When a rebrand goes badly, it becomes the story of the week. Social media fills with side-by-side comparisons, journalists write up the backlash, and the company either backtracks within days or spends months defending a decision nobody asked them to make. When a rebrand goes well, almost nothing happens. The new look settles in, customers adjust, and within a few months nobody remembers there was ever a different version.
This asymmetry creates a distorted picture of what makes a rebrand succeed or fail. Business owners study the disasters closely, usually concluding that the design itself was the problem. In most cases, the design was only part of the story. The real difference between a rebrand that survives and one that doesn’t usually comes down to work that happens before anyone outside the company sees the new logo at all.
Design Change, Communications Project
A rebrand is often treated internally as a creative exercise: choose a new look, approve it, launch it. But the launch itself is a communications event, and it tends to succeed or fail based on decisions that have very little to do with typography or colour palettes.
Gap’s 2010 logo change is a useful illustration of what happens when this gets skipped entirely. The company replaced its recognisable wordmark with a generic sans-serif logo and a small gradient square, with no build-up, no explanation, and no warning to customers. The backlash was immediate, and Gap reverted to its original logo within about a week. Whatever the merits of the new design, it was introduced as a design decision alone, with no communications groundwork to help anyone understand why it was happening.
Tropicana’s 2009 packaging redesign followed a similar pattern. The familiar image of a straw stuck into an orange was replaced with a plainer glass-of-juice shot, rolled out with little explanation to the loyal customers who recognised the product by its packaging. Sales dropped noticeably within weeks, and the original design returned shortly after. In both cases, the failure wasn’t really about whether the new design was good or bad. It was that customers were handed a change with no context for why it was happening, and reacted accordingly.
Why the “Why” Matters More Than the “What”
Audiences tend to accept visual change far more readily when they understand the reasoning behind it. Google’s 2015 logo simplification, a shift from a serif wordmark to a cleaner sans-serif design, drew relatively little controversy, in part because the company explained the thinking at the same time it introduced the new look, describing the need for a mark that worked consistently across a growing range of devices and screen sizes. The explanation didn’t eliminate all opinions about the new design, but it gave people a reason to understand the change rather than experience it as arbitrary.
Airbnb’s 2014 rebrand, which included a significant new visual identity built around its “Bélo” symbol, took this further by pairing the design change with a broader narrative about the company’s mission and sense of community. The rebrand was a bigger visual departure than many companies attempt, yet it was generally well received, largely because the story accompanying it gave the new identity a reason to exist beyond aesthetic preference.
Staged Rollouts Beat Single Reveals
Successful rebrands rarely happen with a single dramatic unveiling. More often, the change is introduced gradually, with different audiences brought in at different points. Staff are briefed before customers, so they aren’t caught off guard by questions they can’t answer. Loyal customers or the media may see an early preview with an explanation of the reasoning before the general public sees the finished result.
Dunkin’s 2018 decision to drop “Donuts” from its name is a good example of this kind of gradual approach. The change reflected a broader shift toward being known as a coffee and beverage brand rather than just a donut shop, and it was introduced with a clear rationale tied to that broader menu, rolled out over time rather than announced as an overnight switch. Given the scale of dropping a word that had been part of the brand for decades, the change drew comparatively little backlash, largely because the reasoning had been made clear well before the shift felt final.
Not Every Backlash Is Fatal
It’s worth noting that early criticism doesn’t always predict long-term failure. Instagram’s 2016 logo change, from a detailed, skeuomorphic camera icon to a flat, gradient-colored design, was mocked heavily at launch. Unlike Gap or Tropicana, however, the company held its position rather than reversing course. Years later, the design is simply what people associate with the app, and the initial backlash is largely forgotten. This suggests that a difficult first reaction isn’t automatically a sign that the change was a mistake; it can also be a sign that people need time to adjust to something unfamiliar, provided the company has the conviction and the communications plan to see it through.
What This Means for Planning a Rebrand
The common thread across the successful examples isn’t that the designs were universally better than the ones that failed. It’s that each was accompanied by a clear explanation, introduced to the right audiences in the right order, and backed by a company prepared to stand behind the reasoning if questioned.
If you’re planning a rebrand, the value of thinking through the communications plan as early as the design plan is difficult to overstate. Decisions about who hears about the change first, how the reasoning will be explained, and how the business will respond if the initial reaction is critical are just as important as the visual work itself, and are far easier to get right when they’re planned in advance rather than improvised on launch day.
If your business is considering a rebrand, LITMUS can help build the communications plan alongside the design work, so the change lands the way it’s meant to. Get in touch.
