Refresh, reposition or rebrand?

Diagnosing what level of change is required for brand effectiveness is arguably the most important part of any change to brand.
Is there immense equity in your brand currently? Do consumers have a strong, positive relationship with your organisation, or is there wide advocacy for your products? If you don’t know the answers or how they impact your business, then this can lead to problematic or unnecessary changes and loss of not just status, but revenue.

The internet is filled with ‘rebrand horror stories’, costly mistakes that became an even bigger expense at reversal, with consumer backlash forcing companies to scrap the new and shiny and revert to the original and respected, and with brands taking on average 2-3 years to embed, any premature change could be detrimental.

Careful interrogation as to why the brand needs to change can expose underlying trip hazards: Is it creative ego? Did someone’s relative make a disparaging comment about the logo or the colour? Is an executive member bored with the way it looks and thinks it should change to keep relevant?

I have heard them all, and there is zero pleasure in watching something carefully built, get torn down and replaced by something less considered, less interesting and less effective. On the upside, I’ve also had the pleasure of working on many rebrands that thoughtfully balanced legacy with innovation in an expression of strength and confidence.
So what are the different stages, and when to pull the trigger?

Refresh. This is when things feel a bit tired. The purpose of the organisation remains unchanged but perhaps the expression is stagnant. Or the brand has been around for a considerable time, well-known and well-loved, but needs to keep relevant without becoming homogenised.
A perfect example is the new Penguin Random House branding, protecting the connection to the original brand developed in 1935, and infusing it with joy and expression to open it up to new audiences while sacrificing none of the iconic essence.
The celebration of the publishing house’s 90th anniversary uncovered the public’s affection for the dapper bird, giving the design team license to increase its role, flexing the brand expression. The illustrations, anthropomorphising the penguin, lean into (and beautifully support) a brand that represents the both the whimsy and vitality of books and how they contribute to life and learning.

A brand refresh might even be minor, the brightening of a colour, a simplification of language or a tweak to the logo so that it feels more modern. But this type of change has a strong caveat - if the revision is so minor, is it actually necessary? Is ‘modern’ the right expression to be striving for, or in achieving it, does the brand lose some of its authority?

Reposition. Repositioning is a more theoretically fundamental update. It can be the result of your category getting crowded, and you need to get pointier about what you do to give clarity to an overwhelmed audience.

This may not require any changes to your brand assets, your logo or even your visual style, but a more focused, positioning of your offering for absolute clarity. Not to be confused with a tagline, positioning is a compass ensuring alignment across internal business units, making it crystal clear what it is that your business or products solve for the market. This of course influences market perception and understanding.
Too disparate a positioning screams confusion resulting in a red flag for the market signalling that you’re not sure what solution you provide. This is particularly risky. Consumers want to know that they’re spending their time, energy and ultimately money on something that will benefit them in some way.
On the other end of the scale, going too broad risks appearing as though you touch everything…but maybe not deep enough to have conviction or expertise (‘Jack of all trades, Master of none’ ring a bell?)

And that brings us to the last and most extensive work in the brand sphere:

The rebrand.
This level of change has immense impact. It’s not symbolic - it’s fundamental with significant visibility. The reasons are major and structural such as core market changes or even shifts in business circumstances such as a merger. It opens up to judgement and critique (both externally in market and with internal teams) and needs to be aligned with a robust and defensible strategy so as not to cause stakeholders to waiver.

It does however give immense marketing opportunity, being able to effectively ‘launch’ your brand again but armed with all the learnings from the first time round. They say that you only get one chance to make a first impression, but with a rebrand you effectively get a ‘do over’, with the advantage of leveraging or jettisoning what went before.  

A rebrand does not always mean changing everything at its most atomic level. There may be significant equity in an aspect of your brand, such as your name or a unique colour intrinsically linked to your organisation.

Retaining the nucleus of a brand is often the most effective. It shows restraint and consideration, and signals that the DNA of the organisation is sound and enduring. A complete departure from anything that has come before can be particularly challenging. It risks appearing as though there was something wrong with who you were, and requires sensitive marketing and thoughtful PR to convince your audience that the new brand has no negative reflection on your core competency.

In a rebrand, the visual expression and language/tone of voice is the most visible aspect however there is another fundamental change that can impact how a brand behaves, goes to market and is referenced by industry, and that is brand architecture.

Brand architecture is the organised structure that defines how each entity within your company co-exist. How your brands, products, and services are positioned, relate to and interact with each other while maintaining their market positions.
There are 4 brand architecture models: Branded House, Sub Brands, Endorsed Brands and House of Brands.
In Branded House and Sub Brands, the parent brand, or master brand, retains the equity, sets the identity to support the other brands or products withing the group, whereas in the Endorsed Brands model, each brand has its own unique identity retaining an association to the master brand for perceived value and credibility.
In the final, House of Brands, there is no link at all between the parent company and any of the brands it owns, and often product types are unrelated.

Defining what structure suits your organisation is vital. It impacts brand equity and even potential cross-selling opportunities. Plus, it establishes clear guardrails for internal teams and most importantly, provides clarity for the market.

In Summary

Any change in branding, no matter how fundamental or minor, has one purpose and that is to provide clarity for your audience. Those with whom your business has an existing relationship (clients, customers or partners), want to feel confident, and potential customers want reassurance that they’ve made the right choice. This leads to advocacy, which alongside internal efforts, can have a fundamental shift in the effectiveness of your business strategy.

Brand clarity is not a luxury, something to kick down the road as you muddle your way through establishing your enterprise. It’s a growth driver with direct efficacy. Appealing to the rational by providing clear understanding for teams and customers alike and the more subjective that taps the emotional connection we have with what organisations or products mean to us, and their effect on our personal or professional lives.

Revitalising, repositioning and rebranding all require vastly different strategies, from diagnosis, to execution and then marketing. And knowing which direction and why, is key to how interruptive and impactful the change is to your business.