Volume 142: To Re-brand Or Not.

To Rebrand or Not.

tl;dr: A largely misunderstood activity.

With WeWork undertaking something of a rebrand, I figured it might be good to discuss rebranding because, in the WeWork case, it’s unlikely to make much difference. Not because of anything that changed graphically but because it’s a business incinerating cash, with a stock price that’s precipitously collapsed under the weight of its cumulative losses and has a bleak future. (Fun fact. Softbank invested over $10bn in WeWork. Ousted founder Adam Neumann was given almost $2bn to leave. And the business is now worth around $450m in total. Ouch) Under such circumstances, any rebrand activity is going to make about as much difference as rearranging the deckchairs while Rome burns. 

However, it demonstrates an increasingly common reality, which is that rebranding - especially the variant where you change the full identity system, logo, and all - is increasingly being treated more like an advertising campaign than something you engage in only very rarely. With some businesses rebranding multiple times in just a few short years. 

Clearly, rebranding, like much in the branding sphere, is a deeply misunderstood activity. Not least because it also suffers terribly from a medical condition that courses through the veins of marketing: vaguedefinitionitis.

So, before we get into the question of when it makes sense to rebrand and when it doesn't, it’s first worth defining what we mean when we’re using the term.

There are generally four situations commonly termed “rebrand,” but each is a bit different, and to make things even more confusing, they can also be layered atop one another. Let's take each in turn (Note, that since I come from the branding side of things, that’s my bias in these definitions):

1. The advertising rebrand:
   This is when the company or product has repositioned and has a new advertising campaign/platform and tagline, but there isn’t a meaningful change to the name, logo, visual system, or other evergreen brand assets. Here, the term rebrand is commonly used in the advertising media press to announce a new campaign, but it may be more accurate to frame it as a re-positioning or simply a new campaign (depending on the depth of change) rather than a rebrand. 

2. The identity system rebrand:
   This is where the company or product has a new visual identity system (colors, type, graphics, imagery), but the name and logo remain the same, perhaps with some subtle tweaking to the logo. New positioning and campaign/creative platform often accompany these changes, but not necessarily. 

3. The logo rebrand:
   As the title suggests, this is where there is a major change to the logo rather than a subtle tweak, almost always accompanied by a big change to the broader identity system, but the name remains the same. Again, this is typically accompanied by a new positioning and advertising creative platform, although not always.

4. The name rebrand:
   Finally, we go the whole hog and change everything. We change the name, the logo, the visual system, the positioning, and the advertising. We change it all. This is the most aggressive form of a rebrand.

If we work backward, we see that the most significant degree of change to the totality of the branding is in 4, working back toward the least amount of change, which is 1. That’s not to say an advertising rebrand or changes to the value proposition and experience can’t change a lot about the brand because it absolutely can. It just doesn’t change what we might label the “evergreen” branding assets people use to identify, associate with, and remember it by.

Phew. Halfway in, and I still haven’t gotten past the definitions. Sorry, but it’s an important frame of reference for what’s to come.

Now, there are some people who will tell you it’s never, or almost never, a good time to rebrand. They are wrong. There are also people who will never pass up an opportunity for a rebrand. They’re also wrong. Let’s start there.

If you work in a branding, design, or advertising agency, it’s highly unlikely you’ll respond to a client saying, “Maybe we should rebrand,” with anything else but a resounding “Yes, you should!” Now, that yes might be couched in all sorts of rigorous analysis and insight, but we also have to acknowledge the 800lb gorilla in the room: the money for the agency is in the rebrand. This is why anyone on the client side needs to be careful whom they’re asking advice of. I’m not suggesting there’s anything nefarious going on, just that if you ask someone with a hammer whether or not you should hit a nail with it, they’re almost certainly going to say yes.

With that out of the way, let’s start with 3 and 4 above, as these represent the most significant degree of change. When should you do these?

First and most importantly, significant rebrands shouldn’t be undertaken lightly, and definitely not just because a CMO or Design SVP has declared it time, mostly because they just arrived at the company and feel the need to make their mark. That’s simply not a good enough reason because the risk of causing harm often exceeds whatever may be viewed as the problem. 

That said…

You should only change your name if you absolutely have to (e.g., you’re being sued for infringing on someone else’s trademark or you’re demerging from a parent brand), if there’s a material problem that will hold that name back from future success (like it being offensive in another language, or that you didn’t register the name internationally where you now need to grow) if you’re too young to have built any equity yet (way back when they were both tiny, Google was called “Backrub” and Instagram “Burbn”) if you’re going through a merger or similar driver of an architecture shift where there needs to be a new name to reflect a new start for both cultures and/or encompass a newly combined value proposition. And finally, if your company or product has done something so terrible that you need to run away from it with a completely new name…like Altria. (Hopefully, none of you will find yourselves in that position.)

Otherwise, name changes almost always create bigger problems than they solve. Put simply, “Hating the name” isn’t a good enough reason to change it.

The why of this is very simple. Of all your assets, your name is the singular thing you’re going to be recognized by first. As soon as you change your name, people won’t recognize who you are, and you’ll invariably have a negative hit on your business while you’re in the process of rebuilding recognition. As a result, it’s rare that a company has a name so bad, so inappropriate, and so generic that shifting to a new name creates less negative impact than the upheaval of changing it. 

