Rebranding Stories to Learn From

Rebranding any business can be a tight balancing act. Of course the main goal of any rebrand is to foster increased interest and positive public opinion. As such it become immediately apparent that you must conduct important market research into your demographic, to create the proper execution for your new design, name, or product.

Major businesses can and will spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to find the rebranding strategy their demographics yearn for. Even with their high budgets, market researchers, and advertising experts, some of these companies still have amazing failures. So seeing this, it comes with no surprise that the decision to rebrand is a tough call.

However, the best rebrands can save a failing business, create a “new” one, or change the common public opinion. A lot of success stories share major parts of their rebrand strategy. To take advantage of their successes, a great place to start researching strategies is to look into what worked for these businesses and see how the different parts of their rebrands could work for own business. So let’s take a look at some notable rebrands and what similarities they share.

Public Trust Crisis

Subway had a big problem with public trust in the months after their spokesperson debacle. Quickly they became the butt of many jokes and the public image of the company fell fast and hard. Part of this was their own lack of action, transparency, and communication during and shortly following the events. To turn the tide, Subway publicly cut ties with Jared Fogle and immediately started purging all references and images of him. While these actions certainly helped public opinion, it wouldn’t be until their rebranding went into full effect that people started to move past the scandal.

Their first attempt had the company looking back on it’s long history. However, for some this ad continued to create memories of their time with Fogle, even if he wasn’t part or present in the campaign. Looking into new directions for the company, Chris Carroll, Subway’s Chief Advertising Officer, stated, “We feel like we’ve lost an emotional connection to our consumers. The fundamental pillars of our brand are health, value and indulgence. That’s never changed, it’s what we’ve done for 50 years. What we need to do is tell that story [better].” Their following campaign forwent any nostalgic references, previous deals, or their fallen spokesperson. Instead they doubled down on lifestyles and stating that there’s a variety and style to fit any type of life. They pushed the consumer to build what they want.

McDonald’s similarly had a public trust issue. This instance not being a public scandal of spokespersons or other insidious affairs, but actually due to their previous success and style of menu items. They became synonymous with unhealthy lifestyles and foods directly linked to the obesity epidemic. This became an almost insurmountable task of reversing their public perception.

To counter such a negative public stance, McDonald’s wisely sought out input directly from their critics and consumers. Their first hand research lead to discussions and eventual implementation of healthier alternatives and marketing styles. These changes along with an active stance fighting obesity has helped regain public opinion and trust.

The similarities between these rebrands, fall squarely on the decision to focus on customer wants and ideals. By conducting research into their demographic and by creating more consumer oriented approaches, both rebrands succeeded and are still working in the favor of both companies.

Growing Bigger Through Small Changes

Not every rebrand has to be a major change or massive effort to shift public opinion. Sometimes the most effective rebrands are subtle enough that the base consumer doesn’t realize it happened but they feel a stronger connection to your brand regardless. Two interesting examples of small change for big effect, come from Google and Mailchimp.

These two services are worlds apart yet they still followed almost identical decisions. As Google grew and expanded their business across various platforms and services, they tidied up their logo by moving to a bold Sans-Serif font. Mailchimp also tweaked their logo. Their update was even more subtle. By adjusting the spacing of letters and cleaning up the line work, they were able to update the legibility of their word work at smaller sizes while still maintaining their air of levity.

The Big Name Change

Of course there will be times when you need to change the name of your business and try for a fresh start. Usually this type of rebrand happens during a period of transition/acquisition from the purchase of an existing business. These are generally the biggest risk/reward ventures. When you purchase an existing business, it will come with a history of clientele and history of services/reviews. Taking that into consideration you will need to research you new demographic intensely to determine not only a new name, but decide on the how and when to present this change to your customers. A faulty execution will alienate your existing base demographic and can lead to distrust and resentment of your business.

A recent example of this type of rebrand comes from the acquisition of the company Musical.ly. In November of 2017 the Chinese company Bytedance bought Musical.ly and incorporated it into their own similar app called TikTok. Granted TikTok was already a big success in China under the name Douyin, however, their lack of transparency during the acquisition and the sudden name change (Millions of users of Musical.ly awoke to find their beloved app changed name and appearance overnight into the new TikTok) caused a great sense of resentment among Musical.ly’s previous user base.

Now TikTok has pushed through the resentment and distrust of the public through a series of ad campaigns and influencer promotions. TIkTok pulled off a massive rebrand but could’ve easily lost it all due to their lack of timing and demographic research.