How to Rebrand a Company (and how not): A Huddle Creative Step-by-Step Guide
At Huddle, we've guided brands through rebrands across professional services, law, property, and finance. In that time, we've seen one pattern that distinguishes the rebrands that succeed from those that cost millions and deliver little: the successful ones start with strategy, not aesthetics.
This guide reflects what we've learned - including the hard lessons from watching rebrands fail. It's a step-by-step walkthrough of how to rebrand a company correctly, and crucially, how not to.
What's in a brand?
A brand is much more than just colours, logos, fonts and all the stylistic good stuff.
A brand is your business identity. In other words, it's the image you wish to portray to the world. It communicates who you are, what you do, what your promise and mission is, what your company stands for and the values it's built upon.
Recognisable and effective branding promotes your brand out into the world, connects you with your customers, enables you to capture a piece of the market, or break into a new market, and edges you ahead of competitors.
And though the visual identity aspect of branding is important, what's more important is how that reflects the very core of the business itself: who it is, what it does, how it does it, and why.
What is rebranding and its purpose?
Rebranding is both a marketing and branding strategy where a new brand name, concept, design or brand identity is created to replace or update an already established or acquired business or brand.
The purpose of rebranding is simple: businesses and industries evolve. For a business or brand to stay competitive and relevant it too must showcase its own evolution both through the brand, and its brand design - also known as its visual identity.
Because of this natural evolution, which could involve changes in positioning, values, or missions, there are a multitude of reasons why a brand may choose to rebrand. At its heart, rebranding can rejuvenate businesses of any shape and size by modernising them, differentiating them, and reinventing them.
Right (and wrong) Reasons for a Rebrand
Rebranding is more than choosing a new logo, name and colour scheme. Rebrands can come with significant risks, like audience disconnect, loss of market standing, and potentially huge impacts on sales and industry leadership.
A good example is Royal Mail, who in 2001 attempted to completely overhaul their brand to become Consignia. The decision cost them 3 million pounds to correct, and they suffered a complete loss of brand identity, industry standing and audience connection because nobody quite understood who they were or what they did.
Before rushing in, businesses and brands must understand the reasons behind why they want to rebrand. If it's poor sales or low brand awareness, these are two things that can be rectified through business strategy analysis, a brand strategy refinement, or deeper research.
The right reasons
1. Rebranding to stand out from the competition
Rebranding to leverage brand uniqueness and step out of the shadow of competitors is one of the correct reasons for rebranding. Generic names, poorly designed logos, or failure to capture brand personality within the visual brand identity will restrain the business from filling its potential and claiming a share of the market.
Siemens is a technology company who got their rebranding right. Their identity before looked tired and too corporate. Fast forward, and Siemens realised the technology market was growing with brands like Huawei and LG, and so needed to differentiate themselves. They added their brand ethos - Ingenuity for life - and ran a marketing campaign featuring people from all backgrounds and diversities, successfully positioning the brand for a dynamic new audience.
2. Rebranding to breathe new life into tired designs
In this digital age, Comic Sans-era branding sticks out like a sore thumb. Tired designs, dullish colour palettes, and failure to diversify or innovate can all leave brands behind like a desolate 1970s amusement arcade.
One such example is Global Lightning Protection Services (GLPS). Their original branding was not very cool - a metallic ball logo in Wordart font, no colour scheme. Their rebrand was dramatic: a cutting strike of a lightning bolt for a logo, shortened to GLPS, with a brand promise - empowering you to take charge - that cleverly uses a semantic field to convey both the mission and why consumers need them.
3. Rebranding to change positioning
If you're noticing that who you're selling to is starting to differ entirely from who you want to be selling to, your brand may need to reposition itself to appeal to the correct audience.
A notable example is Burberry. In the early 2000s, the brand with a 150-year heritage found itself associated with a demographic they hadn't intended to attract. Creative director Christopher Bailey repositioned the brand through new product design, fresh silhouettes, a first-ever line of female swimwear, and brand sponsorships with clean-image role models like Emma Watson and Cara Delevingne. A decade on, Burberry is firmly positioned as edgy, high couture fashion.
4. Rebranding because of brand evolution, merger or acquisition
When two brands or businesses merge, they need to reinvent themselves. Not only will repositioning need to happen as the merged company appeals to two pre-existing audiences, the original mission and values may have changed or been streamlined.
A great example: Computer Sciences Corporation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services were both IT services companies and previously competitors. Rather than sit side by side, both rebranded into DXC Technology - solidifying them as a solitary industry leader with a brand built around their mission: To help clients succeed in the face of accelerated innovation.
The wrong reasons
1. Boredom
Boredom is perhaps the worst reason for rebranding, ever. Many businesses end up spending significant amounts on rebranding - and getting it wrong - all because someone is tired of looking at the same logo and colour scheme.
A classic example was Leeds United. One day they decided to replace their historical coat of arms with a generic icon of a man thumping his chest. Over 77,000 fans protested and the design was mocked openly on social media. Leeds reversed the changes within days.
2. Crisis management
In money troubles? Had skeletons fall out of the closet? Fending off bad press? Do not rebrand. Rebrands in the midst of a catastrophe are seen through immediately. Often a rebrand in the face of a crisis only tarnishes the brand further as it's seen as trying to distract from bad press.
Wells Fargo learned this the hard way when it was revealed they had been opening millions of fraudulent accounts. Their attempted rebrand - swapping management, launching diverse advertising campaigns, updating the logo - was seen as nothing but distraction when more evidence of wrongdoing emerged in 2019.