There’s no guarantee the new name will be any better than the old one, and you have to be willing to accept that the opportunity cost of building equity into the new name will likely require resources that could be better spent on things that might be more valuable, like enhancing the value proposition, instead. 

So, as a general rule of thumb, do everything else before considering a name change-driven rebrand. It represents deep surgery, and as exciting as that surgery might sound, most businesses are not ready for the inevitable challenge of the rehab that follows. 

So, what about leaving the name alone and engaging in a full change to the logo, visual identity system, advertising, positioning, etc? When is that appropriate? Well, many observers, especially those hewing from the marketing science end of the spectrum, will say “almost never” and “very subtle if you do” to this question. They say this with good reason, as it represents a change to the distinctive assets that you may have spent years building equity in. However, there are three specific situations when such a re-brand can be valuable. 

1. Your brand lacks distinctiveness

2. Your brand looks and feels increasingly old-fashioned

3. Your business has transformed significantly, but brand perceptions have not.

Let’s take each in turn:

Your brand lacks distinctiveness.
It’s all well and good to say you shouldn't rebrand because you might lose the distinctiveness you’ve invested millions in, but if your problem is that you lack distinctiveness in the first place, then a rebrand may well be in order. Reversing the trend toward boring minimalist genericism, this is exactly what Burberry did when it ditched the sans serif and embraced a richer and more figurative mark that’s closer to its heritage. Look for more of this in the coming years as more marketers realize that “blanding” was simply an exercise in letting designers with a penchant for minimalism light the company’s money on fire.

Your brand looks and feels increasingly old-fashioned.
In an ideal world, you don’t do big swingeing changes to your brand identity. Instead, you evolve it subtly over time, like Coca-Cola or, more recently, Porsche. These are the kinds of rebrands that happen all the time and shouldn’t even warrant a press release to announce them because the whole point is that you don’t really want anyone to notice. (Note to branding agencies, please stop breathlessly hyping minimal graphical updates; it just makes you look stupid). However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and all too often, identities aren’t updated on an ongoing basis, so what happens is that you eventually start to look a bit faded and old-fashioned in your dad jeans. Often, what precipitates change is the brand finding itself with broader relevance challenges among younger customers and, as part of a broader package of change, decides to engage in a more wide-ranging rebrand. This is a completely appropriate response. My primary advice, if you find yourself in this situation, is to make sure that A. You identify what within your existing brand identity is distinctive and differentiated so that you can update it rather than accidentally throwing it away without knowing. (This doesn’t mean you can’t still throw it away if you have good enough reason, just that you aren’t doing it blindly). And B. You identify what’s going on in your competitive environment, so you can identify the common tropes to avoid and ensure that your brand will stand out relative to the competition. As an aside, my experience is that designers tend not to be great at either of these analyses. But, if this is the path you are going down, you should definitely insist on it as a part of the process. 

Your business has transformed, but your brand perceptions haven’t
It’s not uncommon, especially in a B2B environment, for a business to undertake a sometimes quite radical transformation that fundamentally changes the business model, the value proposition, and even the customer target. However, while much emphasis has been placed on transforming the business, brand perceptions can remain rooted in the past. Under this circumstance, you may decide on a rebrand to act as a signal of change. Essentially you want to send a flare into the sky saying, “Look at us. We’re not the same anymore.” As a part of a package of activities designed to align your business transformation and your brand perception, this can be a powerful tool, especially if you can connect the narrative around the rebrand directly to the transformation that’s occurred within the business. However, what you can’t do is assume that the rebrand is all you need to do. Changing perceptions is a long game play, and it requires discipline to get right, and because you now look very different, you’ll need to spend a period of time getting people to recognize you as the new you rather than the old one.

Finally, on the topic of wider-ranging rebrands, a key stakeholder that’s often forgotten about, especially by the marketing science folks who tend to be ultra-focused on the customer, is the employee. Especially the prospective employees you might be trying to entice into your organization to help you level up your skills and capabilities. A not insignificant number of rebrands are less focused on the customer and more focused on marking a strategic change of direction internally. Using the rebrand as a leadership tool to mark new expectations the organization has of existing employees while also attempting to make it more attractive to the new talent that it needs. 

So, when it comes to wide-ranging rebrands, where you’re engaging in a high degree of change, there are a limited number of circumstances where it makes total sense. Yet none of these circumstances includes a new CEO, CMO, or Design SVP coming in and mandating a rebrand as part of their desire to leave their mark on the brand. Yes, that remains a big reason why they do happen, and no, it’s not a very good reason. 

Finally, when do the system and advertising-driven versions of a rebrand make sense? The deeply unsatisfactory answer is probably more often than you’d like and less often than you anticipate. In general, however, as long as you understand the distinctive assets that need to remain evergreen, you can engage in this kind of rebrand on a more regular basis, as appropriate and depending upon whatever other things you might change. Like Peloton shifting focus to being a fitness app rather than a stationary bike company.

Overall, though, the most successful approach is also the least exciting. Rather than rebranding through the lens of big sweeping changes (unless you have a really good reason to), the better option is normally to engage in a process of ongoing incremental updates, nipping here, tucking there, and retaining an ongoing tension between the dynamism of the new and the familiarity of the old.