Branding
Rebranding: When and How to Refresh Your Brand
Rebranding has an unusually well-documented failure literature, because when it goes wrong it goes wrong in public and on a timeline you can read off a calendar. Six days for the Gap logo. Two months for the Tropicana carton. Those cases are worth studying not for the schadenfreude but because they share one mechanism: an existing recognition asset was removed before anyone had measured what it was doing.
Four documented cases and what each one actually shows
| Case | What happened | The transferable lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Tropicana, 2009 | PepsiCo replaced the orange-and-straw carton in January. Ad Age reported the line’s sales fell roughly 20% within two months. The original packaging returned. | The asset customers navigate by is often not the one you think is the logo. Test recognition before removal, not aesthetics. |
| Gap, 2010 | A new wordmark launched 4 October and was withdrawn 11 October after public ridicule and a failed crowdsourcing attempt. | A change announced with no strategic rationale can only be judged on taste, and taste arguments are unwinnable in public. |
| Airbnb, 2014 | DesignStudio delivered the Bélo mark, a custom typeface, and the Rausch colour, built around an articulated idea of belonging. The system survived and scaled. | Identity change works when it expresses a strategy that already exists and is applied as a full system, not a logo swap. |
| Twitter to X, 2023 | The name and bird mark were retired in late July 2023. Brand valuation firms and analysts put the value destroyed in the range of several billion dollars, with estimates quoted between $4bn and $20bn, and years later much of the public still says “Twitter”. | Verbs and nouns that entered the language are the most valuable asset you own, and the hardest to replace by decree. |
Sources: Ad Age; contemporaneous Gap coverage; Design Week and Dezeen; Brand Finance and TIME reporting on the X rebrand.
Refresh or rebrand: decide with a rule, not a feeling
A refresh keeps the recognition assets, the name, the dominant colour, the silhouette of the mark, and modernises execution. A rebrand changes something a customer navigates by. The decision rule: if a returning customer could fail to recognise you on a shelf, in a search result, or in a list of results, you are rebranding, whatever the project is called internally. Rebrand only when the underlying facts have changed, such as a different offering, a different buyer, a merger, a legal conflict, or a name that has become inaccurate.
The weak reasons, named
- Internal fatigue. You see your identity hundreds of times more often than any customer does. The point at which it feels tired to you is usually the point at which it is starting to work.
- A new executive needing a visible first project. Common, expensive, and rarely stated out loud as the reason.
- Competitor moved first. Following a competitor’s visual direction converts your differentiation into their category convention.
- A trend. Everything that ages badly looked current at the time, including the flat gradient square in the 2010 Gap mark.
The rollout checklist people forget
Most rebrand damage after launch is technical rather than aesthetic. If the domain changes, map every URL and issue 301 redirects one to one rather than pointing everything at the new homepage, keep the redirects in place indefinitely, and update the Search Console property. Update the Google Business Profile name, since business information accuracy feeds the relevance factor Google names for local ranking. Then the long tail: email sending domain and SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, review site profiles, invoice templates, app store listings, and every partner directory that lists you.
Announce with a reason, not a reveal. The Gap case is instructive precisely because there was nothing to discuss except whether people liked it. Publish what changed, what did not, and why, and keep the old mark visible in the transition materials so returning customers have a bridge.
Key takeaways
- ✓Tropicana lost roughly 20% of Pure Premium sales in two months in 2009 by removing a packaging cue customers navigated by. Gap withdrew its new mark after six days in 2010.
- ✓Airbnb’s 2014 identity worked because it expressed an existing strategy and shipped as a full system rather than a logo swap.
- ✓The Twitter to X change shows that a name which has entered common language is the most valuable and least replaceable asset a brand owns.
- ✓Treat the Jaguar sales collapse with care: production of nearly the whole lineup had been deliberately halted, so that figure does not measure rebrand damage.
- ✓If a returning customer could fail to recognise you, it is a rebrand regardless of what it is called internally.
- ✓Most post-launch damage is technical: one-to-one 301 redirects, Search Console, Google Business Profile, and email authentication records.
Related reading
Sources
- Tropicana Line’s Sales Plunge 20% Post-Rebranding, Ad Age (2009)
- Gap’s 2010 logo redesign: timeline, backlash, and aftermath, Marketing Made Clear
- Airbnb rebrand by DesignStudio aims for visual consistency, Dezeen (2014)
- By Renaming Twitter as X, Musk Wipes Billions in Brand Value, TIME (2023)
- Jaguar’s Massive 97% Sales Collapse Is Actually Very Misleading, Carscoops (2025)
Mara Whitfield
Brand Strategy Lead
Mara Whitfield leads brand strategy at ThisCom, helping small and medium businesses build distinctive brands and consistent digital presences that earn trust and stand out.
All articles by Mara Whitfield →Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a brand refresh and a rebrand?+
A refresh modernises execution while keeping the assets customers navigate by: the name, the dominant colour, the shape of the mark. A rebrand changes at least one of those. The practical test is whether a returning customer could fail to recognise you on a shelf or in a list of search results. If they could, it is a rebrand regardless of what the internal project is called.
When is rebranding actually justified?+
When the underlying facts changed: a different offering, a different buyer, a merger, a trademark conflict, or a name that has become inaccurate or limiting. Internal boredom is the most common reason and the worst one, because you encounter your own identity orders of magnitude more often than any customer does, so the moment it feels stale to you is usually the moment it is starting to be recognised.
Did Jaguar’s rebrand cause its sales collapse?+
The 97.5% year-on-year drop in European sales reported for April 2025 is real but mostly explained by something else: under the Reimagine plan Jaguar deliberately ended production of nearly its entire combustion lineup during 2024 and stopped UK retail sales ahead of an all-electric relaunch. The rebrand attracted genuine criticism, but that sales figure does not measure it, and citing it as proof is a reasoning error worth avoiding.
How do I roll out a rebrand without losing search traffic?+
If the domain changes, map old URLs to new ones and issue 301 redirects one to one rather than collapsing everything onto the homepage, and leave them in place permanently. Update the Search Console property, the Google Business Profile, and every directory listing, since Google names business information accuracy as a driver of local relevance. Also update your email sending domain and its SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, which is the step most often missed.
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