Rebranding: when a business needs it and how to do it right

What is (and isn’t) rebranding?

A rebranding is a change in the way the market perceives you: positioning, message, voice and, last of all, the visuals. Your brand identity is the system that makes it visible: logo, colors, fonts, photography style, writing style. Because it touches every point of contact with your customers, from your sign to your website, it’s one of the most important decisions a business makes.

That’s why a new logo on its own isn’t rebranding. If the business says the same things, to the same people, in the same way, the change is purely cosmetic.

There are two levels. A refresh modernizes your existing look without losing recognition. A full rebranding is needed when the substance itself changes: name, strategy, audience.

When does a business need rebranding?

Five signs it’s time:

• Your business has changed, but your brand hasn’t. New services, new markets, a merger. Your name or look keeps the business tied to something it no longer is.
• You want to speak to a different audience. You’re aiming for a higher price bracket or younger customers, but your image points somewhere else.
• You look like your competitors. If customers can’t tell you apart, they’ll choose based on price.
• Your look doesn’t work in digital media. A logo that can’t be read as an icon on a phone or as an Instagram profile picture is a problem.
• There’s inconsistency everywhere. Three versions of your logo, five shades of the same color, a different style on every channel.

When you don’t need it: lessons from Tropicana and Gap

When the only reason is that you’re tired of it. You see your logo every day; your customers don’t. Recognition takes years to build and can be lost in a matter of days.

Tropicana learned this the hard way. In 2009, it changed the packaging of its Pure Premium juice and dropped the well-known orange with the straw. Sales fell almost 20% in less than two months, and the company brought back the old packaging.

In 2010, Gap unveiled a new logo. After a storm of backlash on social media, it went back to the old one in less than a week. In both cases, the company changed something customers loved without giving them a reason.

How to get rebranding right: the steps

• Research before design. What do customers think of you today? What are your competitors doing? What’s worth keeping because people already recognize it?
• Strategy. Who you’re talking to, what makes you different, what voice you speak in. This becomes the brief for everything else.
• Visual identity. Logo design, colors and typography come out of the strategy, not this year’s trends.
• Real-world testing. On a phone, as a small icon, on a sign, in a black-and-white printout.
• Brand guidelines. How the logo is used, which colors and fonts, what’s not allowed.
• Transition plan. Which touchpoints change first, and how your customers and your team are informed.

Logo design is the beginning, not the end

A good logo today is designed as a system: a primary version, a horizontal version, a small symbol for icons, a monochrome version. It has to read just as well on a sign as in a browser tab.

In 2021, Burger King did its first rebranding in more than 20 years. It returned to a modern version of the logo it used from 1969 to 1999, with a new font, food-inspired colors and a unified look across packaging, uniforms and restaurants. It didn’t throw away its history; it put it to work.

Then comes consistency. In a 2019 Lucidpress survey, brand managers estimated that consistent presentation can increase revenue by 33% on average. The same survey found that 81% of companies deal with materials that don’t follow their brand identity.

Before the announcement: trademark, domain and Google

The most expensive rebranding mistakes don’t show up in the design. Before you print your first business card:

• Check and register your trademark. In Greece, applications are filed online with the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation (OBI), using your TAXISnet credentials, and protection lasts ten years and can be renewed. For the whole EU, you apply to the EUIPO.
• Make sure the name is available as a domain and as a social media handle.
• Protect your SEO. If your domain is changing, set up 301 redirects from every old page to its new equivalent and report the move in Google Search Console (Change of Address tool). Google recommends not changing your site structure at the same time, because that increases the risk of losing traffic.
• Update every touchpoint: Google Business Profile, social media, directories, email signatures.

How to announce your new brand

Customers accept change more easily when they understand why it happened. Tell the story: what changed in the business and what they gain from it.

Tell your team and your existing customers first, by email and with a social media post, and then the general public. If your name is changing, keep a reference to the old one for a few months (“formerly …”), so that people searching for you by it can still find you, on Google too.

Also set a go-live date. A half-applied rebranding, with the new logo on the site and the old one on the sign, causes more confusion than it helps.

Rebranding that keeps your customers

A rebranding succeeds when customers feel the business has evolved, not disappeared. It’s not a matter of taste but of strategy, and it’s decided as much by the details of the transition as by the design itself.

At CNCTECH, we design brand identities from strategy down to the last icon: research, logo design, brand guidelines and a move to your new site without losing ground on Google.