Understanding a Rebrand

The very mention of the word ‘rebrand’ can strike fear into the heart of any business owner. It can cause alarm bells to ring and questions to swell about the way a business works and raise the unpopular topic of change. However, while some areas of a business must change and adapt, the fundamentals of effective practice must remain the same. In the following post, I will outline what is meant by the term ‘rebrand’ while also giving some advantages, disadvantages, and real-world examples of rebrands that were done right, and some that, just weren’t. So, let’s get started –

What is a Rebrand?

Before considering a rebrand, we must first detail what is meant by the term ‘brand’. Whether you sell burgers and fries, or you run a greeting card company, your business has a brand. How you position yourself in the marketplace, the colours you use in your promotions, your website, and your social media structure. Your brand is how your customers view you. Every physical and digital touch point of your business makes up the brand that you are putting out there for the world to see.

The effectiveness and interpretation of that brand is up to you. When we brand ourselves well, our customers see us as a fresh, contemporary enterprise, but when we brand badly, the marketplace views us as a dull, dried-up has-been. The success of your brand will determine whether you undoubtedly need or don’t need a rebrand.

Rebranding speaks of a transitional period in which a business will assess their recent market performance. Most commonly, this will take the form of reflecting on previously outlined business targets regarding sales, enquiries, followers, clients, or digital performance. The decision to rebrand may come when these goals are consistently not being met and the business image and brand is beginning to be affected negatively.

Rebranding can come in many forms, from a redesigned logo, to investing in a website overhaul to increase efficiency and customer experiences (UX). A rebrand can be tailored to each individual need and client situation. Sometimes your business logo doesn’t need to change, it just needs to be a higher quality vector (won’t pixelate when enlarged), and this can be achieved by a digital designer using the ‘retrace’ tool within Adobe Illustrator.

Image from: Special Sauce Branding

Advantages of a Rebrand

Maintaining  Customers – through a rebrand, businesses can encourage current clients to remain loyal to the business. With a fresh approach to appearance, content, and customer experience (UX), the current customer base will be more inclined to lose doubts about your business and believe again that with a new look and perspective, your overall performance will improve also.

Gaining  Customers – A rebrand will allow the opportunity for a business to re-establish themselves in the public eye. This gives the appearance of a newly launched and exciting business but with the experience and history to back them up as a capable and professional outfit. If done right, a rebrand can drive traffic towards your business and get potential clients and market competitors talking.

Goal Setting – Rebranding will bring around the topic of future performance. With a rebrand, a business can reflect on previous objectives and begin putting new ones in place in response to the rebranding campaign. Putting the business’ mission back into perspective and setting realistic and measurable goals to work towards is a huge benefit that comes with a clean slated rebrand.

Staff Satisfaction – When a business invests in its own enterprising future, it offers reassurance to its employees. Knowing that a business has a desire and willingness to engage in digital transformation and brand development, means that they don’t intend on letting the company slip into becoming an entrepreneurial slug. When management shows a continual desire to evolve, grow and improve, employees are often more motivated to work and remain loyal to the organisation.

Disadvantages of a Rebrand

Investment – Unless you have an in-house digital marketer, a rebrand in any form will require financial investment. While some rebrands can be completed rather effectively for a reasonable fee (usually by a freelancer or through a mates-rates relation), the majority of rebrands can cost upwards from hundreds to thousands of *insert currency here*. Corporate rebrands may even go into the millions!

Two Steps Forward, One Back  – While a rebrand can bring with it a huge influx of returning and newly found custom, you must be prepared for some customers to walk away in the midst of change. The majority of loyal customers will stick by you during periods of enterprising development, but there will be a few that don’t, and will opt to take their business elsewhere.

It Takes Time  – If you expect your new logo, website, or promotional materials to be planned, concepted, drafted, reworked, redrafted, proofed and approved in a matter of days...you will be sadly disappointed. A rebranding process takes time to get right and if you want it to be as effective and profitable as possible, you must allow time for these things to be reviewed, improved, and eventually approved. If you don’t have time to improve your business, then rebranding is not for you.

Rebranding Success

BT Group

In June 2019, BT launched their new rebranded logo and online interfaces. Through this campaign, while simple and concise, BT were able to redefine their business and revolutionise the thoughts of consumers when it came to their company. While known for their communications and network services, BT knew that as they rolled out a new range of products and offerings, the traditional logo just wasn’t going to cut it.

Although just the letters ‘BT’ in a circle, the logo has gone on to become a recognised and respected brand across the industries of telecoms, sports, entertainment, and emerging digital technology.

Image from: DesignWeek

Premier League

One of the huge talking points in sport during 2016, was the newly acclaimed and rebranded appearance of the Premier League. Having featured a very structured, almost retro style of logo since it’s launch in 1992, the Premier League was long overdue a new coat of paint. What resulted was a visually pleasing and multi-use logo that could be described as clean, concise, and iconic.

Maintaining the head of the famous lion from the original logo, although now portrayed in a simplified way. Using a font that is visually pleasing and easily identified, the Premier League were able to develop as an organisation while also encouraging increased traffic to their online content which was primarily focused around a multimedia design that it’s subscribers and viewers could engage with and be entertained by.

Image from: Premier News

Rebranding Failure

Cardiff City Football Club

Having been founded over 100 years ago, Cardiff City Football Club found themselves under new management in 2012. Thai businessman Vincent Tan was introduced to the boardroom and what followed would be one of the most internally damaging and externally laughable rebrands UK sport is ever likely to see.

Having sported a blue jersey since their inception and proudly establishing themselves as ‘The Bluebirds’ with their loyal supporters, you can imagine the sense of disbelief and complete hysteria when it was proposed and APPROVED to change the team colours to RED.

They felt this would be more relatable to the newly found Asian fan base as the red would reflect the new team nickname ‘The Dragons’.

After spending millions to rebrand the stadium, training facilities and apparel, the board bowed to the thousands of angry fans that boycotted games and events. Two years after investing millions, the club returned to it’s blue roots.

Image from: BBC Sport

Gap

Commonly referred to as ‘The Worst Rebrand Ever’, the clothing giant Gap decided after 24 years, to rebrand their company. Revealed in October 2010, it was one of the most visually displeasing rebrands the clothing industry has seen in recent times. So much so, that the campaign only lasted for an embarrassing 4 days, before it was retracted and terminated.

This wouldn’t be as painful if it hadn’t cost the fashion giant an eye-watering $100 million to create and execute. The reason behind such a poorly designed rebrand was blamed on a lack of communication between Gap and the design agency. It’s hard to see how communication could be THAT bad seeing how at one stage, a representative or marketing director within Gap had to give this rebrand the thumbs up of approval. A fitting reminder that a good rebrand takes time and that communication with your design team is a necessity throughout the process.

Image from: Rebranded

Conclusion

In closing, it is clear that when done correctly, a rebrand can truly take a business to new heights of performance and engagement. However, when done badly or not done at all, rebranding can see a business continue to miss targets or worse, lose their reputation. Rebranding will play a part in every business’ lifecycle. Even with an iconic logo, businesses need to continually develop and evolve their marketing, more specifically their online platforms, in order to stay competitively sustainable in the market. Whether you are a local store or a global corporate leader, the importance of rebranding should be on your mind regularly as you establish ways for your business to engage, grow and thrive.