When to Rebrand (and When Not To)
The first question is not "what should the new brand look like" but "should we be rebranding at all." Most rebrands we're asked to scope shouldn't happen — at least not in the form the client initially imagined. Boredom with your own brand is not a reason to rebrand. The legitimate triggers are narrower than founders usually believe:
- Strategic shift. The business has fundamentally changed who it serves, what it sells, or how it competes — and the current brand is actively misleading customers about that.
- Equity damage. A crisis, controversy, or reputational event has contaminated the brand badly enough that distance from the existing equity is more valuable than continuity with it.
- Merger or acquisition. Two organizations are combining and the combined entity needs a coherent identity rather than two competing ones.
- Functional failure. The current identity has become a liability in practice — illegible at modern sizes, unworkable in digital environments, or trademark-conflicted in a market you need to enter.
- Audience shift. The audience that originally made the brand has aged out, moved on, or shifted in a way that makes the current brand a poor fit for the customers who actually matter going forward.
Note what's not on that list: a new CMO who wants to make their mark. A creative team bored after five years. A board that thinks the logo "feels dated." These are the triggers behind most failed rebrands — and behind most of the design Twitter post-mortems you've read.
Refresh, Rebuild, or Leave It Alone
Once a real trigger has been confirmed, the next decision is what kind of intervention the situation calls for. The three options are not interchangeable.
Leave it alone. The default option. The current brand is doing its job; the equity is intact; the issues raised internally are taste-driven rather than commercial. The cost of leaving things alone is usually a fraction of what teams estimate. The cost of intervening unnecessarily is usually larger than they estimate.
Refresh. A targeted modernization that preserves the recognizable elements — the wordmark proportions, the signature color, the distinctive shape — while updating execution: contrast, type, supporting palette, motion, layout, photography style. Most "rebrands" should be refreshes. The Google logo refresh in 2015, the Mastercard wordmark refresh in 2019 — these preserved equity while solving real problems.
Rebuild. A genuine reset of the visual and verbal identity, often including the name. Justifiable when continuity with the existing brand is no longer an asset. Highest risk, highest potential reward, longest payback. This is the path that requires the most careful sequencing.
