Branding or rebranding: when your company needs each one

“We need to change the logo.” It’s a phrase you hear a lot when a company feels its brand no longer represents it.

Sometimes that’s true. Other times the logo is the least of it: what changed was the company, and the brand kept telling yesterday’s story. Understanding which case is yours, branding or rebranding, saves you from spending on the wrong thing.

Contents

1. How do they differ?
2. How do I know if I need a rebrand?
3. And when is it not needed?
4. How do I decide what suits me?
5. Frequently asked questions

Before deciding what you need and what each term means, one premise up front: the logo, the colors and the brand manual are not the brand’s identity. When you feel your brand needs a redesign, a new image or a new identity, we’ll tell you something right away: the solution is not necessarily a new logo or a rebrand. First you need to explore and discover who you are, what makes you different, what your DNA is and what you want to achieve with it. Once you have the answer, you’ll be able to define what you really need.

How do they differ?

Branding is building the brand of a company that doesn’t have one defined yet: a new company, or one that grew without ever thinking about it. You define what makes it different, how it talks and how it looks.

Rebranding is renewing a brand that already exists. You keep what works and what people already recognize, and you change what no longer represents the company.

In both cases the starting point is the same: first understand who your company is. Design comes after.

How do I know if I need a rebrand?

These five signs tend to show up:

• Your offer changed and your brand still tells the old one. You now do more things, or different things, and on the outside you still present yourself as you did at the start.
• You grew and your image stayed small. You want to sell to larger companies and your brand still looks like a startup.
• You have two brands in one. Each area, branch or product uses its own style and nothing matches.
• Your own team doesn’t see itself in the brand. It’s the earliest sign and the most reliable.
• There was a big change: a merger, new owners, a new stage.

We’ve already shared a case of the first sign: a company that had evolved on the inside and still said the old thing on the outside. You can read it in Partners.

Our experience tells us that when a client goes looking for a provider to rebrand their company, the most common reason is what we call the awakening: they reach a moment when they realize they had grown comfortable, and that if they kept going the same way they would end up in a red ocean, crowded with competitors ready to devour them, with a brand slowly losing relevance in the vast ocean of competitors offering the same thing.

And when is it not needed?

If people recognize you and associate you with the right things, and what’s failing is something else, changing the brand won’t fix it. For example:

• Your brand is fine, but your website doesn’t say what you do. A better website solves that.
• Your brand is fine and nobody knows you. What’s missing there is being seen.
• Your messages are confusing. You sort out what you say without touching the logo.

Changing the logo when the problem is something else costs money and time, and the problem stays where it was.

We said it at the start of this article: do you feel what you need is a new logo, a new image, a new color? Our answer, before you enter a cycle of runaway spending, is: run an analysis, explore the inside of the organization and understand where the gaps and failures may be.

Commercially speaking, the best thing for us as a provider would always be to sell every client a large package of services. But if, at the end of the exercise, the solution to the crisis the company was going through, or to the change in perception that leadership wanted, can’t be achieved with a rebrand or a new image, we will fail together with our client and end up in a dead end.

How do I decide what suits me?

Answer three questions honestly:

1. Does my brand tell what my company does and is today?
2. Does my team see itself in it?
3. Do the customers I want to attract now find in it what they’re looking for?

If you said no to any of them, it’s worth looking at the brand calmly. To know whether it’s branding, a rebrand or just an adjustment, you first need to understand what your company is like on the inside. That’s why we start with an Immersion Session, before talking about design.

Frequently asked questions