Burger King

For the first time in twenty years, fast food giant, Burger king decided to take on a rebrand with a revamped logo, packaging, and uniforms. The focal point of the rebrand was the logo and instead of the logo they used through the 2000s, their rebrand looked strikingly similar to the logo Burger King used through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The goal was “to pay homage to the brand’s heritage with a refined design that’s confident, simple and fun”. The root of the rebrand is centered on their renewed commitment to digital centric expression, improvements to food quality, and environmentally minded decision-making.

The reduction in elements of the logo makes the logo more versatile because it can be displayed at a wider variety of sizes on a wide array of devices. Reducing the complexity and taking out the slant on the old text and asymmetrical blue swoosh give the logo more uses through marketing material. The new typeface maintains its bold weight, with much more rounded and natural-looking edges with hopes of capturing the organic shapes of their ingredients. This is also reflected in their more neutralized color palette. Using more earth tones amplifies the essence of natural ingredients and being environmentally aware.

Their packaging and new advertisements is reminiscent of the minimalist approach that McDonald’s recently took on with their new advertising, but with a more neutral color palette. Replacing the vibrant primary colors with earthy tones captures a new sense of authenticity and creates more brand separation between them and their counterparts. As you observe their new verbiage in their advertisements and slogans on packaging, it is clear that they are trying to be more transparent. “No secrets in our sauce” and “bring napkins, get messy” are simple phrases, but carry a lot of nostalgia and playfulness. This is very important in maintaining relationships with the consumer because it builds on that level of trust and authenticity. The ebb and flow of the typeface mirrors those of rivers or trails and adds to their more proclamation of environmental awareness. 

This was also reflected in their actions as they played advertisements bringing awareness to climate change and the current state of the horrors within livestock industry. Furthermore, they removed all artificial preservatives from the whopper in February of 2020. Creating visual and physical changes that are completely in accordance is a difficult, but important aspect of rebranding. Mirroring the removal of preservatives from the Whopper through the visual addition of the earth tones and natural-feeling font should prove to be successful over time. This is because the same idea is reinforced through the stimulation of multiple senses for the consumer.

For commercial giants, it seems to be no secret that minimalism will play a role in every big players adaptation to the present. Perhaps this is because as our world is becoming more digital every day, design needs to keep up with the constantly evolving screen sizes that mobile applications and digital ads need to be displayed on. It could also be the recent shifts in social climate that we have seen resulting from the pandemic, black lives matter movement, and massive shift towards going mobile & e-commerce. Regardless, It’s no coincidence that both Burger King & McDonald’s rebrands have drawn comparisons to Apple.

Slack

In the same vein of thought, Slack is a good example of a company that had to adapt to their increasingly digital surroundings with a logo and color palette update. Going digital, means that you need a logo with elements that can be used independently of each other, broken down, and reconstructed. Their original logo had 11 colors in it and while it looks good on white backgrounds, they quickly realized that it is very hard to adapt and does not play well on a variety of surfaces. Slack had to use a different icon for every application and they were all different from the original logo. This doesn’t promote a cohesive brand, and can leave consumers thinking they were all from different companies.

Furthermore, the 18 degree angle that the octothorpe rests on was also highly problematic because the style did not translate to be represented vertically or of much use from a creative perspective. Their new color palette and design were reduced from the original, to maintain some essence of the brand, but ended up amplifying the number of ways that it could be used; true mastery of the less-is-more ideology. The droplets and lozenges (shape elements of new logo) were created so that they can be repurposed into a wider reaching visual identity. For example, here are two of the advertisements they released that would only be successful with the new logo.

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There are no elements in the old logo that could be this easily recognized and ascribed to the company. However, it should be noted that even though the logic for the rebrand all makes sense, that does not guarantee a calm, cool, and collected public acceptance. As a matter of fact, the public immediately rejected their rebrand and received much backlash on social media, drawing comparisons from the google photos pinwheel, the draw-4 uno card, random medical groups, and many other memes. However, with the popularity of social media, companies will just have to accept that perhaps, not everything will be accepted immediately from the jump. Slacks rebrand, was not necessarily wanted, but rather needed. This goes to show that not every rebrand is built out of necessity to capitalize off current trends or adapt with the social landscape. Their rebrand originated from the marketing teams inability to create quality & cohesive material with their old logo. Being able to evolve with the increasingly digital space was just a perk found through the process, but even if we did live in a world of mostly print material, a rebrand was absolutely necessary.

