How to Stand Out in Crowded Markets

Rebranding to
Stay Relevant
Building defensible brands in
the age of hyper-competition.
James Winter, Brandfolder

Steve Forbes said, “Your brand is the single
most important investment you can make in
your business,” and those words have never
been truer. In today’s era of hyper-competition,
new challengers appear overnight. When any
product can be copied in a matter of weeks,
how do you create a defensible business?
The answer? Brand. Brand cannot be copied,
replicated, or created overnight.
But what makes a great brand? To answer

that question, we dove deep into the stories of
dozens of the world’s most innovative and
lasting brands. By dissecting how these brands
have managed to innovate and maintain
relevance, I hope that marketers and creatives
of all types—whether you’re just graduating
college or a Fortune 500 CMO—will learn
important lessons that can be applied to their
own brands.
James Winter
Words: James Winter

Design: Wyn Merchant
Table of Contents
How to differentiate in a crowded market p1
How to create a cult brand p11
How to create a dynamic brand identity p24
How to create an international brand p38
How to rebrand to change your brand positioning p50
What brand managers can learn from DTC companies p61
Rebranding around mission and values p71
Rebranding in a crisis p83
Rebranding disasters p93
Summary of key themes p102

r e b r a n d i n g t o s tay r e l e va n t
How to
differentiate
in a crowded
market
R E B R A N D I N G T O S TAY R E L E VA N T
When Chobani first hit the yogurt aisles in 2007,
How to most Americans had never heard of Greek yogurt.
differentiate The product was richer and less sweet than Dannon or Colombo, with less
in a crowded sodium and more protein. These health benefits of Chobani resonated
with American consumers, driving Greek yogurt from less than 1% market
market share to nearly 50% in just a few years.
Then the inevitable occurred. Seeing dollar signs, Dannon and Colombo
introduced their own Greek yogurt products. Soon countless other copycat
1 brands followed. Just 10 years after Chobani was introduced to the market
What is differentiation? p4 sales of spoonable yogurt began to decline. Mintel’s 2017 report on the
yogurt segment unequivocally states that Greek yogurt’s “novelty wore off.”
As a result Chobani’s brand lost its competitive edge and sales began to slip.
2
“Virtually everybody’s copied us,” said Peter McGuinness, Chobani CMO. “I’m
How to build your brand
not here to pick on the competition, but it’s not been good for the category.”
differentiation strategy p7
McGuiness’ hand was forced; he’d need to identify new points of differentiation
to stay one step ahead of the competition. A rebrand, or as we’ll argue below,
3 “an expansion” of the brand was in order.
Rebranding to remain
competitive in
a crowded market p9
Virtually everybody’s copied us

4
Key Takeaways p11
... I’m not here to pick on the
competition, but it’s not been
Peter McGuinness
good for the category. CMO, Chobani
”
1 What is differentiation?
Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that

uses a brand’s unique characteristics to its advantage
Benefits of strong and
when competing for audience attention and dollars. favorable differentiation
There are countless ways to differentiate, Grabs prospects’ attention — By intentionally calling out
but here are a few of the most common:
how your brand differs from the competition, you draw
attention to the unique attributes of your brand that are
meaningful to your target customer.
Features
Takes the focus off of price — Unless you have
What can your product do massive advantages in manufacturing or economies of
better, faster, more simply, scale, it’s very difficult to sustainably differentiate on price.
or more economically? Differentiation based on other attributes of your brand
takes the focus off of price and helps your brand avoid
getting sucked into pricing wars.
Proprietary technology
Creates brand loyalty — Your brand’s unique points of
What innovation, patents, or other
technological advances can only
differentiation matter to a specific segment of your
your brand claim? Proprietary audience. By directly speaking to these attributes, you
technology gives brands an edge create brand loyalty with these consumers.
by being inimitable.
Signs of a weak
Design
Is your product more beautiful,
differentiation strategy
more functional, or easier to use? Copycats — Your brand’s points of differentiation should
ideally be attributes that are not easily replicable.
Customer Service Price undercutters — Almost all brands will face

