Why you’ll have to rebrand

As a brand designer ‘n get to work with a lot of new brands. At least 90% of the time, the request includes the phrase “timeless brand”. People look towards rebrand as a negative action for their business.

Unfortunately, reality tells us that in order to stay trendy, you’ll have to rebrand to a certain extend. This could be a major overhaul or just a couple of tweaks to the brand.

If you look at any of the major and well-known brands in the world, all of them underwent a couple of rounds of rebranding.

Why this happens tells us a lot about the technology and design techniques of the time. It also reveals a lot about the cultural preferences of the society it lived in.

For most of the major, well-known brands, the first rebranding happened between the first 6 to 12 years. Most of these brands rebranded 2-3 times since 2000.

Why do companies rebrand?

There are a couple of reasons that can lead to the need to rebrand your business.

Leadership change

With new leadership, there often comes new visions for a company. A companies brand is a reflection of these visions. Therefore you’ll often see changes in companies branding just after a new CEO is appointed. This is a way to let stakeholders know that there is new leadership with a new vision for the company.

Mergers and Acquisitions

During mergers, companies have to take a new look at their products and target audiences. Whether they keep one of the original companies’ names, this is a good way to expand and include some new audiences.

Your customer evolves

What people wanted and needed thirty years ago, looks a lot different from today. The way people interact with their environment has changed. Thirty years ago, most people didn’t own cellphones. They didn’t shop online and didn’t use online social networks. Customers became less patient and instant gratification became part of the game. Brands need to adapt to these changes in order to stand out and stay relevant.

Repositioning your brand

Millennials are more health and environment conscious. To ensure they didn’t alienate this market, Coca-Cola introduced Coke Green in 2009. This is just one example where a brand repositioned itself to fit into a new company vision of being more environmentally friendly.

Bad reputation

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Warren Buffett

Although rebranding won’t fix a bad reputation, it can be used along with other marketing and communication strategies to revive your brand. Managing your brand reputation is, however, easier than fixing it.

Internationalization

It often happens that companies grow into international markets. Unfortunately, brands don’t get always developed with this possibility in mind. This can lead to confusion regarding words, symbols, and colors used in the original logo. Rebranding is then necessary to ensure your brand has room for the new cultures and views it will operate in.

Lack of brand clarity/consistency

A lack of brand clarity often starts with a lack of vision. When a company doesn’t have a crystal clear vision of who they are, what they do, and how they inspire consumers to take action, they often feel a disconnect from their audience.  Take Disney as a brand. Their brand is consistently sending out the message about creating magic. This tells consumers what they can expect in their experience with the brand.

Outdated image

Although designers always feel like they should modernize old logos, you should be cautious in making hasty decisions. Never rebrand for the sake of rebranding. Take into account your loyal customers and how they feel about the new direction you want to take your brand. Make sure you don’t deviate in such a way from your original brand that it becomes unrecognizable. If you take most of the examples above, you’ll see that the changes were small tweaks. A change in font, color, or just simplifying the brand, but the original brand could still be recognized.

To conclude

Thinking that your brand will be so timeless that you’ll never have to rebrand, I think is a bit naive, seeing that tried and tested brands showed through history that rebranding will be necessary at one point or another. As long as the reason for the rebrand is in order to keep your company relevant to the consumers it is aiming to serve, you’ll be fine.

When you ever feel the need to rebrand your business, take the opportunity to start by revisiting your company vision. Make sure about the audience you are serving and take into account their wants, needs, and the way they perceive your brand. Market test your new brand by asking your already loyal customers about their opinion. How does the new logo make them feel? Only then will you be absolutely sure about the direction you take your new brand in.

If you think that it’s time for your business to get a facelift, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me by filling out the form.