Rebrand Vs Refresh Vs Repositioning Explained

Most people think a rebrand is a new logo. It's not… it's a behaviour shift, and doing it too late won't save you. This week I get into the real difference between a refresh, a reposition, and a rebrand, why the market's forcing almost everyone to reposition, and the buying psychology we don't even notice we're running (the sauce in your cupboard is doing more emotional work than you'd think). 

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Welcome And What’s Circulating

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You're listening to Brandon Butter. Straight talking, occasionally in your face, no BS, branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. For those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior, and design thinking can impact what people see, think, and feel. I'm your host, Tara Ladd, for sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable, and often unapologetically blunt, the founder and creative director of brand and design agency your one and only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. There's

Rebrands Done Too Late

SPEAKER_00 0:45

a few things I've seen circul circuling, circulating is the word I'm looking for online this week, about rebrands, repositioning, businesses going out, and I want to talk to that because I think that there is a an important thing around what these words mean and I guess the importance of them. If I just repeat it myself, sorry. I'm like ad-living my thoughts, which is dangerous for everyone. But what I am mostly wanting to talk about is those that come to do a rebrand at a stage that is later on in their business where they may be struggling or financially inept, whatever that may be, a rebrand isn't always going to save you. So what I would say about when the time to invest in a rebrand is, it's usually before that happens, if that makes sense. Because you have to allow the rebrand to work, and the rebrand can take months, if not a year or so, to rebuild that positioning. Because a rebrand is a behavior shift, it's not a design shift.

Refresh Vs Rebrand Vs Reposition

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And anyone that just reskins their visual identity and says that that's a rebrand, that's what we would consider a refresh. So you're fixing up things that I guess look different or modernize your brand to be applicable to I guess freshen you up and put you in a different light, essentially, which is part of a rebrand. Uh to break down that terminology, I would say a refresh, which happens every between, I think it's like three, three to seven years, four to seven years, people update to keep modern. And you need to these days, you can't wing that. And a rebrand, I think, is done every seven to ten, and I would say that's pushed forward again. And so a rebrand is what I would consider a complete overhaul. You're looking at a new direction, you're revisiting all of the structures of how you would conduct and run a business. Uh, repositioning sits somewhere in the middle. I would say that is if you're trying to talk to a new audience, you may be really happy with your visual identity, and sometimes that doesn't need to change, but the messaging may need to be updated, and how you position yourself in terms of the audience that you're trying to attract would be where the repositioning is. And a lot of brands are needing to reposition. I would say almost all brands are needing to reposition at the moment if they have not done one recently because the market has changed so drastically, and that would be, I guess on a scale, it would be revisiting who you're trying to attract in terms of audience. If we're talking to a brand that has not even revisited anything to do with their brand in the last couple of years, you absolutely need to do something there because we have and businesses around are going out left, right, and center. And it it really is a game of competition at the moment, capitalism in full swing. But it's the game where people need to know you exist. So there's a visibility issue, there's a differentiation issue, they need to know how you differentiate, and they need to know why you are the optimal choice. And that also is in alignment to why they would buy from you in the first place. Now, I have so many different things that I've been talking about to jot down because whenever I have an idea, there's usually 50 things that come out of it. It's never a central idea. And I've been jotting down my points.

