A client came to us for a rename. We said no.
People tend to think a rebrand starts with a new name. It doesn’t. It starts with panic. Letsssss talkaboudit.
Our major supply chain brand came to us convinced they’d outgrown their eponym. They didn’t just do what they were named for anymore (their founding capability). They’d evolved into automation, robotics, RFID, all the next-gen supply chain tech. To make things worse, their competitor named themselves the actual literal exact same thing in a different tense.
Blink. Blink.
And, since they were prepping for a series of capital events, they feared their name was holding them back, or worse would kill their relevancy over time. So, leadership said let’s change the name!
We said hold the phone, because a rename (while, cha-ching for us!) rarely makes sense for a brand, especially well-established ones. High equity brands tend to forget the sweat, time, and hard earned cash that went into building their reputation, and so it seems trivial to burn it all down and start again with a new name. Starting over sucks.
For fun, here are a few reasons when it *does* make sense to rename:
You’re entering or leaving a market
You’re facing negative brand equity or PR fallout
You’re merging or restructuring the portfolio
You’ve shifted who you serve or what you sell so drastically that the name actively misleads the market
Your brand was racist. Yep.
None of that was true here.
Instead, we started with some discovery as a standalone project. A look under the hood, if you will. What we found was even better: The name had earned its own meaning. Customers didn’t associate it with barcode technology anymore, they associated it with reliability, partnership, and the incredible relationships they had with the people on the team. You could say that the name had become shorthand for trust.
So instead of starting over, we evolved the identity by taking a date mark that tied them to their namesake and rebuilt it into a system of building blocks that represent progress, connection, and movement across the supply chain. The name stayed and the brand grew up.
How to tell if you’re rebranding for the wrong reason
Quick gut check before you blow up your brand equity:
Ask customers first: What they think the name means matters more than what you think it means, and trust me they don’t think about it as hard as you do (do you really think about Netflix being about the “net” which is a super dated term? Of course not, you just want to watch your shows).
Quantify equity: How much brand recall, search, and sentiment are attached to your current name? Do you know how to measure it, because I’ve taught you a bunch, here’s a starting place.)
Audit architecture: Sometimes the sub-brands, not the master brand, are what’s actually outdated. This is cleaner to focus on first, even if you do rename.
Reply to this email with “questions” if you want a link to the interview questions we asked their customers during discovery.
Just for fun
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