Domino's Pizza

In my humble opinion, Dominos has had one of the must successful rebrand campaigns in the 21^st century. From being laughed at, and nationally recognized as the worst pizza chain in the early 2000s, Dominos decided to take some action around 2010 in launching their “Pizza Turnaround” campaign. They devised an ad that explained the tactics that they used to make their pizza look so much better than it did in person, and even ran national taste tests against pizza hut and papa johns with new recipes. These worked wonders for their perception of being transparent and genuine.

One of every company’s most prominent goals through the branding process is earning the trust of your target audience and this did exactly that. Not only did they launch a better tasting recipe with this campaign, but they secured a 14.3% increase in revenue from it. Seeing those returns in just a sales quarter, this prompted rebranding efforts to revolutionize not only their pizza and packaging, but also the way they provide their service. That’s right, they went on to develop the pizza tracker to give their customers the exact time of their pizza delivery once again bringing the customer experience to the forefront. On top of that, they redesigned their pizza delivery cars to keep the pizzas fresher, and created the concept of Carryout insurance just in case something happens to it before you’re able to enjoy it. Dominos continues to strengthen community relations today through their campaign to fill in local potholes with a fund they’ve created. 

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Back to the physical rebrand though, readability and transcendence across platforms were again 2 motivating factors in the domino rebrand as well. Their original logo is large and clunky, while also difficult to ready because the words are rotated and confined to under half of the original mark. In order to truly have an icon represent their brand, they had to take the word out of the icon itself, and shorten the name to save face. This translates to the Internet much better because their icon or name can now be recognized independently outside of the original logo. Domino’s Pizza chief marketing officer said in a press release, “We’d like to reach the point where we’re recognized as the Nike swoosh or Golden arches”. This adds credibility to the idea that companies are learning from industry leaders and adapting many of their same thought processes throughout their brand adaptation.

Packaging seems like an afterthought in the branding process, when really it should always be in the forefront of the discussion. Dominos knew that their old boxes were unoriginal and bland, so they turned their new logo into their boxes. This helps the new logo get a foothold with Domino’s consumers and also infuses its own bold sense of creativity.

Through self-deprecation and, at times, cringe worthy honesty, dominos has run one of the most successful rebrands of this century. From 2009 to 2017 Dominos more than doubled their revenue and surpassed its competitors in market share, and all they had to do was listen to their consumers. They listened when they were told that their pizza was bad, and they walked the walk by showing their customers how they were going to change and even asking for their help throughout the process.

Sears

When going mobile and developing an app, it is almost completely necessary to have a symbol outside of your company’s name to represent it. However, Adding an icon to the name has not always gone well, as Sears found out in 2019. With sales plummeting in recent years due to rise in e-commerce and further hindered by the coronavirus, they decided to give their 2010 logo a reboot. Emboldening the font, and adding an icon to encapsulate the ideas of “home and heart”. Seems like a good idea from the outside except for one thing: the symbol looked IDENTICAL to the icon that Airbnb adopted in 2014.

In response to the criticism, Sears released a statement explaining their rationale: "The new icon was created to represent both home and heart, this shape also conveys motion through an infinity loop, reminiscent of one getting their arms around both home and life. The rings, like those of a tree trunk, show longevity. With home and heart at the center, the rings radiate and grow to encompass our broad assortment of products and services." In my opinion, any logo that attempts to incorporate an infinity loop is doomed to be cliché, but nevertheless this statement did resolve much of the anger that they plagiarized the logo. Additionally, the emboldening of the typeface was successful in helping the logo work on any screen size because the thin font is tough to read on a small interface.

The final element of their physical rebrand was a new slogan: “making moments matter”. This slogan was intended for their target audience: baby boomers and young families. This makes a lot of sense in accordance with their campaign to shut down some of the large stores, and open up a bunch of smaller stores centered around home + life. Just because it makes sense on paper, doesn’t mean that will directly translate in sales. I believe they should have taken a more customer-centric approach with their rebrand and done more integration with e-commerce. Time will tell if their efforts will prevail, or if they will go under.

Coors

The Coors rebrand is an interesting study because their goal was to evolve the public’s perception of their character as well as visually.  With the ultimate goal of cracking into the top 3 or 4 premium beers on an international scale, removing the “light” from Coors light, and adding the blue mountains were just the beginning of their transformation. Their marketing department acted on the results of studies that showed consumers found their new branding “more distinctive and appealing”. Even though the blue mountain adaptation caught some slack for being similar to Evian, it does give Coors an icon to rely on for their mobile and digital presence.