The Hidden Emotions Behind Buying

SPEAKER_00 4:20

And one thing that I wrote down in a verbal note that I wrote this morning, or I spoke this morning, was the differences between buying a sauce and a and a highly emotional product. So it might be something like a house. Obviously, that's a huge, huge, big investment. It's deeply emotional and compared to something like a sauce in the cupboard that may not be as emotional. Now, I would beg to differ that that is a big challenge. A lot of people buying a sauce in the cupboard may not realize that their emotions are actually at play when they're buying that sauce. This comes right down to consumer psych and when we're talking about what that source means. So for instance, if you've left home recently or hell, you could have been gone for a long time and you want that familiar sense of what it's like to be at home or childhood, you know, revisit your childhood, you would essentially buy very similar brands to what you used in your childhood home. And that's like legacy, right? Like you're building out that and without even realizing that becomes like part of your internal choice. You don't even realize it becomes such an unconscious decision that when you're buying things that you don't think are emotional, it is actually an emotional thing because it's come from a place of, I guess, consistent routine and being familiar and all of those things are deeply embedded into what you do. It becomes almost part of your life choosing a certain brand and without you even realizing. And so, or you may do the opposite. You may leave and hate at home and want to do everything in that's not even this remotely the same. So you go and you buy something completely different just to change it up. These things we don't even realize have such a high emotional response that we don't even we don't even see them. And that's the point, is when we're looking at emotions and we're looking at behavior, these things that people do that sometimes they're not even aware of it. So asking consumers what they want, sometimes they're not even aware. So we have to be very cautious of how to ask a question because that can also lead them to give you a response that you may want or they may think that you want. And the way that I put this into consideration is if we look at the in-group bias, for instance. If we go back to school, when we look at wanting to fit within the crowd, you may buy something or you may buy a brand of something to fit within that group of people. And you may not even want that thing or want that brand, but you buy it because it signifies your place in this in that group, if you know what I mean. Humans are pack, they want something that aligns with what they believe in or what they want to do and what they want to kind of be part of. And these are where the behavior shifts happen. So sometimes people are buying things, and by painting that aspiration, aspiration, I put in adverted commas, sometimes it might not even be what they want. It's something that they want to fit in. So buying a specific handbag or buying a certain car may symbolize the representation or the the reputation, I should say, that they want to have and want people to think of them. It's the perception. And we need to be thinking about that when we're rebranding or when we're repositioning, is what is the audience looking for? And again, we don't want to just completely reposition around an audience. There needs to be an element of what you stand for as a brand there because there needs to be a connection piece. It's not just recreating our identities in order to align to an audience that can can change every five seconds. You'd be rebranding every five seconds. So it is about creating that foundation of who you are as a brand, but also making sure that you're speaking to the right people and communicating to them in a way that your brand will then attract them. And that comes from a range of different places.

Messaging Tone And Visual Identity

SPEAKER_00 7:58

We're looking at messaging, we're looking at tone, where because you could have a bunch of brand messaging. Your voice is the messages that your core brand messages of your of your business and the way that you speak, right? And then your tone is how you can manipulate that to fit the room you're in. If you're doing a keynote versus if you're online doing social media versus an a reel or a story, your tone may change depending on what it is that you're doing there. But the message and the overarching narrative of the brand remains the same. And that is a core part of your brand identity. I would, that's what I consider to be the verbal identity. And the visual identity is obviously your visuals and anything that's visually appealing. Now, this can be anything, not just from, you know, logos, colours, fonts. We're talking about photography and we're talking about art direction across the game of if you have a product suite and you know, I guess the unboxing experience if you are a product or what your internal documentation looks like. And I spoke about this on stories this week, is what your onboarding documents look like, or your tenders, or your services guides, or all of the internal collateral that you would be pushing out client facing or customer facing where they see your brand replicated. If you've just got it looking all schmickko in one spot and then the rest of the touch points all look inconsistent, then you're sending out a very different message across the board. So it's really about what perception are you sending? Because you can have a really beautiful visual identity, but if that visual identity isn't being portrayed across every single touch point, then there's a missing element there. Another thing that we also need to consider is like editing, like video editing. The way you cut and the way that you narrate or you like, I guess, video script is part of that as well. If you're an elegant brand, you're going to have like very cinematic kind of pieces or a high-level, high luxury vibe. All of these things are so synonymous with creating that perception. And this is where so many people are going wrong. They may look at the next best thing, and you know, the the thing online is yapping at the moment. But would you see a Chanel account yapping? Absolutely not. So it's it's about who the brand is, what the brand is, what the brand stands for, and how that brand shows up. And does it align to the overarching narrative? And there's so many people just going, this is the next best thing, this is the next best thing. And it's like, no, it's not. You need to make sure that that fits within whatever the perception is that you want to lead by with your brand, and if the consumer that you're trying to target fits within that, I guess, that space. So

