Don't throw your brand out with the bathwater

[timandren]

I recently had a consulting session with a women's couture client who wanted to rebrand their company. Their marketing director was anxious to throw out the old design (and corresponding style guide) and bring in a fresh new look. They wanted to 'establish new values' because their industry had taken a hit due to the economy.

My intuition told me to dig a bit deeper to understand why they wanted to change. I often get paid to think, but my role as a marketer is not to assume I know all, but rather to be a good extractor of information. It was time to play journalist.

The more answers I received, the more I realized that a rebranding could do more damage than good and we'd be much better off not lifting a finger. Their company values were perfectly aligned. We compromised with a simple facelift to the logo which kept the icon and color palette intact.

Many times businesses feel, due to results-based analysis, that they must rebrand or they feel pressure to do so by a marketing agency. Too often this is change for the sake of change. It is is akin to stripping the old building down and strip malling it back together again. Far too many times the baby hits the pavement along with the bathwater.

I see a parallel to this behavior in the beach cities where I live. Business after business suffers from that shortsighted urge to keep up with the Joneses, ripping down their foundations and building on top of them. What's ironic is that often the places people enjoy going to is the old hole in the wall, the place with character. 'This business survived the recession of (insert year) so their fish tacos must be good!'

These businesses show their age and their personality through the odd paint chip or crack in the wall. These scars appeal to the crowd far more than an attempt to mimic the 'new' place across the street. The new place will shine for a while, it deserves to flaunt it newness. However, the established businesses that 'go new' always come off appearing sterile and saccharine. People then say, 'it lost it's character.'*

Sometimes a fresh coat of paint or an entirely new start is needed for your brand, but a full rebranding should be a last resort when all else fails.

*Sadly when Pepsi's brand had been around long enough to be recognized as a time-tested soft drink, they went ahead and changed it and lost the attractive patina. Apparently, there is some justification behind the design in that it suggests a smile. I never once saw that...in fact, it made me think of a Pringles potato chip or a feeling of imbalance. Bad move.

[AppleGate]

I partially agree with this, but, sometimes a company starts off wrong (like I did with my first site) and need to rethink where they're really going before they invest a lot of money into a dead end.

With that said, mistakes are the best successes you will encounter. You can learn a lot more from what you did wrong in a failed venture that just being happy with something that happened to go right.

[OMPundit]

I agree with the previous statements about the importance of brand, BUT, I think there is a distinction between brand and packaging. Brand is about your identity, your logo, corporate colors, how you do business, your mission, your vision, etc...

Changing the packaging, whether it's literal, or packaging as in how an old building looks, or how your site looks, is often refreshing and can bring new energy to the organization and your customers.

I'm not saying it's easy, you have to take great pains to make sure the new packaging is true to your brand. A great example is your example of the businesses trying to "keep up with the joneses" or "mimic the new place", I agree it sounds like these businesses lost their sense of culture, of their place in the neighorborhood, of their brand. It really is too bad, I hate to see that happen, but if you think about it, I bet there is a lot of ideas on how they could have upgraded their packaging without breaking their brand. My point being that change isn't always bad, it's unfamiliar change that is.

Great discussion by the way, not enough business people put thought into their brand and how it affects them.