When is it Time to Rebrand?

Is a corporate rebrand in your future?

If you are reading this, then your brand, or the brand of someone you know, is on your mind.
You may be thinking: “Our brand looks dated, at a time when we need to look current.” If this is you, you need to consider a product or corporate rebrand. That means refreshing or rebooting your brand strategy and brand systems — logo, colours, tagline, font, imagery — the overall experience of your brand.

Reasons for rebranding

Before you embark on a costly rebranding journey ask yourself:

• Are you just bored?
• Is rebranding solving the wrong problem?
• Is this what the customer wants?
• Will this surely increase awareness, loyalty and sales?
• Is this just someone’s vanity project?

Here in Toronto, our beloved Toronto Blue Jay’s baseball team spent fifteen years rebranding, only to announce that it will revert in 2012 to the “classic” design that launched the brand in 1977. The National Post piece “Toronto Blue Jays logos through the years” chronicles 25 years of the Blue Jays logo’s history.

Branding was never the problem for the Blue Jays. We love the classic 1977 Blue Jays logo. We also love the 2012 Blue Jays Logo. Unfortunately, all the rebranding projects in between were unnecessary. However, this pales in comparison to the 2010 PR disaster the GAP inflicted upon itself when it tried to change its logo.

As much as a product  or corporate rebrand can seem exciting at the time, there is a real risk that it is a waste of money or worse that it can come across as a superficial veneer for a weak brand. A brand is the sum total of an organization’s reputation. A superficial rebranding which amounts to creating a new logo can distract from the real hard work of pleasing customers and employees.

When building your brand, the look of your brand does matter. However, of far greater concern is your business strategy and your brand strategy. Answering yes to one or more of the following questions indicates rebranding may actually be needed.

• Has your audience (target customer) changed?
• Has what you are selling changed?
• Has your competition changed.

An affirmative answer to any of these questions indicates, in essence, that your current business is competing with yesterday’s brand. This is an important reason to rebrand urgently! But here, the change may just be required in brand strategy: brand promise, brand personality, and brand position. Brand systems like your logo may be perfectly fine as they are. In fact, changing your logo may be a waste of resources. Before you rebrand, ask yourself “Brand Analysis, Strategy, Systems: What do you Need?”