The “rebranding” myth

Not much makes me crazier than the misuse and abuse of the word “brand” (or more specifically in this case “rebrand”). Change the name of a company, product, service and you get to say it has been “rebranded”; come up with a new marketing campaign or slogan and you are “rebranding”; get a new logo, yep “rebranded.”

Let’s start with the fact that the word “rebrand” is a misnomer. Brands are what you believe to be true and what your actions show, so to “rebrand” would be akin to a personality transplant.

Now I know my view makes me a bit of a heretic, but the fact is I can change my hair, wear different clothes, even use another name, but if underneath it all I still act the same way and do the same things, not much has changed. Sure, people’s initial impression of me might be different, but that’s only an inch deep. The minute they have to deal with me, my true brand will reveal itself.

For decades many of the things that today are mashed into brand, have had perfectly good names. Your logo was your logo and part of your corporated identity; your advertising campaigns were called – well advertising campaigns; product and company names were just that.

Why are the pracitioners who produce these things so afraid to call a spade a spade? (Okay, it’s a rhetorical question.) It seems like nothing more than a desperate landgrab – not happy with the view from where they are everyone wants to be a “brand” expert.

I will concede that many of the things labelled “brand” remain valuable markers. They help us recognise a brand, they tell us what it stands for (whether it does or not is a whole different discussion for another week). And helps us find our way around the competitive landscape. But the elevation of them all to brand has become counter-productive and confusing.

So what to do about it?

For my personal stance, I don’t use the term rebrand (I don’t use branding either). But as a broader starting point, perhaps the professionals who design, write, create and build many of the markers that today get called “brand” could practice a bit of restraint in their misuse and abuse of the term.

But beyond that, how about we just go back to calling things what they are – after all, sometimes a logo is just a logo, a name is just a name and a spade is just a spade.

See you next week!

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognise who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.