Brand Update Or Total Rebrand?

By Neil Kilgallon on Tuesday, 15 April 2025

Your brand is a critical aspect of your business that can often be overlooked or not given the attention it deserves. A brand helps build business recognition and trust, distinguishing you from competitors and helping you connect with your target audience.

As a full-service web design agency​​​​​​, our services include brand creation and modernisation. We have assisted hundreds of businesses in creating a strong brand presence. In this article, we will cover why it might be time for a brand refresh or total rebrand, potential risks, and tips on how to make the process smooth and successful.

Why Is Your Brand So Important?

A brand is more than just a logo, tagline, and colours. It is your business identity that shapes how others perceive your business. A consistent and strong brand creates instant recognition, credibility, and an advantage over your competitors. It builds value for your business, improves public awareness, and helps you connect with potential clients.

Conversely, poor branding can confuse your target market, sending a mixed message and creating uncertainty about your business, products and services.

What Is A Brand Update?

A brand update is usually a refresh or minor update to an existing brand identity. Sometimes, the updates can be subtle, such as a slight change in the RGB for a colour or a slight alteration to the tagline. Subtle brand updates can be applied to any of the following:

• Logo
• Colours
• Fonts
• Tagline
• Name
• Story
• Packaging
• Tone & voice

Two well-known examples of a subtle brand update are Starbucks and Google.

In 2011, Starbucks removed the ‘Starbucks Coffee’ text from its logo, retaining only the siren (mermaid) in a simplified, cleaner design. This change modernised the brand and enhanced its versatility while leveraging its strong recognition. Most casual coffee drinkers hardly noticed, but it marked a shift toward a broader lifestyle brand.

In 2015, Google updated its logo font from a serif to a sans-serif typeface (Product Sans). The colors remained the same, and the change was subtle enough not to scream “new Google,” but it improved digital screens' readability.

Reasons For A Brand Update

There are many reasons for a brand update, which can be driven internally, externally, or sometimes by both. Below are some key reasons why a business might consider brand updates:

• Current branding feels outdated and no longer relevant.
• New corporate strategies or goals.
• A change in market trends and preferences.
• Budget constraints prevent a complete rebrand, which would be significantly more expensive and resource-intensive.
• Continuous negative feedback.
• Inconsistency across the brand needs to be aligned.
  • For instance, a website might display different brand elements than the packaging.

What Is A Total Rebrand?

As the name suggests, a total rebrand is a complete change and update of your entire brand identity. This strategy can have enormous implications for your business and needs serious consideration and planning. It can be risky, but the rewards can be immense if completed correctly and for the right reasons.

Twitter's 2023 name change to X serves as a typical example of a complete rebrand. X’s valuation slid to $19 billion by October 2023, a 57% drop from Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase price for the service. It hasn’t succeeded in a traditional commercial sense, such as user retention, revenue, or brand strength. However, Elon Musk typically plays the long game in business, and recent signs indicate an upturn for X. Only time will tell if this will become a success story.

Areas that could change during a complete rebrand include:

• Changing the name of a business, as discussed with Twitter’s name change to X.
• Changing the visual identity with a new logo and visual elements.
  • Colours, fonts, image style, icons, layout, patterns, etc.
• Creating a new corporate mission and vision, including a new tagline.

A total rebrand would generally involve completely redesigning your existing website to reflect this new brand direction.

Reasons For A Full Rebrand

The reasons for a complete rebrand are usually more compelling, as it is not just a slight redirection of the existing brand base but a complete change. At ID Studio, we update brands more frequently than we fully redefine them; however, on the occasions we have done so, it has been for the following reasons.

• The business has been taken over, and its mission and objectives have changed.
• Legal problems where a copyright has been violated or a similar dispute.
• Adverse publicity.
• Changing markets and the brand need to reflect a different target audience.
• The business feels the brand is irrelevant and has lost its appeal.
• To help a business stand out, create attention.

What Are The Risks?

A rebrand should not be taken lightly, and there should be good reasons, as the risks can be high. However, if completed correctly, the benefits can be plentiful and transform a business's fortunes. Risks associated with a rebrand include:

• Clients who don't notice your change or recognise your new brand might go elsewhere
• Not correctly reading your target market and creating a brand that does not resonate with your client base.
• People can be finicky and do not like change. Often, a rebrand can alienate loyal customers who do not want the new brand and feel there is no need for it. An example of this was the initial massive backlash when Twitter changed its name to X.
• Many brands have taken years to build their reputation and carry a sense of prestige and heritage. However, a new brand can sometimes change that narrative entirely.
• Costs can quickly skyrocket depending on the company you use. We offer set prices at ID Studio, so our clients know exactly what they are getting.

6 Tips To Help With A New Brand

We have helped countless clients with their brand transformations, and we will share some tips and approaches we have learnt over the years.

1. Ensure you understand the rebrand's core objectives, helping keep your project closely aligned to your goals.
   A rebrand without a clear objective risks becoming lost. Define what you are trying to achieve with the rebrand.
2. Understand how your current brand is perceived so you can decide how to reposition it.
   Speak to customers, review social media, and analyse competitors to learn what people love, hate, or expect from your brand. This will help you define the direction for the new brand.
3. Conduct thorough market research.
   Don’t guess. Study your audience’s habits, your competitors, and industry trends.
4. Test your new brand throughout to ensure you get the right balance.
   Roll out in stages by testing logos, messaging, or features with focus groups or beta users. Pepsi’s 2008 logo tweak came after prototyping to ensure it still felt like Pepsi.
5. Involve different departments to gain feedback and thoughts, as they will provide a far more varied viewpoint.
   Your marketing team envisions the overall strategy, while sales understands the customer pain points, and tech recognises what’s feasible.
6. Do not make your message too complicated. Keep it meaningful and clear.
   ‘Just Do It’ works because it’s simple yet profound. Strip your message to its core. Complexity drives people away, while clarity resonates.

ID Studio has created refreshed and total rebrands for companies across many different business sectors. Arrange a call with the creative team to discuss your brand creation or web design requirements.