The purpose of a rebrand is to align your business’ presence with what matters the most to you and your customers - from key goals or objectives, to the unique value proposition that your business brings to the market. Many of the biggest businesses in the world have embraced a rebrand strategy, using it as a means of staying competitive, modernising, and appealing to new audience needs. However, a rebrand can either be a moment of rejuvenation for your company, or its downfall if done wrong.
Your rebrand effort might involve a whole new look, a new logo, or incorporating new values into your business - but whatever you do, there are some things you’ll want to avoid. We’ve listed some of the top mistakes that a business can make when thinking about or implementing a rebrand, so you can take these into consideration when planning your own overhaul.
If you’re considering a rebrand, there are most likely some key drivers behind this - and they shouldn’t be ignored. The reasons that have led you to explore the idea alone should actually become key aspects of your strategy, and failing to build them into your rebrand approach could cause you to miss the mark of what you wanted to achieve.
How to avoid it: As soon as you’re thinking about any kind of rebrand, set some time aside to consider exactly what’s lead you to this point. Make a note of these themes or issues, and make sure they are reflected in your overall rebrand strategy.
When you implement a rebrand, you have to be aware that you are risking the connection your business has built with your audience. Making the wrong decisions could potentially alienate long-standing customers, and this kind of loyalty is hard to repair.
How to avoid it: When we discuss any kind of rebrand effort with our clients, we carry out in-depth audience analysis to understand more about how the clients’ customers relate to the business. This gives us a foundation for building the new brand that still accounts for the customer value that the old brand had established.
It’s no surprise that a lot of business owners would view something like a new logo as a rebrand - but this isn’t exactly true. If all you do is create a new visual identity for your business, you are almost certainly going to have some disparity with the rest of your presence - from brand voice, to market positioning. With this pointer, we’re not necessarily talking about making small tweaks such as colour or styling updates - we mean creating an image for your brand that actually no longer matches any other aspect of your presence. It does happen - in 2009, Tropicana unveiled a new visual identity, which actually left customers not being able to find the brand's products on supermarket shelves. This, paired with the lack of broader strategy, resulted in a 20% drop in sales.
How to avoid it: Unless you are relaunching as a drastically different business with a whole new set of values, you should avoid making visual changes that come with no broader consideration. Avoid this one by pricing brand voice, messaging, and positioning into your thinking.
The success of your rebrand will be decided by whether your internal team are fully behind the changes you’d like to make; these are the people who know your business better than anyone, so don’t underestimate their thoughts on your revamped presence, Having internal buy-in shows confidence across your business (rather than just amongst those making the decisions), and this can only be a positive sign for your rebranding efforts.
How to avoid it: Get employees engaged with the project from the get-go - we hold stakeholder sessions for our rebrand and website design projects, giving key voices within the business an opportunity to voice their thoughts.
Just because your competitors have rebanded, doesn’t mean your business should. We did mention that rebranding can assist in staying ahead in saturated markets, but it isn’t always the solution in this sense - and it can cause some hard-to-repair problems.
Rebranding also isn’t about blending in - your customers are going to feel a bit lacklustre towards your brand if it becomes a carbon copy of all of the other options on the (hypothetical) shelf.
How to avoid it: Focus on differentiation and creating an authentic ‘brand DNA’ that sets your apart from others on the market - and don’t rebrand just because other key players are!
A lot of time and effort goes into a rebrand - often, with our clients, it involves a huge combined effort across our print, digital, and signage teams. When it comes to final rollout, everything should be done simultaneously, and if this isn’t the case, your brand image can run into difficulty. If you reveal a new logo and completely refreshed colour palette, but your website is still holding onto your old palette and presence, your customers will be left extremely confused. The same concept applies if you perhaps have done a recent door-to-door leaflet drop, then the following month you do another and this time, your flyers have a whole new brand design - your customers could assume the new look is actually a competitor.
How to avoid it: Do your rebrand effort justice by planning a coordinated, multi-channel launch, where everything goes live at the same time, and all collateral is consistent with your rebranding.
Rebranding is not, and should not, be seen as a kind of crisis management strategy. Seeing these types of changes as a solution for negative press or reputation damage will only backfire, and it’ll most certainly add to your predicament. When Elon Musk turned Twitter into X in July 2023, he did so at a very politically volatile time in the US. Rebranding in the midst of crisis heightened perceptions of chaos, rather than renewal and a new era for the social media giant.
How to avoid it: We’ve used a high-profile example to highlight just how damaging the timing of your rebrand could be - but to avoid it, remember that your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that a new image won’t be the remedy for more pressing issues. Align with business stability and market readiness before you unveil your rebrand to your audience.
As we’ve detailed, rebranding can be high-impact, high-reward effort - but it does also pose some risks and challenges for your business. At Reeds, we work closely with businesses that want to rebrand as a perfectly timed opportunity to modernise, engage with new audiences, and communicate their core values more effectively.
We’re experts when it comes to brand strategy support - simply contact us to find out how you can start this process, or read some of our case studies to understand how we’ve helped other businesses across the North West, Scottish Borders, and beyond - including Cumbria Health, Cumbria Constabulary, and People First.