In the vocabulary of brand strategy, few words have become as promiscuous as rebrand. It now attaches itself to everything from corporate strategy to personal reinvention, flattening a remarkable variety of situations into a single, deceptively convenient label.
Spend a few minutes searching for stories about rebrands and you’ll quickly see the problem.
An energy company refocuses with a new name. A sandwich chain restores “Deli” to its name. A soda company launches a new brand design. Organizations debate DEI. Career coaches explain how to improve your chances of promotion.
These stories have very little in common. Yet every one reaches for exactly the same word: rebrand.
Somewhere along the way, the term escaped the vocabulary of brand strategy and became shorthand for almost any kind of change. It has become so ubiquitous that it’s now the linguistic equivalent of duct tape—it sticks to almost anything and binds together a remarkable variety of motives, ambitions and circumstances in one tidy bundle.
The Problem Begins With the Word
There is no doubt that thoughtful work has been undertaken under the banner of a rebrand. The literal meaning itself is an impediment to clarity.
The prefix re- simply means “again,” “back,” or “anew.” Revisit. Restart. Rebuild. Retread. Attach it to brand and it evokes something that can be done again at will—a makeover, a refresh, a redo.
Once an initiative is labeled a rebrand, attention inevitably shifts to the “brand” part of the word rather than to the underlying business challenge. The language has already framed the conversation around visible expressions of change: a new name, a new logo, a new website, an advertising campaign.
Cracker Barrel furor illustrates the point. What began as a broad modernization strategy quickly became a very heated debate about a redesigned logo. The visible artifact eclipsed the strategic intent. Even news coverage of CEO Julie Masino’s departure led with the logo controversy rather than the wider transformation program she had been hired to deliver.
Paradoxically, the same word is often used for precisely the opposite reason. Rebrand confers significance. A visual identity refresh sounds tactical. A rebrand sounds more strategic. The label elevates the perceived importance of an initiative before anyone has examined what has actually changed.
In one context, the word inflates the work. In another, it diminishes it. In both cases, language sets expectations before the work itself has a chance to speak.
Language Matters
It’s more than a matter of semantics, though. Words are slippery things. The more fashionable they become, the less discriminating they tend to be. Eventually they stop illuminating distinctions and start erasing them. Rebrand is well on its way.
Marketing professor Mark Ritson, one of the industry’s most widely read commentators, makes a similar point in his glowing praise for PwC’s recent brand work.
In an article titled Most Corporate Rebrands Are Expensive Nonsense. PwC’s Was Not, he argues that rebrands fail because they are “cosmetic responses” to corporate anxiety rather than genuine strategic change.
He goes on to say that PwC did not undertake a rebrand or even a refresh, but a disciplined brand “revitalization”—PwC’s own word of choice for the initiative. As he succinctly puts it: “Revitalization starts with clients, history and thinking. Rebrands start with pantones, fonts and umlauts.”
Whether revitalization is the perfect replacement is almost beside the point. The instinct is exactly right. Different kinds of change deserve precise names because language is never just descriptive. It tells people what kind of work they are looking at, what questions they ask and, ultimately, how they judge the outcome.
The first responsibility of a brand strategist is to diagnose the problem before proposing the solution.
Eventually, the outside world may decide to call the outcome a rebrand. By then it scarcely matters. The important work will already have been done.
BrandingBusiness is a global B2B branding agency dedicated to building powerfully effective B2B brands that lead with clarity and perform with purpose. For more than 30 years, we have helped forward-looking clients to navigate change, enter new markets, unify cultures, and drive sustainable momentum toward their growth plans.