3. Ego
An oversized ego can do oversized damage in branding. Cardiff City are a team who had a rebranding nightmare. New owner Vincent Tan changed the team colours from blue to red and replaced the bluebird logo with the Welsh dragon. Significant fan outrage led to the colours and logo being reverted back to blue in a new, much more stylish design.
4. To save floundering sales
In the face of declining sales, reinventing your brand might seem wise. But if nothing has changed under the surface, those rebrands become temporary highs and costly, addictive cycles of repetition. Subway is one such brand learning that lesson.
Rebrand vs Refresh: How to Tell Which One You Need
The best way to quickly define the differences: a brand refresh adds a new lick of paint to the wall. A rebrand knocks down the wall to make room for a new extension.
A rebrand is where a brand takes itself apart and completely reinvents itself. A brand refresh just updates the look and feel. If your logo just needs a quick update, you'll be needing a brand refresh.
On the other hand, if your business has changed its positioning, persona, values, mission, or undertaken a merger or acquisition - it's probably time for a complete rebrand.
How not to rebrand
Before we tell you how, we're going to go one better and tell you how not to. Why? Because it will make the process much simpler if you know which pitfalls to avoid.
1. Don't cut corners
Branding is 80% strategy, 20% implementation. It is a strategic decision, not a stylistic one. Investing time up front, and doing things in a considered way, will always save time in the long run.
We had a client - a property investment firm - who came to us six months after attempting a rebrand with a freelancer. They'd spent 12,000 pounds on new logos and a website template. They'd skipped the strategy entirely. When we audited their brand, we found a beautiful visual identity built on no brief, for no defined audience, communicating nothing that differentiated them from their 40 closest competitors. The visual work had to be almost entirely redone. The shortcut cost them twice as much as doing it right the first time.
2. Don't copy anyone. Be yourself.
Despite knowing branding is about differentiation, it's amazing how many companies end up looking and sounding alike. A good rule of thumb: if you're struggling to identify what makes you unique, you're probably trying to convey what you think you should be, rather than what really matters.
3. Don't try to be too clever
While you want to be different, be careful not to annoy anyone by getting too clever. Design systems and conventions evolve for a reason. You have to know the rules in order to break them, and there's nothing more irritating than a style-over-substance brand. Stay simple.
4. Develop a solid brand platform before doing anything
Let your values and position inform every decision you make about the brand experience. If you've got any uncertainty about who you're actually for and why you're even in this, it's not going to get any clearer after a rebrand.
Not sure where your brand currently stands? Huddle's Blandscape audit tool measures your brand across 10 dimensions to identify exactly where it's losing ground - and where the highest-value improvements lie. It's free, takes 10 minutes, and gives you the strategic foundation every rebrand should start from.
5. Don't go it alone
We all have blind spots when it comes to our own branding. Mozilla were guilty of navel gazing when they decided to replace the l's in their name with forward slashes for no discernible reason. Getting support from a professional outfit who can help you see yourselves in a fresh light is essential.
How to Rebrand Step-by-Step: The 5 Pillars
Following these five key steps will put you in the best stead to successfully rebrand, and reap the benefits.
1. Reestablish your brand's audience and market
Remember how Burberry ended up realising that the audience they were targeting and the audience buying from them had vastly differed? The first step in their rebranding strategy was to reestablish their preferred audience - and that's a blanket first step for any brand taking efforts to revolutionise.
Reestablishing your brand's target audience happens by acquiring information through market research and focus groups, and then analysing the data. Once you can establish who's buying from you, and who isn't, you can begin to compare this against your initial target market.
2. Redefine your company's vision, mission, and values
Quite often brands need to rebrand because something fundamental has changed - usually the mission, the vision, or the values. Even if you think neither has altered, it's worth reevaluating them anyway.
Vision - What are you doing? The business's vision is its guiding light. It influences all actions the company takes, so it's essential that everyone, from C-level to employees, have a firm understanding of it and are working in sync.
Mission - How are you doing it? The business's mission supports the vision by roadmapping exactly how the business is going to achieve what it's set out to. If your what has changed, so will your how.
Values - Why are you doing it? Your business's values are your purpose. But as brands and businesses evolve and grow, some values may become less relevant than others. It's time to update those values and make the branding reflective of the change.
3. If you're renaming, plan for all outcomes
As Royal Mail soon found out, changing names is one element of a rebranding strategy that should not be approached lightly. Changing names can lead to a loss of brand recognition and a complete stop in organic search traffic, so ensure you've brainstormed a post-name-change recovery plan.
4. Reconsider your brand's slogan
Slogans are almost as important as names because they communicate the business's mission, vision or one of its values. If your slogan is something your audience has memorised, keeping it may hinder your rebrand - especially if everything else outside and around that slogan has changed.
5. Reimagine your brand's visual identity
These are the tangible assets that will most definitely need overhauling in a rebrand: your logo, existing colour palette, typography and fonts, imagery, and overall brand guidelines.
Logo: Keep it refined - don't try to compile too many elements of symbolism into the logo.
Don't make it generic. Don't alienate your target audience. And design for the future - rebrands should only be done at pivotal points, so ensure your logo can grow with your business.
- Colour Palette: Colour semiotics matter. Use our blog on colour semiotics to decide on your messaging, run competitor research to determine the impact of competitors' colours, and test your new palette against all your updated marketing collateral and website design.
- Typography: Fonts convey as much messaging as colours do. Align any new fonts with your new colour palette and messaging and ensure they show up consistently across all marketing materials.
- Brand Guidelines: Once you've rebranded, let everybody know - employees, partners and stakeholders - by supplying updated brand guidelines. Brand guidelines are a crucial source of information for everyone displaying the brand outwardly.
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