If you want to understand the value of brand updates, pull up some photos from your high school prom. Odds are that your style looks dated—and more importantly, it doesn’t feel like you anymore. Teal lamé was a solid choice once, but times have changed, and you’ve changed too.
Businesses, much like prom attendees, also evolve. The most successful companies regularly update their brands as they grow and mature—and as markets (or fashions) change. Many business leaders structure this process using something known as a brand refresh. Here’s what a brand refresh is and how it can help your business stay current and competitive.
What is a brand refresh?
A brand refresh is an update to one or more elements of a company’s brand identity. It’s a strategic approach designed to align a company’s brand image with its current offerings and reflect its response to shifting market conditions and customer needs.
Brand refreshes can involve adjustments to a company’s messaging, design system, or other brand elements. Here’s an overview of the elements you might consider revising:
- Visual identity system. A visual identity system encompasses all of a brand’s visual assets and graphic design elements, including its color palette, logo, typography, and photo style.
- Brand messaging. Brand messaging includes a company’sbrand story, brand values, and value propositions.
- Brand personality. Companies can also make adjustments to their brand voice, tone, and image style, all of which affect their brand personalities.
- Brand architecture. Brand architecture refers to how a business structures its brands, such as whether it develops brands based on individual products or unifies all its service and product offerings under one umbrella brand.
Brand refresh vs. rebrand
A brand refresh updates, tweaks, or modernizes a brand’s identity. A rebrand, on the other hand, is a complete overhaul of a brand identity. If a brand refresh is like redecorating your living room—maybe switching up the window treatments, trying a new paint color, or swapping out your framed Chicago Cubs jersey for a vintage oil painting—then rebranding involves taking the room down to the studs (or even knocking down your entire house).
Although companies use brand refreshes to keep their images current, businesses typically undertake a complete rebrand because of a failed brand strategy or a fundamental change to a company’s mission or business strategy, such as new ownership, a merger, or entry into a new market.
Benefits of a brand refresh
- Improved brand positioning
- Access to new audience segments
- Competitive edge
- Consistent brand identity
A successful brand refresh can help your company connect with customers and remain competitive in dynamic markets. Here’s an overview of the benefits:
Improved brand positioning
Brand refreshes can help you maintain strong brand positioning, letting your business respond to emerging customer needs. You can also use a refresh to increase differentiation by developing a more distinctive visual identity. A financial services firm, for example, that uses a shade of navy similar to its four main competitors might rework its logo in cerulean or aquamarine.
Access to new audience segments
A strategic brand refresh can also help you target new potential customer groups. If you want to increase brand awareness among parents, for example, you might revise your brand messaging, visual identity, and voice to address the specific needs and decision drivers of this audience segment.
Competitive edge
Consumer needs constantly change. Successful refreshes respond to those shifts, providing a competitive advantage that helps your business stay relevant as audience needs evolve. Brand refreshes can also take into account contemporary aesthetic norms, ensuring that a company’s visual identity feels current. This might involve swapping out older typeface with a more modern one.
Consistent brand identity
Although a brand refresh can update one or more core elements of your company’s brand identity, the end result is an updated version of the same brand—not a new brand. Your business continues to benefit from existing brand loyalty while you focus on marketing strategies that support immediate business goals rather than introducing a new brand.
Brand refreshes also let you retain important factors of brand identity—such as a signature wit or shade of green—providing a familiar touchpoint for your loyal consumers.
How to conduct an effective brand refresh
- Identify your goals
- Revisit your market research
- Rework your brand messaging and positioning
- Update your visual elements
- Structure your revision process
- Plan your rollout
The full brand refresh process starts with goal-setting and ends with a successful rollout of your updated brand. Here are six steps to help refresh your brand:
1. Identify your goals
Start by identifying the goals of your brand refresh project. This can help you confirm that you need one and guide your brand refresh strategyas you proceed.
For example, a company might set a goal of increasing online engagement and interest among a particular audience segment, such as younger or female-identifying consumers.
2. Revisit your market research
A brand refresh requires a clear understanding of your customers, so revisit your consumer and market research to ensure that your information is up to date. Pay special attention to any changes in your target audience demographics or needs since your last research round—this information can help you determine what changes to make to your brand identity.
