A full rebrand is often an agency's first recommendation, but it's rarely what a company truly needs. My experience has shown that most brands simply need a more focused approach. Let's clarify the difference between a rebrand, a brand refresh, and a brand refocus.
What is a rebrand?
A rebrand is a reinvention or overhaul of a brand’s core identity, messaging, values, strategy and market positioning. It alerts the brand’s customers, prospects, competitors, and market that something significant has changed for the brand. A few reasons for a rebrand include:
- Pivoting to a new product offering
- Focusing on a new market
- Entering a new level of maturity
- Trying to counter negative attention
If you aren’t doing one of these, you don’t need a rebrand.
What is a brand refresh?
A refresh is about a series of tweaks to what exists already. It can include updated color palettes, typography, marketing materials, and even an updated logo. A refresh can be helpful when your marketing materials or website is feeling dated and stale. A refresh is often more about publicity and declaring relevance to the market than indicating anything drastically different.
What is a brand refocus?
At Vergency, I evaluate and audit what exists already to discover the good, the bad, and the inconsistent. A refocus can have a lot in common with a refresh but the goals are slightly different. A brand refocus keeps the best of what you already have and aligns the rest to this standard. In a lot of ways, a brand refocus looks like a retro in function and structure.
- What should be kept? – What elements of the brand are good and should be kept? Is the messaging good but the design chaotic? Or is the messaging confusing but the design top notch? Does the color palette work as is?
- What should be executed differently? – What can we tweak without coompletely redoing? Where are the inconsistencies in execution that we can unify in approach?
- What should we stop doing? – Does every designer start from scratch and apply the brand identity in a different way? Is the messaging inconsistent? Does the voice and tone change based on who wrote it? Are the icons or illustrations different styles?
Outcomes of a brand refocus
Depending on what the audit uncovers, the brand refocus could uncover the following recommendations:
- Clarify key messaging – Are the brand’s purpose, position, and differentiation aligned with each other and with reality? Do they speak clearly to the problem the company is trying to solve? Do you differentiate beyond a feature list?
- Formalize and structure your brand – Do you have clear brand guidelines that cover key areas like voice, tone, logo usage, color palette, typography, and imagery? Do you have templates that make it easy for employees outside of the design team succeed at brand compliance? Do you have a design system in place (or at least a UI kit) so that being brand compliance is the path of least resistance?
Benefits of a brand refocus
- Faster time to market – Since the starting point for a brand refocus is keep the best and then align, there’s less work to be done and less need for consensus. The goal is to refocus, not remake, or redo.
- Less invasive – Like the faster time to market, a brand refocus doesn’t change everything. Most changes can be made moving forward as opposed to retrofitting a rebrand on past marketing materials.
- Less expensive while still being expansive – Lastly, a faster time to market and less invasive work means less hours updating to the new guidelines. The efficiency of a brand refocus also means it's a fraction of the cost of a full rebrand, which can easily run into six figures.
Putting a brand refocus into practice
DataRobot, while a global brand, lacked brand guidelines for the design team to reference. As a result every piece of collateral had its own feel depending on which designer was assigned. After a careful review of all current collateral, web, and video assets, cohesive and flexible brand guidelines, coupled with design and document templates, were put in place so that designers, vendors, and internal teams could all create assets for DataRobot.