Rebrands are Stupid
Rebrands are Generally Stupid
Identity designers today lack discipline, and prioritize adding a cool “case study” into their portfolios instead of questioning the reasons behind a rebrand. Are rebrands actually effective in the long-term?
Identity designers will jump to the requests of companies wanting to rebrand. But if most designers took two more brain cells to understand basic concepts surrounding behavioral and decision science, and how consumers make decisions, they’d quickly come to the realization that rebrands are generally stupid, and usually harm the business's bottom line in the long term—even if it was executed beautifully (what most designers swoon over). The problem that most designers forget however, is a key concept of branding: you are not the consumer and so what you think looks cool is again, generally useless.
Without getting into the pointless weeds of “what is a brand?”, let’s just say for now that a organizations brand is a mental heuristic, and their success is rooted in our perceptions, emotions, memories, and serve as quick identification from alternatives consumers might choose. When a brand changes its identity, you end up with a jumble which risks losing its brand equity, and cause consumers to have to rewire these mental shortcuts from scratch. An excellent example of this is Tropicana's 2009 rebrand, where the company changed its iconic packaging design, resulting in a significant drop in sales and a loss of €30 million in just two months. Not surprisingly, this led to the withdrawal of the new package design.
When Tropicana rebranded, most designers commented on the new tactical changes: “I liked new font.” “The design was more modern.” “It felt more premium.” “Feels unoffensive.” “The straw in the orange was so dated anyway.” Even if any of those things were true, that doesn’t make it effective or right. The orange juice itself didn't change, and tasted just as good as before. The brand name was the same. So what happened?
What happened was that it was no longer looked like itself—i.e. the straw through the orange was a key distinctive asset that was now gone. Changing the automatic recognition cues (which are processed by the part of our brain that deals with quick mental processing, also known as System 1 thinking), made consumers work harder and use more cognitive energy than they have or want to. When brands become deeply ingrained in our memories, then we proceed to change how they look, our image processing becomes confused, and brands that change their identity lose their familiarity and awareness.
This concept is empirically proven through research by Jenni Romaniuck and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. Their idea of distinctiveness simply says that using your distinctive brand assets/brand codes (typography, colors, logos, packaging) consistently, helps you be quickly recalled in buying situations. Brands should take inventory of their assets, and for each asset determine the level of uniqueness and fame. Uniqueness meaning, how many people can link a specific asset to your brand only, and fame meaning, how many people can link your brand to a specific asset? When you decide to change everything that exists from a brand, those mental shortcuts and associations are removed.
Vignelli’s Canon alludes to this in his section on Equity: “The notion of a logo equity has been with us from the very beginning of time. When designers were asked to design a new logo for the Ford Motor Company, they proposed a light retouch of the old one which could be adjusted for contemporary applications. The same was done for Ciga Hotels, Cinzano, Lancia Cars, and others. There was no reason to dispose of logos that had seventy years of exposure and were rooted in people’s consciousness with a set of respectable connotations.”
Rebranding is usually a stupid tactical move that often creates more problems than it solves. Instead of rebranding, brands should consider revitalizing their original identity and focus on updating their executions without losing their brand equity. Brand revitalization requires stepping back and then looking forward with a fresh perspective. Brands that can revitalize their identity while staying consistent with their original ethos can maintain their recognizability, without losing market share.
If we’re to be taken a big more seriously as designers, then I think we have to start understanding more about the science behind how consumers buy to make better-informed decisions for our clients.
N.G.