Rebrand or Refresh: Which is Right When Your Digital Brand Identity is Outdated?

To rebrand or refresh? 

We get asked that question a lot, but the answer depends on a number of factors 

Whether you’re shifting your visual style in small increments or completely reinventing yourself, it’s something every brand has to consider at some point: Is it time for a refresh, an evolution, or a revolution (a total rebrand)? All too often, the budget becomes the answer, when the real focus should be on what you are trying to achieve with your shift.
 

Getting to the heart of the problem   

Before you do anything, first consider what you are trying to accomplish. Is it that your brand is outdated and relying on digital design trends that have fallen out of favor, like Corporate Memphis? Or is it that your current brand no longer represents who you are or who you want to be? Or, do you need to bring your brand into a new digital space and find that it’s not translating?
 

Just a lil’ refresh 

A refresh may be needed when:

• Your brand feels dated but is fundamentally sound.
• You want to update specific design elements like color palettes, typography, photography, etc.
• Your brand needs to adapt to new technologies or platforms.

If your brand is pretty solid but your experiences in the market or testing show something isn't resonating, it could just be a simple tweak that gets your brand where it needs to be. Generally speaking, a refresh takes your existing elements and updates them to feel more modern and usable. But when your brand no longer reflects where you are as a company, it’s time for a rebrand.
 

Rebrands: Evolutions and Revolutions

Whether an evolution or a revolution, it all starts with an audit, where we look at everything from type style to mission, vision, and voice. The audit helps determine if your current brand is working, if it truly represents who you are, and how to modernize it to look like a leader in your space. From there we have two paths to go.
 

Evolutions

We get this a lot on website projects where existing brand guidelines don’t take into account digital best practices around things like fonts, colors and accessibility. While your existing brand assets may work above the line, your brand guidelines need to be updated to include these digital specific modifications. 
 

Revolutions

Revolutions are a much bigger project and can pick up where an evolution leaves off or be a start from scratch. Some elements may remain, while others change, with everything evolving together. This process often includes a re-evaluation of your mission and values, brand tone and voice, logos, etc.
 

A case in point

We recently worked on a biotech client’s corporate brand project that ran the full range of the spectrum. 

Their corporate communications team had previously attempted a full rebrand. But without having a framework in place, internal buy-in was tough to get and the project went nowhere. We helped them break that down, leading with a brand audit across channels that identified strengths, weaknesses and glaring inconsistencies in how people were using the brand throughout the organization. We followed that with persona research that identified key users and how they were experiencing the brand through touchpoints, and we finished with a creative concept that provided an option to lightly clean up their existing brand or go further and rebrand it completely. 

With all this work on the table, it was obvious they needed more than a refresh. And so what started with an ask for a powerpoint turned into a full brand evolution where nothing was spared short of their logo and signature color. We redefined their mission, vision and purpose, and developed a new brand persona. We simplified their color palette around their signature shade to make it more ownable. We unified printed and digital assets under one font to create consistency across their organization, and developed a series of photography guidelines, showcasing their aspirational mission and the human connections that make it happen. We also developed a new brand shape that became an identifiable design element, lending itself to myriad patterns, textures, and framing devices. And we crafted a bespoke illustration library that captured the fine nuances of their scientific work. To finish, we packed it all up into neat and accessible digital brand guidelines. 
 

Are you ready for a revolution?

So what does your brand need? We’ve done everything from quick refreshes to full rebrands with new logos, and from solely visual ID and voice updates, to complete design systems with both print and digital components. As we said earlier, it ultimately comes down to being less about budgets and more about what your brand needs to do. Fortunately, we’re also pretty good about keeping those budget concerns top of mind even as we plot the best way forward to improve your brand. 

Get in touch and let’s find out what your brand needs. 

Genuine is a digital experience agency with an independent spirit and the global scale of an IPG company. For 20 years, we’ve created marketing campaigns, website redesigns, lead nurture CRM’s, social content, microsites, and everything else digital for clients in almost every B2B and B2C category there is.