Branding Experiences

When I began working at my workplace three years ago the agency embarked on a name and branding change. I was naive to think that these changes were a simple process for the agency however, simply changing the organization's name was a huge ordeal. Although I was not directly invovled with the marketing strategies and changes I remember a lot of emails being sent to staff to prepare for the upcoming changes and give us information on how to relay the names and branding changes to patients and families. Staff members were given booklets that contained the new logos, slogan and specific fonts, colors, etc. that we would need to use.
It has been two and a half years (I think?) since the rebranding was complete and I still hear employees and people in the community calling the agency the wrong nameand not recognizing that we now have an entire divison of the agency that is devoted to education and research. I don't think this means that the rebranding failed however, it did show me how difficult it is for people to change their attitudes about a particular service that they've had experience with and/or simply referring to a service or product by another name.
This experience made me think about how important branding is to market products and services and this strategic process is crucial in engaging and understanding target audiences.