You can also conduct a new competitor analysis (or competitive analysis) to see how your competitors’ branding and brand positioning have evolved.
3. Rework your brand messaging and positioning
Consider how your current brand positioning and messaging align with your refresh goals, and revise your key messages according to your updated consumer and market research.
For example, imagine your company sells ready-to-blend smoothies, and your messaging emphasizes the time-saving benefits of your products. You want to appeal to younger consumers, and market research tells you this group is less motivated by messages about efficiency than by claims about a product’s health and wellness benefits. You might reposition your company as a wellness brand, emphasizing your product’s personal fitness, gut health, and immune system benefits.
4. Update your visual elements
Next, revisit the visual elements of your brand identity system—including your brand’s logo, color palette, and typeface—and consult your goals and market research to identify productive changes. You can also compare your visual identity system to your competitors’ and make updates if your system doesn’t adequately differentiate your company.
5. Structure your revision process
Updating all your collateral is a time-consuming process, but it’s critical for an effective refresh. Start by updating your brand guidelines to reflect any personality, messaging, or visual changes. Clear brand guidelines can help you ensure consistency across materials and provide an easy point of reference for your internal team during the refresh.
Next, perform a brand audit: Take stock of your current brand collateral and document it in a spreadsheet or other tracking system. Include brand assets, sales and marketing materials, and written content like email and web copy. You can use this list to plan your revisions, track your progress, and ensure you don’t forget any updates.
6. Plan your rollout
Once you’ve audited your brand, identify critical assets to update before launch. You might rework web copy to reflect your new tone right away, for example, but hold off on updating seasonal marketing materials until your refresh is live.
Many companies start with a soft launch that loops in internal stakeholders and a few key external stakeholders before a more formal launch. This approach can help you identify and fix issues with your updated brand before you draft a press release and publicly promote your refresh.
Successful brand refresh example
Travel luggage and accessory retailer Eagle Creek recently updated its brand to emphasize its unique position in the outdoor and adventure market. The refresh was partially inspired by a change in ownership. Apparel maker VF Corp., which acquired Eagle Creek in 2007, said in June 2021 it planned to retire the brand. Former VF employee Travis Campbell bought the business a few months later.
Lisa Bressler, Eagle Creek’s vice president of marketing and ecommerce, says the company’s history informed its brand refresh strategy.
“We picked up this brand that’s almost 50 years old and had already gone through a couple of significant shifts in the way that it showed up to the world,” Lisa says. “The number-one thing that we wanted to do was to really take our time and evolve the brand in a very slow, palatable, non-alienating way. We wanted to pull the best parts of our history forward into the story that we want to tell today.”
The Eagle Creek team started the refresh process by re-examining its brand values.
“We were like, ‘What do we care about as a group of people who are working with this brand? What does this brand stand for?’” Lisa says. “It came to this idea that travel can and should be a force for good, and the products that we make should perform and be best in class.”
Lisa says these values are a key differentiator for Eagle Creek, and the company’s next step was updating its brand messaging to highlight them.
“We wanted to take our brand look and feel from very commercial and very product-focused to more of a storytelling arc,” she says. “We are the leading manufacturer of travel goods. We’ve been around the longest. We invented many travel product categories. And we wanted to start really telling that story through the lens of actual users, customers, photographer friends—anybody going on big adventures.”
Eagle Creek first updated the content elements of its brand refresh strategy to reflect this new messaging, with more revisions in the works.
“We, as a brand, believe that the power of travel is strong and good, and that building connections with people outside your community, country, state—whatever it may be—is inherently good for the world,” she says.
Brand refresh FAQ
What is the objective of a brand refresh?
The goal of a brand refresh is to help a company maintain a contemporary brand image and remain competitive as market conditions and consumer demands and preferences change.
What do you need for a brand refresh?
Here’s a high-level brand refresh checklist:
- Brand refresh goals
- Current market research
- Recent brand audit
- Revised brand messaging
- Updated visual identity
- New brand guidelines
How do you know if it’s time for a brand refresh?
Here are three signs your company might benefit from a brand refresh:
- Your product or service offerings have changed.
- You’ve identified a new target audience.
- Your brand identity no longer sets you apart from your competitors.
