Rebranding offers Face Lifts for Aging Brands

When a company revises it’s logo, it’s like remodeling a house. Keeping the 1970 orange countertop, avocado appliances and shag carpet will NOT help with the resale value of your home. KFC has had a lot of logos in recent years — can you tell the OLD ones from the NEWEST logo?

But rebranding goes way beyond the logos. Or at least in my opinion it should. Many strong brands established their position years ago and look dated, just like your home would without a remodel in 30 years.

Take a look at these recent logo remodels:

UPS An interesting history and discussion about the UPS logo story from the World’s Best Logos and Brands blog. UPS has had only 4 logos in almost 100 years.

Dairy Queen: The Curved Mind blog written by Chrys Bader posts with a variety of logo rebranding efforts. He doesn’t like the DQ remake and said the graphic designer “vandalized” it. My guess, a committe had to approve it and the graphic designer did the best he or she could with the client’s direction.

While I agree with Jay Ehret at the Marketing Spot that looking too deep into a the “meaning” of a logo doesn’t have to be so hard, I think it’s extremely important to refresh and update a brand’s look.

Here’s what Jay says about the Holiday Inn rebranding effort:

Holiday Inn is putting a great deal of money in a rebranding effort. About $1 billion dollar’s worth. Whenever you see the word “rebranding” you know there’s a new logo coming. I mean, you are not going to spend that kind of money and not get a new logo in the deal.

And for $1 billion it better be good. So here’s what’s coming to replace the old one.

I know that they didn’t blow their entire wad on that logo (at least I hope not). But if you followed along with our recent riff on the importance of logos in branding, you know that this is probably all Holiday Inn needed.

I love how they repositioning Holiday Inn Express from the Holiday Inn.

For additional reading about repositioning and rebranding:
Rebranding 101: Why its Important to Your Marketing Plan What’s the cost?
Tradition vs Updating The Middlebury College Story
Rebranding in the Neighborhood the Applebee’s story
Rebranding: Fast, Faster, Fastest Cingular to AT&T

Best Brands of the World has some great logo reference. I can get lost in this website.

Enough already about branding & rebranding. Happy Thanksgiving!
Go put the turkey in the oven. We’re having 23 over to our home today (both sides of the family!) and blogging about rebranding is my procrastination effort for not dealing with it. Why is marketing more fun than cooking?