Q1 • 2024


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Jason Cieslak President, Pacific Rim


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Jim Heininger Principal, Rebranding Experts


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Roger van den Bergh Founding Partner, Onoma


hen is a rebranding not a rebranding? When it’s a redesign or a repositioning. If that seems


somewhat unclear, it’s because many people are unclear regarding what differentiates a rebranding from those less intensive efforts. Numerous companies and trade publications refer to a redesigned logo or an attempt to expand to a different audience, for instance, as rebranding. Brand marketing experts, however, insist that a rebrand is much more. “Any time you’re in need of, or


aspire to tell, a new story to the world, that’s a rebrand,” says Jason Cieslak, President, Pacific Rim for brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale. “When you’re communicating what’s changed, what’s different about what you’re doing in the world, and why people should care.” Jim Heininger, Principal of agency


Rebranding Experts, has a more formal definition: “We believe rebranding is the deliberate and systematic process of creating an inspired, forward-facing organization ready to grasp opportunity through the alignment and dynamic portrayal of your unique differentiators to customers. Rebranding means updating or repositioning your core customer promise, the essence of what makes you different.”


The Why and When of Rebranding Rebranding Experts offers a simple matrix to distinguish a rebrand from a redesign or a repositioning:  A redesign focuses on refreshing visual elements such as the logo, typography, and brand imagery. Updating the tagline might be an element as well. With a visual redesign, the refreshed logo or packaging might be an end in and of itself—for instance, Buick simplified


its somewhat fussy red, blue, and silver logo to a sleeker black-and- white logo in large part to signify what it calls “an electric future.”


 A repositioning typically (though not always) incorporates the above, along with reimagining the customer experience and what Heininger dubs “the brand essence.” He considers the 2021 move by Victoria’s Secret to appeal to a wider swath of women as a repositioning. Part of its strategy was to feature women of all sizes in its advertisements and to downplay its Angels walking runways in scanty lingerie. (Interestingly, the company seems to be walking back from that repositioning and toward a re-repositioning.)


 A rebrand usually encompasses all the above, and then some. The company’s mission and vision, its culture, and often even its name are reconsidered and redefined, if not outright overhauled. While a redesign is design oriented by nature and a repositioning is marketing focused, a rebranding is an organization-wide strategy.


Given all that it entails, the decision to


rebrand is not one to make lightly. “It’s not like putting a Band-Aid on,” says Roger van den Bergh, a founding partner of brand identity design firm Onoma. “It’s a very structural process. It requires time and discipline.” Sometimes legalities mandate a


rebranding—another organization might already have copyrighted similar names or visual elements, say. Or if a company is planning to go up for sale, “they can use corporate identity as a tool to improve its perception as an attractive proposition,” van den Bergh says.


A related reason for a rebrand: “When


a company decides it’s going in a new direction,” Cieslak says. “Maybe you’re creating a new breakthrough product that changes how the world perceives you.” He adds that rebranding can also be “a powerful tool for recruitment and employee retention and attraction. Brand is not just for customers.” Think of the U.S. Army’s “Be all you can be” messaging, which it recently redefined as part of its 2023 rebranding. According to


Other times mergers, acquisitions, or spin-offs necessitate creating a new brand from the remains of the previous one. For instance, after the US team of global coaching corporation BPI Group completed a buyout, Rebranding Experts “worked with their leadership team over months to distill their core brand promise: that good coaching helps ignite bolder futures,” Heininger recalls. From there they came up with the name Bravanti, a fusion of brave and avanti, “to go courageously forward,” he says. “It struck this emotional note with them that this is how they want to be perceived, and it stood for something that was never expressed within that industry.” A new visual identity, featuring colors as bright and bold as the futures the company promised, accompanied the rebranding, as did the expansion of its services.


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