Rebranding is an essential business strategy to promote longevity and timelessness. Find out how to give your brand a facelift without losing your community in the process. 

Everybody changes at some point in their lives, right? Businesses are not so different. A brand that launched more than 20 years ago may have different goals since when they first started. After all, a company’s business targets, market position, and customer profile are unlikely to stay the same for so long. 

That’s why rebranding is a tricky business. Some brands want to stick to the familiar and fail to deliver something new to the table. Meanwhile, others stray too far from their original identity and lose connection with their market. 

Balancing the elements that build up your brand’s identity is essential to make your rebrand a success. Here are some ways to make sure you don’t flub your new identity.

When Should You Rebrand? 

The process of rebranding can involve updating the company’s logo, visual identity, brand messaging, and marketing materials. This is done mostly to allow a company to stay relevant and modern, improve brand recognition, and better reflect the company’s mission and values.

There are a number of ways to tell if your business is in need of a rebrand. Usually, these will involve a noticeable shift in values or intended market. Take a look at these examples below: 

• Change in brand value and mission
• Reflect new market positioning
• Changes in the brand’s industry
• Reflect mergers and acquisitions
• Business expansion

The Four Stages of a Rebrand

1. Rebrand Planning

A good rebrand strategy starts with a good understanding of why the brand needs updating. At this point, you also want to check how huge the scope of your rebrand will be. Are you looking for a partial or complete rebrand? 

Getting familiar with the major goals of our rebrand is key to helping you guide the direction of the rebrand. After that, you can conduct market research to gain valuable insights into industry trends, customer preferences and competitor branding strategies. 

Setting these rebranding goals and objectives will help you keep the rebrand focused and effective. You can also develop a budget and project timeline to be on track and within allocated resources. 

2. Brand development

Brand development involves refining your brand personality and creating a new logo and visual identity. 

Your brand personality ensures that your message and positioning aligns with your new mission and values. Meanwhile, your new logo will serve as the primary marker of your rebrand–you want to make sure it represents your new brand well. 

Most rebrands tend to stick to a similar color palette and make minimal adjustments to their typography. This allows their visual identity to carry a familiar image that’s consistent with their original brand. 

3. Rebrand implementation

Here’s where it gets interesting. When debuting your new brand identity, it’s important that you cover all bases to ensure a flawless transition. 

Start by communicating the changes to stakeholders–like your employees and relevant managers. It’s best to update all your marketing materials all at the same time to really emphasize your rebranding debut. Plus, you can even add a quick explanation of the rebrand by writing a blog post or through your social media copy.

 Make sure to pay attention to small details like your business cards, social media profiles, employee uniforms to make your rebrand feel complete.

4. Rebrand evaluation

Finally, it’s always a good idea to look at metrics to judge your performance. The success of your rebrand will depend on brand recognition and customer engagement, so you want to make sure that you really research your branding decisions well. 

Don’t forget–the brand refreshment doesn’t end there. You can still increase your brand recognition through your social media marketing strategies and other off-page campaigns, so make sure you tune in to what works!

It is important to continually evaluate the rebrand and make necessary adjustments in order to ensure that it is meeting the company’s goals and objectives.

Tips To Make Your Rebrand Noticed

The important thing with rebrands is to make sure customers still recognize your new brand identity. Some companies want to make sure that they get the idea right, so they test out their new visual identity by getting feedback from customers. This allows them to make fewer adjustments post-launch. 

Another strategy is to plan your brand campaign so customers can recognize the new branding from repetition. You can do this by doing campaign blasts in social media and in your physical stores (if any). A great way to signal a rebranding is to also pair it with product campaigns, refreshing copy, and discount deals. 

Small businesses have more leeway to conduct a complete rebranding with new color palettes and new logo. However, legacy brands with a long history of their current branding may want to play it more safe and only add or subtract elements. 

Finally, make sure your rebrand puts you in a unique spot among your competitors. Whether it’s in your corporate messaging or product campaigns, your new brand must be a step above the rest. This will help attract old and new customers to your brand. 

Three Rebranding Examples To Inspire Your Work

Rebranding isn’t an easy project by any means. And it can be difficult to predict whether your new brand identity will be successful. Here are some amazing examples to see how rebranding is done. 

1. Dunkin’ 

Dunkin’, previously known as Dunkin’ Donuts made a stunning rebrand back in 2019 with their huge brand name change. This reflected the brand’s desire to shift into a more “beverage-led on-to-go” brand. 

The business made this brand refresh to offer customers faster and more convenient beverages and pastries. However, they still kept a few things the same–such as their iconic pink and orange fonts that they have used since 1973. This brand refresh comes with their more lifestyle-oriented campaigns and desire for international mass growth. 

2. Sprite

Sprite is another example of a successful rebrand initiative. The brand removed the starburst element in the logo and transitioned to a more minimalist look while keeping its yellow and green color palette. 

This is a subtle yet elegant move that’s made to appeal to more Gen Z consumers, as the new typeface offers a bold and refreshing vibe. The brand refresh also addressed its plastic PET bottles and made the switch to To connect with younger audiences, it also made sure to release a campaign that matches with music. 

3. Sweetgreen 

Sweetgreen also has a new look. The salad company debuts its brand refresh with hand-drawn illustrations of ingredients based on vintage cookbooks. This puts more focus on organic elements to emphasize the natural ingredients of their food. 

With this, they are also moving to embrace the imperfections in their ingredients. This campaign encourages them to promote more seasonal ingredients with a more modern vibe. 

There are plenty of ways to go about rebranding a business. One thing is for sure though, it’s not an easy task. Be prepared to go through rounds of revisions to make sure your brand voice is tailored to the current trends. 

If you want a rebrand that’s sure to impress, collaborate with DotYeti and our talented roster of designers. We offer custom logos, social media assets, and other graphic design services for a flat monthly fee. 

Sign up today to get started for as low as $449 a month!