“Should we rebrand?”
This is one of the most exciting questions and opportunities for marketers at brands and agencies. One that can drive corporate and personal success when done right. But also, a decision that results in disastrous consequences if done wrong.
Zozimus has helped clients across industries successfully rebrand. Our experience tells us a few critical decisions at the onset have an outsized influence on the outcome. One of our first and most important conversations is helping our partners determine the type of rebrand that will benefit them the most and the process to achieve it.
TLDR: there are three types of rebranding: a full rebrand, a positioning update (sometimes also called rebranding), and leaving well enough alone.
Uncovering Why You Might Need to Rebrand
Rebranding is often more than a cosmetic exercise—it’s a strategic decision that can reshape external perceptions, reinvigorate growth, and align internal leaders and talent.
But understanding why a rebrand is necessary, and what type of rebrand is required, is critical to ensuring the initiative delivers the desired outcomes.
There are a few common drivers that prompt organizations to consider rebranding, ranging from the need to distance themselves from negative associations to the pressures brought about by shifting market forces or internal dynamics. These two key scenarios will be explored in greater depth: rebranding to manage reputational risk and rebranding in response to political or social pressures. If neither of these scenarios reflect your current state you likely find yourself in the third option: leave the brand alone and focus your efforts elsewhere.
A Full Rebrand to Manage Reputational Risk
Sometimes a company becomes entangled with events, performance issues, or public relations crises that can tarnish its image. Whether it’s the fallout from a product recall, negative media coverage, or a series of poor business decisions, these situations can leave lasting impressions that negatively impact current and future corporate growth.
In these cases, rebranding is a means to create a new identity and circumnavigate the past. By redefining the brand’s entire identity, companies can strategically distance themselves from past missteps and reposition themselves in the market. However, this approach requires a delicate balance: a rebrand should signal a fresh start while maintaining any positive benefits that resonate with current and historical buyers. Organizations must commit to making real, sometimes difficult, corporate and operational changes, and not simply addressing surface-level change.
What Constitutes a Full Rebrand?
A full rebrand is an extensive transformation that goes beyond refreshing the brand’s visual elements. It involves rethinking and reshaping every aspect of the brand’s identity and how it presents itself to the world. Typically, a full rebrand includes:
- New Name: Changing the brand’s name is a significant step, often reserved for situations where a complete break from the past is necessary, whether due to mergers, reputational damage, or a fundamental shift in the brand’s direction. A new name also impacts website, store signage, social handles, email, etc. making this a much larger lift than many believe it will be.
- Positioning: Revising how the brand is positioned in the market, including what it stands for, who it serves, and how it differentiates itself from competitors.
- Logo and Visual Identity: Redesigning the logo and visual identity, including color schemes, fonts, and overall brand aesthetics, to better reflect the new direction.
- Tagline and Messaging: Introducing new slogans, taglines, and key messages that align with the refreshed brand vision.
- Tone of Voice: Reimagining the brand’s voice and communication style to align with the new identity, whether it’s shifting from formal to approachable, playful to serious, or somewhere in between.
- PR and Communication Support: Strategic PR efforts to manage the transition, announce the changes, and build positive momentum around the new brand.
- Application Across All Channels: Ensuring consistent application across all paid, owned, and earned channels and properties, from social media profiles to packaging, website, and customer service touchpoints.
A full rebrand is most suitable when the existing brand identity no longer serves the organization’s strategic goals or when a company is repositioning itself entirely in response to new market dynamics or a significant shift in business strategy.
A Partial Rebrand in Response to Political or Social Pressures
While distancing from negative associations is often about crisis management, rebranding in response to political or social pressures is more focused but can be more complex. When a brand finds itself at odds with evolving societal expectations or the political landscape, it may feel compelled to rebrand as part of a broader strategy to remain relevant and aligned with its customers’ values (this could be end buyers, investors, centers of influence, and internal talent). There are also scenarios where a rebrand is in response to slow/plateaued/declining sales in hopes of reinvigorating growth.
This partial rebrand, however, often requires a different skillset to sell-in and execute as the motivation is often less obvious than crisis management. And, it is fraught with a different type of risk than crisis management, which carries the risk of inaction. Partial rebrands must balance the risk of being the wrong action.
Brands can alienate key segments if the rebrand is perceived as disingenuous or purely reactive. For instance, if a company makes a sudden pivot without demonstrating a long-term commitment to the issues, customers might view the rebrand as superficial, undermining the intended benefits. Recent examples were adjustments made during the early years of COVID and the more recent “AI-enabled” craze.
The Role of a Positioning Update
A positioning update retains much of the existing brand identity while refining or shifting the brand’s narrative to align with new opportunities and goals. The strategy is to preserve what works while adapting specific elements to better connect with evolving customer expectations, market trends, cultural changes, or business objectives.
A positioning update typically involves:
- Refining Messaging and Positioning: Updating the brand’s story, value propositions, and market positioning to reflect new corporate priorities or shifts in customer needs. This can result in a new conceptual idea being expressed in marketing, and in certain instances, a new tagline and core messaging points.
- Continuity in Brand Recognition: By carrying forward most existing elements, a positioning update aims to leverage the equity the brand has built over time while making the necessary shifts to stay relevant. However, investing in a positioning update is often supported by PR and Communication Support both to introduce the market to the updated brand and to energize internal talent and aid recruiting efforts.
- Easier Implementation: Since the updates are more targeted and less disruptive, the transition tends to be smoother and requires less intensive resources than a full rebrand.
A positioning update (partial rebrand) is often the best option when the brand has a strong foundation but needs to fine-tune its messaging. Since most clients are not facing the headwinds of crisis management to require a full rebrand, a partial rebrand is the most common rebranding effort.
The Critical Role of Internal Alignment and Commitment
Full and partial rebrands are high-visibility projects for internal marketing teams and external partners. As the outcome impacts the entire business, everyone must be aware before the project begins, involved or updated during it, and supportive of the outcome. Ensuring alignment across the organization and with key centers of influence is one of the most important, and often overlooked, aspects of a successful rebrand.
Even the most well-crafted strategies can falter if your organization isn’t fully aligned and committed to the new direction. In fact, a lack of internal and key partner cohesion is one of the primary reasons rebranding efforts fail to deliver lasting impact. A recent example of this disconnect is investors’ displeasure with Unilever and Hellman’s positioning effort from a few years back. (Note, this is not meant to question why this partial rebrand took place or the updated positioning, but rather to illustrate the importance of engaging key stakeholders, even if outside your organization.)
Why Internal Alignment is Key
Your brand isn’t just what you present to the outside world; it’s a synthesis of how your employees and key partners understand, live, and communicate your values and ambitions. This is why internal and key partner alignment is essential—it ensures that every department, from marketing and sales to customer service and product development, and key suppliers, investors, and centers of influence.
When internal teams and key partners are not fully bought into the rebrand, it leads to mixed messages, inconsistencies, confusion—both internally and externally—and ultimately the decision to abandon the strategy altogether.
Ensuring Success
Ultimately, successful rebranding or repositioning is less about the exercise and more about the execution and impact. Internal alignment and steadfast commitment champion your rebrand through the ups and downs of market dynamics, competitive pressures, and changing consumer behavior.
Jake Garber
SVP, Strategy & Planning
Jake was recruited to join Zozimus to establish and run the strategy and planning department, an offering that is normally only found at much larger agencies. He has spent the past 4+ years helping clients across all different industries establish their brand, understand their target audience and create marketing and advertising that drives business results.
BOSTON, MARS
