It’s no secret that the need for a business to keep up with the constant change of their industry is crucial; especially in this current climate where phones, computers and the internet in general is in such high demand!
The idea of being and looking ‘modern’ is also changing along with it, so the same logo you had 10 years ago might not work as well now. Take us as an example – Trustist was only founded in 2014 and we’ve recently decided to change our branding after only 6 years!
Our new one looks a lot better; don’t you think?
It doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the logo we had before, it just shows that designs have evolved over time and our business needed to evolve too!
This also leads us to think about the reasons other businesses choose to rebrand.
Reasons to Rebrand
Rebranding undoubtedly takes up a lot of time, patience and money, and with all your other workload on top of that, is it really worth it?
It’s actually more of a common occurrence than you think, huge brands like McDonalds, MasterCard and even Instagram have taken on new, more modern looks in an effort to appeal to the ever-changing tastes of their audiences.
You may notice that each new logo is more simplistic. Less is more!
It’s great to see brands continuing to evolve, but we can delve even deeper and take a look at the reasons for these changes!
Outdated Images
Leaving images to become outdated means that at a certain point, they will no longer represent your brand and the products/service that you offer. This can lead to confusion, frustration and perhaps, if you’re not careful, false advertising, all of which would be detrimental to your business’ reputation. Outdated images can also make your company itself look outdated and out of touch therefore effecting each new target audience that you go after!
Well-known Petrol company, Shell, have changed their logo eight times since 1908 to keep their image modern. Pepsi’s logo too is now unrecognisable from when the company first started in 1898 evolving from a ‘wordmark’ into a clean, modern font. It’s also important to acknowledge that both brands have always remained recognisable to clients, despite making changes over time.
Bad Reputation
Sometimes, a company develops a bad reputation that can send their business on a downward spiral as they lose sales. In this case, a rebranding can refresh the business and change the way it’s perceived to gradually win consumers back – a bit like wiping the slate clean!
When the documentary ‘Super Size Me’ came out in 2004, McDonald’s sales took a big hit due to their reputation of being a cheap and unhealthy fast-food chain. This prompted them to rebrand and spend a large amount of money to give all of their restaurants a makeover. Now when you go inside a McDonalds, you’ll see a lot of natural, earthy colours like green and tones of brown. The documentary was also the influence behind their ‘Salad Shake’ being added to the menu.
Change in Markets
A change in markets has the capacity to really threaten a business, whether they chose to go after a different target market, or their consumers just changed naturally. This is another reason why a company will decide on a rebrand, it allows them to reflect on current market dynamics and possibly gain an advantage over their competition. Another reason could be to express the company’s evolution and appear bigger, stimulating growth and improving on the brand.
A perfect example of this is MasterCard. They changed their logo by taking the wording off the icon and making the middle segment orange instead of the red and yellow combs. To keep up with technology, this logo is now optimised to work on phones which is where banks seem to be currently headed.