Building Repeatable Brand Systems

SPEAKER_00 10:28

one thing that we did recently was the work for the Endeavour Foundation, which is a 75-year legacy brand. They're Australia's largest disability employer with over 5,000 employees. And they had a rebrand done last year, over the course, you know, of a few years, I think, prior to that. And when they came to us, they needed someone that was specialist in, I guess, understanding the inclusivity aspect of it. And so what we actually did was develop a system, something that was completely missed. So they had a visual identity that looked okay, and we actually needed to get in and clean it up so that the system worked across a 5,000 employee business. If the system and the brand isn't repeatable, then you're going to have problems because then every single employee at that business or that brand will then give their own interpretation of what that should look like. And this is where most brands fail. You have individual people giving their perception, or not perception, but their interpretation of what it should look like. And then you create inconsistencies. So rules are there to maintain that visibility and consistency, which is what people

Consistency Builds Brand Equity

SPEAKER_00 11:33

need. So coming back to what I was talking about in the beginning of buying the sauce in the cupboard, that consistency and that piece of familiar, I guess, sense or vibe is what people are searching for because people hate change. So anything that is constantly changing and moving, it actually impacts the trust value and the brand equity. And brand equity is trust built over time. A lot of people are missing what brand equity is. And I think we've lost what brand is, and people are putting marketing first. So they're trying to market a product, especially in a sense of scarcity when the world's feeling very, I guess, what's the right term? Uh unstable. And they're looking for something, they're just jumping to whatever the next best thing is. So there's inconsistencies. And what happens then is that people won't spend because the inconsistencies signal uh, I guess, a sense of distrust. They don't feel familiar. If they're gonna change every five seconds, what are they gonna do with my money type vibe? Uh, or what am I buying into? And if I'm buying into something, does it symbolize my values? Does it symbolize my identity? And even people that say, Oh, I don't buy on that stuff, they do. They just don't realize it yet. Human behavior is very complex, very nuanced, and it's about really diving into well beneath the surface, which is something that we've been talking to for quite some time now, and something that we're actually going to be going hard on over the next few weeks. So that was one thing that I wanted to really jump in and speak to is just that behavioral mechanism that we're starting to see really start to show through all of the brand elements and brand marketing. And we're seeing brand really stepping up. When we're getting to the point where everyone's buying less because of the market instability and inflation, that means that the people that are out there really need to cement some kind of point of difference and positioning because yes, people are buying, but we may have reduced the pull as to who is buying, which means that their competition has opened up, which means it becomes way more competitive for the people fighting for the same job. And

The Real Takeaway And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 13:32

so that is this week. I wanted to leave something quite short and sharp on a Friday afternoon. If you can listen on the weekend, or whether you're listening to this later on down the track, I wanted to put that in that a rebrand isn't always the answer if you do it too late. But a rebrand can absolutely change the game if you understand that it's a behavior shift and you understand that behaviors take time to change, and trust takes a long time to embed. It is a compounding effect, also known as the is it? Damn it, I lost it, oh, mere exposure effect. I was like, I had it, lost it, had it again. So think about that when you're looking at your brand and not just from a rebranding perspective, is am I currently keeping up with where the identity should be? Am I speaking to the consumer that I want to be speaking to? And does my brand align to the vision, long-term vision that I want it to go in? Or it could be that you've scaled and you've removed or you're uh far apart from where you used to be and you need to kind of realign. It's called identity congruence. So you want to bring the internals to match the external. Anyway, quick one for today. Hope you enjoyed that episode. We've got more coming out over the next coming weeks, and I'm releasing something very soon, which I'm very proud of. Uh, that's been a couple of years in the making to get to this point. So, yes, it's all coming together, and I think that it will help a lot of people. Until then, I hope you have a good weekend, good day, whatever day you're listening to this on. And again, as always, if you have any questions, please slip in. I am very open to having a chat on Instagram or through our email. Otherwise, chat soon.

Rate Review And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Did you like that episode? Hope so. Because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at you on and only underscore AU on Instagram or head to www.ywan and only.com.au