The decision to change a brand is often made for the wrong reason: a new head of marketing wants to leave their mark, or the team is bored of the logo. There are signs, though, that genuinely show a brand has stopped working for the company.
1. The company changed its offer or market, and the brand didn’t
You started out serving local businesses, and today you sell a product in several countries. Or you went from contractor to strategic partner. The brand still talks about what the company was, not what it is.
2. People see you differently than you’d like
At the first meeting, customers expect a smaller company or lower prices. Job candidates ask what exactly you do. If in every conversation you have to explain that the company is “more than the website suggests”, the brand isn’t doing its job.
3. Sales makes its own materials
Salespeople don’t send the official presentation; they rework it their own way or start from scratch. It’s one of the surest signs: the people closest to customers feel the materials don’t help them.
4. Every department looks different
Three versions of the logo, five shades of the brand color, presentations in different typefaces. A lack of consistency rarely comes from bad will. It usually means the brand has no rules that can be used day to day.
5. The name gets in the way
It’s hard to pronounce in new markets, it gets confused with another company, a sensible domain isn’t available, or there’s a trademark conflict. Renaming is the most serious form of rebranding, but sometimes it’s the only one that solves the problem.
6. The brand doesn’t work in new places
The logo doesn’t fit an app icon or a round avatar, the colors disappear in dark mode and there’s nothing to show on video. A brand designed with paper in mind often struggles on screen. We wrote about how a mark should work across formats in wordmark, symbol or both, and about color in the article on brand colors.
7. You look like your competitors
The same colors, the same stock photos and the same promises as three other companies in your industry. If you can’t tell whose website it is once the logo is covered, the brand isn’t setting the company apart.
When not to change the brand
- When the team is bored of it. You see the brand every day; customers see it a few times a year. Boredom inside the company arrives long before it does for your audience.
- When the problem is the product or the service. A new logo won’t fix delays or poor quality.
- When you don’t know what should change. A rebrand without a clear goal ends up as a new look for the same lack of clarity.
Refresh or rebrand
Most companies don’t need a complete change. A refresh keeps what’s recognizable, such as the name, the color or the shape of the mark, and puts the rest in order: refines the logo, adds versions for new formats, writes down the rules. A full rebrand, with new positioning and sometimes a new name, makes sense when the company itself has changed.
Where to start
- Gather all the materials in one place: the website, presentations, proposals, social media, documents. Just seeing them side by side says a lot.
- Talk to customers and to sales. How do they describe the company? What’s missing for them? We described the questions worth asking in the article on B2B personas.
- Settle the positioning before you talk about looks: who the company is for, who it competes with and what it promises.
We start every branding project with a workshop like that. See how we approach branding.
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