Rebranding Strategy: Know Your Why – And When
Successful companies intentionally evolve their capabilities, audience, and identity as they grow. Rebranding your business better reflects your brand today and where you’re headed, but it’s not always an easy process. Learn from major rebranding disasters and take an iterative, thoughtful approach to reinventing your brand.
What Is Rebranding?
Rebranding is a strategic effort to substantially adjust a company’s positioning with elements such as a new logo, symbols, marketing standards, and brand voice. Depending on the motivation for the rebrand, it might include an entirely new name.
Why Rebrand?
The goal of a rebrand is to establish a new identity that enhances relevancy and appeal to your audience while helping employees and stakeholders confidently represent your brand.
Every organization has its own specific reasons for rebranding, but they often include one of the following incentives – or necessities.
Differentiation
Companies often rebrand to further differentiate themselves from industry competitors. This is especially important to mid- and late-stage brands operating in industries where goods or services have become increasingly commoditized. When pricing or service expertise are essentially the same across competing companies, branding can be the key value proposition that encourages a customer to choose one brand over another.
Stagnation
Established companies often stick with the same logo and brand standards for decades. With time, even the most progressive, bold brands begin to feel outdated. The logos and design assets of the print-focused ’80s and ’90s looked dated as marketing and business operations went digital in the first decade of the 21st century. Many brands invested in robust rebranding campaigns then. Others rebranded in the 2010s to enhance their image on social media platforms and growing digital channels, such as email and paid search.
Evolution
As companies grow, many expand into new verticals or regional markets. One of the most common reasons to rebrand is to represent new capabilities. A business that began by selling custom baseball hats to high schools might rebrand to reflect its ability to sell complete uniforms, accessories, and gear for other sports.
Reputation
Rebranding is also a common public relations strategy used to change a brand’s perception after negative press. This doesn’t always include a new logo and splashy rebranding campaign. Reputational rebranding focuses on shifting narratives around the brand to increase positive press and reception. Some of the biggest brands on earth have undergone reputational rebranding in various forms, from Chipotle to Ford’s infamous Pinto problem.
It’s worth noting that rebranding to improve perception should be more than skin deep; these efforts invariably include a revamp of organizational and operational structure, which is presented to the public.
Mergers & Acquisitions
M&A activity is a common catalyst for rebranding, as it encompasses all the reasons we’ve already covered. The new organization (bigger, better, stronger) needs to reintroduce itself to new and existing markets, communicate its expanded or novel capabilities, and communicate its values internally and externally. It’s a process that Oneupweb helped Tilley Distribution navigate when it acquired three companies in 2021. This type of project benefits from the expertise of an experienced rebranding agency.
Related: A Guide to Brand Hierarchy
How to Rebrand a Company, Explained
Rebranding requires a little soul-searching, a little researching, and plenty of honesty. Leave egos, attachment, and assumptions at the door; those biases can make the rebranding process fractious and ineffective.
1. Know Your Why
Reassess your brand’s values, mission statement, and vision. How do you perceive your brand, and how would you like others to perceive it? If you have a brand voice and tone guide, that can be a great place to start tweaking how you speak about your company’s overall direction. Remember that you don’t have to start from scratch; it’s okay to make minor changes, or none at all, to your mission and values.
2. Determine Which Assets Are In or Out
Work with company stakeholders to decide what needs to change and what doesn’t. Document loose decisions, but be flexible as you move through the rebranding process.
Depending on the extent of your rebrand, assess brand elements like:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Brand voice and tone guide
- Marketing materials (text, video, images)
- Sales enablement materials (presentations, one-sheeters, business cards)
- Domain names
- Website design
- Social media assets
- Email marketing assets (signatures, newsletter templates)
- Signage
3. Do Your Homework on Differentiation
Look at your industry and market competitors to identify opportunities to differentiate your brand. How is your value proposition unique? Why would consumers choose you over another brand? How many changes can you make without losing significant brand recognition?
Gut feelings aren’t enough here. Make sure you have quality market research and performance data on hand to make informed decisions.
If you are changing your company name, this is the time to look into new trademarks, domains, social media account handles, and other variables to see what’s available.
4. Lay Out Your Company Rebranding Strategy
Once you determine who you want to be, create a roadmap to get there. This should include both a timeline and a clear list of assets and actions your team will need to tackle.
Set aside time and budget for your website redesign; 75% of consumers base their perception of a brand’s credibility on its website.
5. Create a Rebranding Campaign
As the rebrand process takes shape, prepare to celebrate it. Sometimes referred to as a rebranding launch strategy, the rebrand campaign should introduce and define the rebrand. Set the narrative by explaining the why behind your effort, not just what has changed. An effective rebrand campaign cements the mission, value, and identity you’ve cultivated over the past several months or years, and it can be make or break.
6. Analyze and Adjust
Utilize reporting tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and social listening to gauge the response to the rebrand. Start with brand awareness metrics like branded search impressions. Look at trending keywords relevant to the campaign (e.g., “why did jaguar rebrand”) to see how well your messaging resonated and how well you rank for those keywords to own your narrative. This may allow you to tweak the current or future campaigns to clarify your intent and build stronger brand loyalty and recognition.
(Very, Very) Bad Rebranding Examples
With such a complex, sometimes subjective process, it’s no surprise that rebranding goes wrong. Sometimes the vision gets lost in translation between your internal brainstorming and introducing the concept to the public, sometimes embarrassingly so.
The Jaguar Rebrand Disaster
What on earth were they thinking? Pink backgrounds, a slew of models prancing around, and a decided lack of cars. Jaguar’s 2024 “Copy Nothing” campaign was the perfect example of rebranding gone wrong. It was lambasted on social media and headlines for weeks, and with good reason. It erased Jaguar’s rich brand heritage and iconic leaping jaguar logo, and it completely ignored its current audience without clearly reaching new potential customers.
GAP Goes Back on Its Redesign
In 2010, GAP’s redesign failed so badly that the retailer reverted to its old logo just six days – less than a week! – later. The rebranded logo took months to develop and reportedly cost as much as $100 million. That’s $16,666,666 per day of use, if you care to crunch the numbers.
It didn’t work because GAP didn’t read this article. (Admittedly, this was written 15 years too late.) GAP’s logo redesign served no purpose; it didn’t effectively communicate a change in value or address a changing customer base. Instead, it caused a reputation crisis.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sometimes, the best advice we offer clients is don’t. And that advice is usually free.
Get Your Rebrand Right
Oneupweb creates purpose-built rebranding strategies. Collaborate with us to achieve your goals now and lay the groundwork for growth long-term. We’ll hand-pick an expert team of strategists, designers, developers, and writers to guide you through the rebranding process, from workshopping ideas to reporting campaign results. Your reinvention starts today! Get in touch or call (231) 922-9977 to get started.
