The most common reason I have been seeing rebrands over the past five years is to adjust the brand standards to be optimized for the digital world. Many legacy logos were created to live IRL and their complex dimension or wordmark does not translate to a screen in a hand or an app bubble. The advice I have is to start with the basic lines and add as few strokes as possible. “Striking simplification” has been the path to success for many major re-rebrands recently.

A brand update should occur if market research continually proves that a brand’s values and offering aren’t resonating with target consumers. Brand updates must occur though, in a way that isn’t just a move to keep up with trends. A rebrand has to be a timeless transformation that will remain relevant in the far off future. Multiple rebrands is never a good look in terms of conveying trustworthiness to consumers.

Whim is not a good reason. Change in company direction might be. As a purist, I would not change IBM, NBC, or even Aunt Jemima (even though Quaker Oats did). Brands that have had an established following run the risk of losing part of their consumer base by making changes if such changes are not clearly understood and emotionally accepted by the consumer.

One of the most urgent brand re-fresh causes, other than irrelevance, is necessity. Witness both Abercrombie and Victoria’s Secret; their staid positioning cost them millions, to say nothing of gobs of bad press. The turn around can be slow in such cases, but when necessity strikes, you HAVE to refresh. The opposite of necessity is someone like Gap, who, due to creeping irrelevance, also have a powerful need to refresh. In that case, and possibly in the aforementioned brands’, positioning was so set in stone, said refresh has been very slow in coming.

A brand “refresh” should only be done occasionally, not as the “flavor of the month,” and not at the risk of brand equity. But when that equity is no longer resonating with target customers — and unable to appeal to a broader base of consumers — it’s time for a change.

That change may be as simple as a logo redesign or a name change (“Ben’s Original” instead of “Uncle Ben’s”), or it could be a revamp of the underlying brand image itself. These are tougher to pull off; the many efforts of J.C. Penney to change its stripes over the past decade are an object lesson.

As a baseline I start with understanding that we live in an evolving marketplace. And it’s evolving at a faster rate now than the past several decades. So what is it exactly that needs changing? The strategy, or the tactics? Is the original Brand Promise still valid, or does it just need new levels of implementation in this digital and tech world? I’d argue that the original brand promise of the department store is still valid today. It just needs a vastly different implementation than it did 10 or 50 years ago. And I would further argue that the implementation was better 50 years ago than 10 years ago. I guess that means that a brand has to update just to keep even with an evolving market. Has Nike’s brand promise changed much over 50 years? I’d say not much. Has its implementation changed? Yep. Nike plays offense, not defense. Some brands lead, some follow, and some hibernate. And waking from hibernation can present a daunting quest for survival.

It’s interesting that the “target audience” was mentioned briefly and the rest of the list stemmed from things happening internally to the organization. As some have already commented on, the real key here is the target customer. All of the above are great but the reality is that a great brand resonates with its customers and shouldn’t be changed unless there is a strong enough business case to determine that it is losing relevance with the most important target customers. Most customers don’t really care about a lot of the internal happenings of the organization – they want a brand that they know and trust that aligns with their lifestyle and differentiates itself enough to remain unique. The right loyalty, CRM and customer analytics can help retailers on this journey. Regardless of approach, the customer needs to be front and center of this major, strategic decision.

I love this topic. Rebranding is a tightrope walk. So many in the past come to mind like Lee Iacocca at Chrysler. Remember his famous quote, “Lead, follow or get out of the way!” It was so incredible to watch him re-position the company and knock it out of the park. How about Coke’s re-formulation and re-branding of its flagship brand Coke Classic? What an abject failure, but the learnings were immense! Who can forget Apple’s transformation and re-branding that has led it to being one of the first companies to surpass $1 trillion in market cap? But one thing must stand the test of time, and that is brand promise. Does the product or service deliver or not? If the value, utility, and experience are there and continue to excite the senses in the consumer’s mind’s eye, then a re-branding effort is moot — it doesn’t make sense. But if an enterprise starts to see fraying around the edges with its target audience, then a re-branding might be worthy of consideration.