Branding2 min read
Five signs it’s time for a brand refresh
Not every dip in sales needs a new logo. These are the signs that your brand really is holding you back.
Rebrands are exciting, expensive and often unnecessary. We regularly talk clients out of them. A dip in sales is usually a product, pricing or media problem, and a new logo won’t fix any of those.
But sometimes the brand really is the problem. These are the five signs we look for before recommending a refresh.
1. You’ve outgrown the story
The brand was built for the company you were five years ago: one product, one market, one type of customer. Since then you’ve added services, entered new countries or started selling to businesses as well as consumers. If your team needs a slide of caveats to explain how the brand fits what you do now, it doesn’t.
2. Nobody uses it the same way twice
Look at your last ten pieces of marketing side by side. If they could plausibly come from three different companies, the brand isn’t doing its job. That usually happens when the guidelines are too thin, too rigid or simply too hard to find, so everyone improvises.
3. You look like your competitors
Put your homepage next to your three biggest rivals with the logos covered. If you can’t tell which is which, neither can your customers. Every category drifts towards the same look over time; the brands that break away from it get remembered.
4. It breaks in new places
Brands designed for print often struggle on a phone screen, in a 16-pixel app icon, in a short vertical video or in dark mode. If your logo has to be squeezed, redrawn or replaced every time it appears somewhere new, it’s time to rebuild it for how people see brands today.
5. Your best people apologise for it
This one is our favourite, because it’s so telling. When your sales team says “ignore the website, it’s out of date” or recruits get a quick disclaimer about the brand, the people closest to your customers have already decided. Listen to them.
A refresh isn’t about looking new. It’s about looking like who you already are.
Refresh or rebrand?
Most of the time, the answer is a refresh: keep what people already recognise, such as a colour, a shape or a name, and fix everything around it. That protects the recognition you’ve already paid for.
A full rebrand makes sense only when the name or the core idea itself is holding you back – after a merger, a big change of direction or a reputation you need to leave behind.
If two or more of the signs above sound familiar, it’s worth a conversation. If none of them do, put the money into media instead.
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