We’ve written before about how important your brand is, and how to build and leverage it. But, sometime in the life of your business, you may want to change your brand. There are a number of reasons and situations where changing your brand makes sense. Let’s take a look at some of those reasons as well as how – and how not – to change your brand.
Why Change Your Brand?
Businesses often need to rebrand, and it can be a result of many reasons, including growth, new management, a bad reputation, or an outdated image. Whatever the motive, it’s essential to create a stellar brand that people will remember.
Rebranding is a strategy that involves changing a company’s corporate image or organization by developing a new name, symbol, logo, and related visual assets like marketing materials. The main goal of rebranding is to create a new and differentiated brand identity in the minds of consumers, investors, prospects, competitors, employees, and the general public.
Rebranding is also a way to keep your brand current. Design trends play a major role in how potential or current customers perceive your company and its offerings. Ensuring that your look is always ahead of the curve shows your customers that you pay attention to the trends within your industry.
Companies will also rebrand to reflect new goals, products, value, or offers. It’s tricky to communicate how your company has grown if your brand doesn’t signal it. If you’ve grown to offer new products, expanded to include more services, or set new ambitions for your business, then rebranding is a great way to show that your business is growing.
Often when companies rebrand it’s how they innovate and adapt. The main purposes for a makeover, says Maggie Sause, director of go-to-market strategies at branding agency Red Antler, are usually to improve a company’s recognition and reputation, and to signal a shift in their focus and investments.
Yet the change is almost always jarring for some consumers. Sause says people often feel emotionally invested in brands, especially with products they use in their daily lives.
“It’s almost like we’re saying, ‘How dare you make this decision without consulting me?’ It can feel almost like an act of betrayal.” -Maggie Sause
Zach Dioneda, VP of brand marketing at fintech company Public.com, agrees that people can take rebrands personally.
“There’ll be people that feel as if it is an affront to them as a loyal user,” he says. “People don’t love change.” – Zach Dioneda
Yet experts say there are ways to make brand transformations more palatable, with end users front and center. Among these best practices are pivots that consider the habits, desires, and values of core users and customers, and are often data-driven and researched.
One example is Massachusetts-based Dunkin Brands Group, Inc., who in 2018 announced they were changing the name of their flagship Dunkin’ Donuts brand, founded in 1950. They’d be dropping the word “Donuts” from both their moniker and iconography, and would subsequently be just Dunkin’, to represent a wider swath of food and beverage offerings.
Just like with other corporate transformations, the name and logo change didn’t sit perfectly with all consumers at first. However, Sause says she sees the Dunkin’ rebrand as largely successful because it relied on data and user-response studies – especially because the brand had so much consumer nostalgia and affinity due to its longevity. The makeover was “borne of deep audience and market research in order to expand to new audiences without isolating or deterring their current one”, she says.
How to Change Your Brand
So, you’ve made the decision that your company needs to rebrand. Here are the basic steps to take effectively rebrand your company while advancing your business goals.
- Start by understanding your mission, vision, and values
- Have a complete rebranding strategy that works with, and doesn’t take away from, your existing branding
- Consider your audience, the market, and your competition
- Collaborate with your team
- Create a rebrand marketing strategy
- Get your logistical ducks in a row
- Rename your business
- Rebuild your brand identity
- Manage the rebrand carefully
- Launch your rebrand and tell the world
In a future blog, we’ll go into the details on how to create and execute a rebranding strategy effectively. If you want to rebrand now, let’s connect for a free strategy session and we’ll help you on your way.
How Not to Change Your Brand (Example: Twitter to X)
We all are aware of Elon Musk’s recent changing Twitter’s brand to X. In the process, he did away with the name and instantly recognizable bird branding. Based on the publics’ and experts’ reactions, he implemented the rebrand in a way that is an excellent example of how not to change your brand.
Twitter’s rebrand to X has left core, devoted users feeling left out. Without consulting them, Maggie Sause believes it “feels like a black hole promise, full of things Musk might do”, with no evidence that there’s a clear plan to implement any of the new functions he’s floated to consumers. This, she thinks, is largely alienating to their devoted user base.
According to Stephanie McArdle, head of design at Droga5:
“Twitter felt like a giant that would last forever. With this rebrand, the Twitter we knew is truly dead. The brand itself feels pretty empty. It’s more like a teaser. OK, there is a boldness to one letter. That’s cool. But what does it mean? What are we supposed to be buying into? People need to be given a reason to believe.”
Neil Cooper, head of design, Wolff Olins London adds, “As a designer, all of us have purchased domain names with the dream of one day using them to start a business. Elon Musk has done exactly this. But in doing so, he has destroyed one of the world’s best-known brands. An instantly recognizable color palette, a globally known logo, and brand verbs such as ‘tweeting’ have worked their way into the zeitgeist of popular culture. All were destroyed overnight.”
According to Orlando Baeza, chief revenue officer at Flock Freight, and a former marketing executive and branding leader at Buzzfeed, Paramount, Activision, Adidas, and Nike:
“This is a dramatic and unexpected turn. Their brand identity went from feeling warm and welcoming to dark and members-only. And to top it off, this all happened overnight. Literally.”
In Conclusion
A rebrand can be a declaration of your company’s commitment to upward growth. On the other end of the spectrum, a rebrand can be necessary to restore your reputation. Either way, a rebrand allows you to revamp and refresh the primary point of communication between you and your customers.
Change is never easy, but sometimes, a change will do you good. The key to changing your brand successfully is to take your time, plan it out, and effectively execute your strategy. If you change your brand impulsively you’re asking for problems connecting to your targeted audiences and retaining, or growing, your market share.
Are you ready to change your brand? Let’s connect for a free strategy session and we’ll help you achieve your goals. And, if this is beyond your internal capabilities, we’re here to execute a successful rebranding strategy for you!
