A rebrand can be a touchy subject; consumers are often quicker to criticise rather than compliment. British carmaker Jaguar learnt this lesson last year, after a teaser video for its revamped brand identity was met with instant ridicule and derision. “Surely there were some adults at [the] board level when this was signed off?” one user posted on X. (To this, Jaguar cryptically replied, “To live is to evolve.”)
While Jaguar did eventually reveal a new electric concept car to explain the change in direction, the backlash served as a cautionary tale for brands attempting a makeover. And it wasn’t the first time that brands were served this lesson the hard way.
In 2010, clothing brand GAP tried to ditch its iconic blue square with a condensed serif font for a more pared-back logo in a bold Helvetica type. The decision garnered so much backlash that the brand went back to the old logo after just six days. “We’ve learnt just how much energy there is around our brand, and after much thought, we’ve decided to go back to our iconic blue box logo,” Louise Callagy, a company spokesperson had said at
the time.
Tropicana met a similar fate the previous year when it decided to freshen up its packaging. It replaced its straw-in-an-orange motif with a generic glass of orange juice. Consumers hated the new look, sales dropped by 20% and within six weeks, the fruit juice brand said it would return to its original packaging. The whole exercise reportedly cost the brand more than $50 million.
The pitfalls within
Unveiling a brand concept without any tangible product or service change always risks being deride, says Lulu Raghavan, managing director, Singapore and India, Landor, because audiences don’t understand the full context of the rebrand.
Being clear on your strategy and why you’re making a change is critical, adds Deva Corriveau, creative director at global brand consultancy Brandpie. “In the case of Jaguar, the storytelling around the ‘why’ may not have been so clear in the initial stages. But as things started to come out, people started to say, ‘Ok, that actually makes a bit of sense now,’” he says.Nine out of 10 brands face a backlash when a new logo drops, says Ankur Rander, founder and CEO, Bombay DC, the firm behind the revamped visual identity of Aquaguard and Eureka Forbes. “Remember when Instagram moved from its old camera to this new palette? People thought it had lost its character, but they got used to it. Change is good when it’s strategic,” he shares.
Timing is everything
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly 75% of companies have opted for a rebrand or updated their branding strategy. In the last year alone, we have seen major brands such as PayPal, Lego, Bumble and KitKat all undergo brand refreshes.
“Brands are keenly evaluating their strength through the lens of relevance. The pursuit of relevance is a never-ending race for brands with younger target audiences, shifting consumer preferences, digital disruption, increased competition, technological advancements and cultural nuancing. Rebranding helps reignite relevance,” says Raghavan. She also mentioned that in Jaguar’s case, the renewed wordmark is fitting with the new concept car reveal and that the company’s strategy could be well warranted.
However, a change of identity should come about only if you’re changing your story, cautions Corriveau. “There’s value in rebranding if I need to tell the general population that my business is different from the way they perceive it, or if I want to remind them of the qualities of my business by defining it better,” he shares.
Pivotal moments — a merger, acquisition, divestment, IPO, change of CEO, business pivot, targeting different audiences — are all good times to consider a rebrand because it’s an opportunity to crystallise what your business is, Corriveau says.
Godrej Enterprises Group, for example, used the restructuring of the family business to refine its identity. “The family settlement agreement gave us the opportunity to launch an identity that was more distinctive and inherently ownable across our diverse range of businesses,” shares Sumeet Bhojani, head, brand and strategic insights, Godrej Enterprises Group.
To this end, the company revamped its logo (it’s now purple), adopted a customised font, refreshed its visual imagery across different consumer touchpoints and narrowed down its tone of voice. “Our single life brief to the agency was, how do we live up to the brand personality of ‘smarter, authentic, more confident’,” Bhojani reveals.
Asked about how they avoided a potential backlash, Bhojani says they had a very structured communication exercise, both internally and externally, so that people understood the rationale behind the new identity. “We also stress tested the identity across a couple of touchpoints early on,” he shares.
Taking forward equity
Refreshing your visual identity can be dicey, particularly if you’re moving away from colours or motifs traditionally associated with your brand. This can risk alienating loyal customers. “While Jaguar’s business performance has been in decline, the brand’s iconic assets, particularly the Leaper, resonated with loyalists,” Raghavan says. In the new concept car, the prancing cat has been flattened and now only appears in a brass ingot on each side of the car. Not quite the same status symbol as the silver iteration.
When Bombay DC revamped the Aquaguard logo, it realised that consumers associated two things with the water purifier: A water drop and a text-based logo. “So, we did not want to introduce a mnemonic or symbol. We kept it as a word mark and created a custom word type carrying a hidden water drop in the letters (the counter holes),” Rander explains.
“When most legacy brands evolve, they retain and strategically evolve the iconic assets that are sacrosanct and have been nurtured over time,” Raghavan adds.
So, when Tropicana reattempted a rebrand in 2024, they doubled down on what was iconic to the brand. Brand and packaging design agency Sunhouse reintroduced the iconic straw-in-the-orange, added an orange to the logo (above the ‘i’) and made subtle changes to the colour palette to emphasise the role of the orange.
Don’t forget digital
It’s also important to account for digital. As companies embrace a digital-first future, they often struggle to maintain consistency across various channels due to the design limitations of each. “A website or digital application might need an extension of the colour palette, you may have to provide more tints, or the way the typography is laid out [on a screen] might require some tweaking,” shares Bhojani.
In the digital realm, brands also face the challenge of making interactions as impactful as in-person encounters. LG is a great example of solving that, Rander points out. “It brought in new life by introducing a whole new motion design language, emoticons and characters to its logo. It gave meaning to the brand, and to its ‘Life’s Good’ tagline,” he says.
Why Is Every Brand Rebranding?
KitKat, PayPal, Lego, Bumble, Decathlon, Sandisk, Audi E — 2024 seemed to be busy with logo redesigns and identity refreshes. But was it really that busy?
Deva Corriveau, who has been in the business for more than 20 years, doesn’t think so. “Rebrands are probably happening at a similar rate as to what I’ve experienced in my career. But now there’s a lot more attention, which makes it feel as though rebrands are happening all the time,”
he says.
“[Today] People are engaging with B2B rebrands in a way that they wouldn’t have in the past. Take the GSK rebrand in 2022. Ten, or 20 years ago, nobody would have even known that GlaxoSmithKline had undergone a rebrand, but now it’s very much part of the public consciousness,” he adds.
