Brands are constantly expanding and evolving to meet the challenges of the day. As your business grows, your offerings change, and your mission shifts over time, it’s good practice to reassess your brand to ensure it properly reflects your place in your industry. Sometimes, a little bit of polishing with a brand refresh is precisely what your company needs to mark these transitions.
A brand refresh gives your company a “facelift” in the public eye. This may entail changing the font a brand uses, redesigning the icon, choosing new colors, or incorporating a new slogan into the logo. However, what doesn’t change is the core of your brand. During a brand refresh, your company retains its name and the overall look and feel of the brand while introducing fresh, new elements that bring your logo and other visual elements of your brand identity into a forward-thinking, modern age.
Change can take some time, but with proper research and planning, executing a brand refresh will be well worth the effort. These five tips can help guide you and your team through this process.
When you think of a brand refresh, you may first think of a total overhaul of your company’s visuals. But a brand refresh doesn’t go that deep, which helps to retain connections to the original branding. These five brand refresh benefits best illustrate its role in maintaining and advancing your company’s image.
Let’s take a look at three famous brand refreshes so you can get a good idea of how this concept works out in the real world.
The pharmacy chain is an excellent example of retaining recognizable visual elements while pivoting to meet a new mission. In 2016, CVS took significant steps to align itself with wellness and a person’s whole health, uniting four disparate brands under the banner of CVS Health. Two years prior, the company famously decided to stop selling cigarettes in its stores — certainly a healthy move. And just a year later, the company bought the healthcare company Aetna.
CVS retained its signature red font and big block lettering in this logo, even with such a drastic change. The creative team added a heart to symbolize care and well-being, bringing this company into a healthy future without leaving recognizable components of the national pharmacy chain behind.
The hotel and hospitality chain’s old logo retained some 3D elements reminiscent of ‘90s graphic design. As Holiday Inn moved to refresh its hotel rooms, it changed the logo to better reflect the direction in which the company was heading. This brand refresh, completed in 2007, retained the script-inspired “H” in Holiday Inn and the green used in the logo while choosing a fresh new palette and gradient. Under this new, refreshed logo, customers know that Holiday Inn offers a revamped experience wherever its hotels can be found.
The two overlapping circles in the Mastercard logo have been a part of the brand since the 1960s. The yellow and orange circles have been through several iterations throughout the years — paired with different words, striped to indicate an overlap — but the latest brand refresh in 2019 removed the “Mastercard” wordmark altogether. The two circles have become so closely associated with the brand that they could successfully stand in place of the name, and there would be no doubt which company stood behind the logo. It’s the perfect example of the power of imagery in a logo done right.
Whether you’re marking 10 years in business, expanding your product offerings, or simply want to revive a tired logo, a brand refresh can help you keep up with the competition and remain relevant in a fast-paced world. Namecheap Visual is a suite of tools that can help you quickly and effectively complete a brand refresh. These easy-to-use and intuitive products help you create your new look with the help of the free Logo Maker, the accessible website builder Site Maker, and Card Maker to create new business cards with your refreshed look. Head to Visual to explore all our products and see how they can help you keep your brand relevant, attractive, and competitive.
Keep your company’s brand kit updated by replacing visual design assets as they change, like swapping out old logos for those that have been redesigned or refreshed. In addition, make edits to the style guide as needed to ensure consistency with imagery, fonts, color palettes, and other branding elements.
To announce a brand refresh, prepare statements that you can release across different channels (social media posts, press releases, etc.). Make sure your announcement includes an explanation of the changes and clear visuals to show the modifications to your brand’s visual identity. Don’t forget to update your website, social media profiles, and email signatures to coincide with the refresh announcement.
Companies often complete a brand refresh every three to five years, while a complete rebrand usually only takes place every 10 years or so. Avoid making unnecessary changes if your brand still feels relevant and effective. A refresh or rebrand should only be completed when the brand is starting to feel outdated or your business takes a new direction.
A complete rebrand is a massive undertaking for any company. It often requires months of planning and may even involve hiring consultants to help guide the transformation. A brand refresh, however, is much less challenging. It involves only minor tweaks to the existing visual elements and marketing strategy while keeping the core of the brand consistent.
One of the most common reasons that rebrands fail is ignoring customer feedback. When a rebrand alienates or confuses the target audience, it can drive people away and erode customer loyalty. Other issues that may contribute to rebrand failure include extreme changes to the brand’s visual identity, a failure to convey the reason for the rebrand, and lack of employee buy-in.
From voice to visuals, here’s how to create branding that everyone will recognize.
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