People come to us wanting to start again when the name is fine and the recognition is worth money. Here is how to tell which one you actually need.
We get this one most weeks. Somebody has gone off their brand, they are embarrassed by it, and they want the lot binned and started again.
And often, once we have had a proper look, the honest answer is that the brand is not the problem. It is the state of it. Everything has drifted, nobody has touched it in four years, and there are six versions of the logo floating about.
That is a refresh. It is cheaper, it is quicker, and it keeps the thing you have spent years building, which is people recognising you.
Why we say it when it costs us money
A full rebrand is a bigger job and a bigger invoice, so we are arguing ourselves down here. We would still rather do that than take a proper chunk of money off somebody and hand them back a business their customers no longer recognise.
Recognition is an asset. It is not on your balance sheet but it is real. Every van, every sign, every saved contact, every bit of word of mouth is attached to what people already know you as. Throwing that away needs a proper reason, not just being bored of your own logo.
You are the only person who has looked at your logo ten thousand times. Your customers have seen it twice.
When a refresh is the right call
- The name still fits. It says what you do, or at least it does not fight it, and people can say it and spell it.
- People know you. You get recommendations by name and repeat customers who know exactly who you are.
- The logo is fine but tired. Slightly dated, too fiddly on a phone, was drawn for print and struggles everywhere else.
- It is the consistency that is off. Three fonts, four blues, the website and the socials look like different companies. This is the most common one by a mile.
- You have grown past the presentation. The work is premium now and the branding still looks like it did when you started in a back bedroom.
A refresh keeps the name and the core idea and tidies everything around it. The mark gets redrawn so it works small and on dark backgrounds. The colours get a proper set, not a vague memory. The type gets chosen once. Then everything you use gets rebuilt from that one set of rules.
People notice you look sharper. They do not notice that anything changed. That is the point.
When it genuinely is a rebrand
- 1The name is holding you back. It is too narrow for what you do now, it is nothing like what you sell any more, or it is constantly confused with somebody else.
- 2You have changed what the business is. Different customers, different price bracket, different service. If the business is not the same business, the brand should not be either.
- 3There is something attached to it you want to leave behind. A bad chapter, a partner who left, a reputation you have outgrown.
- 4You are merging, splitting or buying something. New entity, new identity.
- 5There is a legal problem. Somebody else owns the name properly, and that one is not optional.
If that is you, do it properly, in one go, and plan the changeover. A rebrand done in dribs and drabs is the worst of both worlds, because for about a year you are two companies and nobody is sure which.
The test we use
Ask yourself what a customer who has not seen you for two years would say if they saw your new look.
If the answer is that they would go oh, they have smartened up, that is a refresh and it is the right one.
If the answer is that they would not know it was you, and you are alright with that because the business has genuinely moved on, that is a rebrand and it is worth the money.
Either way, the files matter
Whichever you end up doing, make sure you finish with the actual files and a page of rules. Vector logo in a few formats, the colour codes written down, the fonts named, and what not to do with any of it.
The reason most brands drift is not that somebody got sloppy. It is that nobody had the right file, so they used what they could find, and four years later there are six versions of you in circulation.
