Rebranding: what you already have, what has to change together, and what can wait

The article beside this one describes a pillar where decisions are taken first and objects are made afterwards, in that order. It is the right way to start, and almost nobody starts there.

The real situation is this: you have been trading for some years, your brand already exists, and nobody decided it. A logo drawn by a relative, a sign whose colour the sign-maker chose, a page with a different avatar, packaging carrying a fourth version.

Redoing that is not a creative project. It is a replacement operation: the drawing is the short, cheap part, and the rest is changing a mark present on dozens of surfaces — some of which are not yours — without the business looking as though it has closed while you do it.

This article gives the inventory to make before speaking to anybody, the three magnitudes of change that get confused under one word, what has to switch on the same day, and what we refuse to invoice.

People say "redo our logo" for three operations with different costs, different risks and different consequences. Separating them before you speak to a designer saves more than any negotiation over rates.

A retouch keeps the shapes and cleans them: proportions corrected, colours fixed with references a printer can follow, versions produced for the sizes where it was illegible. Your customers notice nothing, which is the point, and neither do your staff, which saves you having to explain anything.

A redraw changes the shape and keeps the name. Visual recognition has to be rebuilt, but the name carries: somebody looking for you finds you, somebody recommending you knows what to say. It is the most common case and by far the worst costed, because the shape appears on every surface in the inventory.

A name change contains all of the above and adds the one thing no budget buys back: what people say. A name circulates by word of mouth in recommendations you never hear, and it takes years for a new one to occupy that place.

The test for choosing is one question, answered before you look at any drawing: is it the shape that bothers you, or the name? If it is the shape, the name is not on the table. If you hesitate, it is almost always the shape — because a name that genuinely gets in the way gets in the way for a reason you can state in a sentence.

This is the most painful point and the worst handled: cartons, labels, bags and invoice pads carrying the old mark, already paid for and already in the store room. Nobody likes discussing it and it is often half the problem.

There are three honest options — run it down, over-label, destroy — and a fourth that will be sold to you readily: redo everything immediately. That one is not an option, it is an invoice, and it is almost always proposed by the person who banks it.

Running it down suits everything the customer never sees: internal stationery, working documents, transport cartons the carrier takes back. It is wrong for anything going to a customer during the weeks you are announcing the change, because that is exactly when old and new cross.

Over-labelling is acceptable on a shipping carton and disastrous on a product on a shelf: one label stuck over another reads as a repackaged, relabelled or recalled product, and that suspicion costs more than the stock it saves.

The rule follows from the previous section rather than from any calculation of thrift: old stock stays usable anywhere it will not be seen beside the new. That is not a concession, it is the same criterion applied to what you already hold.

An old mark carries a value that appears in no account: people recognise it at distance, in a blurred photo, through a half-obscured window, on a passing van. That value accumulated without an invoice and it is spent in one go.

So the question is not how to avoid the spend — every rebrand makes it — but what you are buying with it. A vague answer to that question is the best available signal that it is too early.

The reasons that justify it can be said in a sentence: the name stops you selling what you now sell; the mark announces a trade you have left; it is confused with a competitor; it is illegible at the sizes it is actually seen, which is small and on a phone.

The reason that does not justify it is the most common one: internal fatigue. You have seen your mark a hundred times a day for six years and your customers see it three times a year. What you take for wear is, at their end, a recognition still settling in.

Once the decision is taken, a bridge costs little and prevents a lot: keeping the colour through the transition, or showing the old shape small beside the new one for a few months. It says "this is still us" to people nobody told anything, which is the overwhelming majority of your customers.

We build the inventory with you and we cost it, including the lines we do not manufacture. We separate the retouch, the redraw and the name change, and we write down which of the three your situation asks for, even when the answer is the cheapest of them.

We then produce the files in the formats your suppliers actually use, with colour references a printer can follow, and we write the switch plan grouped by moment of encounter rather than by type of material.

We refuse to price a rebrand before the inventory. A quote produced without that list covers the drawing alone — the small part — and gives the client a sense of the budget that is wrong by a factor no discount recovers.

We refuse to promise a commercial effect. We will not say a rebrand will raise your sales, because we cannot measure it and the previous section explains why nobody can in your situation.

And we refuse to sell you a name change you have no reason to make. If your problem is a logo illegible at small sizes, the answer is a retouch and two file versions; we will say so even when it is the shortest quote line we can write, because a name changed without a reason spends a recognition that took years to build.