to both. But you have to position each element manually to make sure the layout is right. This is a slow, painstaking process. 

Also, I had to learn how to use Showit. It’s relatively intuitive, but it certainly took time. 

Another challenge: third party integrations. Unlike WordPress that has a plugin for pretty much everything, you have to use some workarounds and more complex methods to get some integrations to work with Showit. I had to hire help twice: once to get my email provider connected correctly, and once to help with my WooCommerce integration for my shop. This was added cost, after I also spent hours trying and failing to find solutions on my own.

Then there’s that blog integration I mentioned. Not as simple as I’d hoped. You have to create Showit templates for your main blog page and for the individual blog post layout. Showit then autofills those templates with your content from WordPress. But if you have blog titles of inconsistent lengths, or long category names, or anything else that doesn’t fit easily in that template, it can really mess up your formatting. 

Oh, by the way…this is all design stuff. I hadn’t even mentioned the copywriting for my new site, which was also a major time investment. It may be what I do for a living, but that doesn’t make it easy. And writing for myself is always 10x harder and slower than writing for clients.

I’m happy with my site. But it took me five or six months to get here, chipping away little-by-little in between client projects. I had no idea how long my rebranding efforts would take. 

I’d suggest: Think long and hard about what’s most important to you when it comes to a website. Is it all about the vibes? Showit is a great choice. Is it ease of use? (Don’t discount this!) Squarespace has you covered. Do you want lots of third-party integrations? Check out WordPress (but Squarespace is also a good option). 

Phase 5: Administrative Stuff (aka Everything Else You Might Forget)

Ok, so I’ve got a new name. Visual assets, like logos and photography. And a new website. 

We’re not done yet.  

Here’s a quick checklist of everything else that it took me to rebrand:

• A new email address. But I also have to keep the old one for a while. I sent out the new contact to all of my current and recent clients, but I want to make sure anyone with my old info can still reach me.
• A new Google Workspace. This goes along with the new email address, so I can keep everything updated under one account. 
• Migrating my old Google Workspace to my new one. For a reason I will never understand, there is no native way to download your entire Google Workspace and upload it to a new Google Workspace. There is, however, a great third-party service called VaultMe that I used to migrate every email, calendar event, and Google Drive doc from my EDWC to my LCC workspace. 
• Redirecting my old website and every internal link to the new one. I’ve got a decent amount of SEO juice aimed at my old eatdrinkandwritecopy.com website, so it’s staying live for now. I have redirects set up to send people to the new site, and I can take the old site down sometime next year. (But yes, that means I’m paying for hosting for two sites.)
• Updating old email automations (like my welcome sequence) with new branding. 
• Printing new business cards. 
• Updating handles on social media profiles.

And here’s a list of tasks I have yet to complete: 

• Reach out to clients and third-party sites that have linked to my old site and ask them to change the link to the new site. This will be a big help with SEO. 
• Finish my Shop page (coming very soon!)
• Create Toolkit page with affiliate links to the stuff I use all the time. 
• Make sure all internal links on my old blog posts send visitors to Last Call Copy pages, instead of EDWC pages. 

I’d suggest: Make lists your BFFs. Capture every little task that you need to accomplish, and create a timeline with task dependencies. For example, you probably shouldn’t update your email address until your new site is live. But you can print your business cards any time. Prioritize your list and just focus on one thing at a time. 

Total Cost & Final Thoughts

The rebrand process has not been easy. I started thinking about new names in 2023. I started the work in earnest in August 2024. And my new site wasn’t live until March 2025.

If I’d worked on it full time, it would have been done much sooner. But I had to fit this work in among client obligations, because those always come first. 

It was a complex process. And it wasn’t cheap. 

Final price tag? $11,051. That’s a lot of coin.

I’m so proud of my new brand. I think it’s a better reflection of me and my services. 

Is it achieving my business goals and reaching my target audience? The jury is still out. The next phase of this project is to ramp up my marketing efforts, so people will actually see the new brand. Only then, with some client feedback under my belt, will I know if it was worth the time and money. 

But I will definitely say this: if you’re considering a rebranding project, think really hard about why. If it’s because you’re bored, or because a competitor recently did, or because customer engagement is down…drop the brand guide and slowly back away.

Release a new product Try a new marketing campaign. Revisit your company values. Research consumer behavior. There are many ways you can reinvigorate your brand with a much smaller time and money investment than by rebranding.

So tell me…have you rebranded? Leave a comment below, I want to hear all the horrors and all the wins!