Malcolm Gladwell once said, “There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis”.  While Coors was right to have their marketing department run studies garnering opinions of their new brand, they were also smart to think on a surface level by choosing an Icon that they embedded multiple associations with. On their bottles, Coors created a mountains icon to turn blue when the beer was cold enough to properly enjoy. This is ingenious because now anytime a returning consumer sees the Blue Mountains, it stimulates memories of waiting for the beer to become as “cold as the Rockies”. Now your perception of the company and its brand encapsulates your entire experience of enjoying the beer.

Another dimension of brand evolution that we have seen during this has been their pivot to marketing to express their values in this move also with the Coors Seltzer mission to save America’s rivers. In today’s climate, being able to evolve for the digital realm, visually reflect positive values, and innovate simultaneously, is about all you can ask for in a rebrand.  Lets take a step back and look at what can be learned from this process. One thing to certainly come back to is having a legitimate reason for the redesign. Simply undertaking a rebrand because you become bored and tired of looking at the same logo is simply not a good idea.  It runs the risks of unnecessary spending, unrecognizability, and public backlash with the disadvantage of not being able to defend it. Be careful not to underestimate the emotional attachment that a consumer may have with an old brand logo. The pros for the rebrand, must outweigh those alone. Brand evolutions should be a gradual process that happens naturally as the culture, environment, and public needs shift over time.

Another common trend, was adapting to the desktop and mobile experience. Maintaining brand standards across screens of all sizes is a hard thing to do. And if your logo wasn’t built with that kind of malleability from the jump then it may be impossible without a rebrand. Every company that has an app needs to be recognizable in the form of an icon, and every company with a website has to have a brand identity that is fluent across the largest computers and smallest phones. Often, in order to achieve this the logo will have to undergo some degree of simplification, while maintaining originality.

Rebrands are required to constantly evolve in order to keep up with the times. There can be many motivating factors that lead a brand to evolve such as social influences, current trends, adapting with technology, or simply just becoming too outdated over time. Great brands understand that it is important to balance the company’s core identity with the customers’ wants and needs. This is particularly difficult because a consumer is constantly having conscious and subconscious reactions when experiencing your brand. However, in terms of changes the brand needs to make, you don’t even always need a complete overhaul, but rather a modification or update. These are called brand-extensions, and this is what most large companies will do over time to preserve the essence of what they have represented in the past, while keeping up with the times.

Starbucks Rebrands Example

For example, in 1994, Starbucks decided to begin selling their Frappuccinos in other stores such as convenient stores and grocery stores. This rebrands move would quickly become a good example of a positive brand stretch because Starbucks began competing in a market outside of its own walls. They did this to reach a larger audience and prove to the market that it can create the best tasting product anywhere, not just in their physical locations. See Starbucks Website

Typically when companies do something like this, they run the risk of diluting their brand. If you expand to a new market and aren’t the top dog there, it hurts your companies reputation in every market that it currently exists in. On the other hand, not growing at all is the negative outcome on the other side of the spectrum because you can never be too stagnant in an economy that’s constantly growing and evolving.

Whether you realize it or not, there are different preconceived standards for companies based on their size and niche in the market. In general, smaller companies are thought of as having more conscientious, environmentally friendly, and humanitarian brands. While this seems like a disadvantage to the big players, I can assure you there is no need to worry on their behalf. They have the advantage of more revenue, which allows you to do things that smaller companies cannot. For example, Starbucks had the resources to offer more benefits for its employees or run more advertisements than a local coffee shop could ever do. Let’s not forget that consumers aren’t the only ones to focus on when building a brand, because how employees are treated play a large role in the public perception of the company too. Starbucks gained a lot of positive reputation when they pivoted on this point and created a culture and environment that’s better for their employees.

The lesson to be learned from this is that we should strive to view brands more dynamically, as if it is a living part of the company; constantly evolving with the culture and growing with your values. While striving for this is important “Research suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.” (Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking). In short, whether you actively think about brand or not, your brain is always creating preconceptions about what you view and hear about a brand regardless. Now let’s now go through some of the more recent rebrands to dissect why certain decisions were made and infer what it means for everybody moving forward. See More