Consider the entire experience competition from other companies that undercut them
around your product or on price. If this occurs and your brand’s only point of
service. How does your brand differentiation is price, that’s trouble.
serve your customer better
than anybody else?
Focusing on changing demands or expectations from
customers — Don’t differentiate on something that can
easily become obsolete. This is why you see technology
companies differentiating on innovation or other
consistent attributes that run throughout their products
Brands seeking to compete — particularly in
rather than on the features or functionality of a specific
crowded markets — can realize significant
product that will eventually become obsolete.
benefits by identifying and executing on a
deliberate differentiation strategy. Hyper-niche differentiation — If your point of
differentiation only matters to a very narrow segment of
customers, you may end up alienating potential customers.
How to differentiate in a crowded market | 3

EVERY product Many brand managers dismiss
can be differentiated differentiation by saying they sell
a commodified product.
But all products can be differentiated. One example: Fiji

Water, a brand that commands a premium price based
on the source and taste of their water. They sell the same
combination of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen
atom as their competitors, yet they charge multiple times
the price.
“There is no such thing as a commodity,” says Theodore

Levitt in his article Marketing Success Through Differentiation
— Of Anything published in Harvard Business Review.”
All goods and services are differentiable.”
This proves to be true even in commodity exchanges

where goods like metals and grains are traded. While
these products appear to be generic and completely
undifferentiated, what is “sold” is often differentiated
by execution: the efficiency of the transaction, a brand’s
responsiveness to inquiries, the clarity and speed of
their confirmations. Ultimately what Levitt calls the
“offered product” is differentiated, while the “generic
product” is identical.
Particularly with consumer packaged goods, many less

informed consumers perceive that even substantive
differences in the generic product are so slight that the
differences between products lie solely in their packaging
or advertising. This presumption, Levitt writes, “is
palpably wrong.”
Coors Light uses Bill Weintraub, former CMO of
differentiation to companies like Tropicana, Coors,
wage war in the light and Kellogg’s wholeheartedly
beer category agrees with Levitt.
Having worked with products ranging from orange juice to

cereal to light beer, Weintraub is uniquely positioned to
speak to how differentiation can be applied successfully to
When anybody says that products that many consumers perceive to be quite similar.
a branded product is a “Miller Lite launched the light beer category and became
very successful, so Budweiser copied them with Bud Light
commodity, that means
then Coors copied them with Coors Light,” says Weintraub.
that they can’t identify “We decided to concentrate on what was different about
what is distinctive or Coors Light compared to Miller Lite and Bud Light, and the
differences were partly in the way the product tastes. Miller
special about the brand ... and Budweiser had systems set up to pasteurize the beer.
Somebody who Coors had what’s called a sterile-fill system which means
that it’s virtually impossible for microorganisms to get into
understands marketing the system so they don’t have to pasteurize the beer.”
and the notion of “Pasteurization creates a bitterness and off-notes, so
differentiation understands Coors Light is actually more refreshing than the other two
light beers. If you were tasting them blind and you had a
that there are differences.
beer palate, you could taste the difference between the
It may be the most three. Because we had a different process and we didn’t
pasteurize, we called it cold-filtered — that was our name or
important principle in all
”
nomenclature that we put on the packaging and advertising.”
of marketing.
“Anheuser-Busch and Miller have breweries all over, but at
Bill Weintraub the time all Coors Light came from our brewery in Golden,
Former CMO, Tropicana, Coors, Kellogg’s
Colorado,” Weintraub continues. “The water came from the
Rocky mountains, and beer is 95% water so we took the
imagery and the fact that all the water came from the Rockies
which are associated with cold and snow, along with never
being pasteurized to support the fact that the brand is more
refreshing or smoother drinking than Miller Lite or Bud Light.”
The differentiation was effective for Coors: during

Weintraub’s 10 years as CMO of the company Coors Light
overtook Miller Lite, and the company’s stock price tripled.

2 How to build your brand differentiation strategy
The point of differentiation that you choose COMPETITOR DIFFERENTIATION

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
for your brand can be an attribute, a benefit,
How do they describe their
•
or a feature, but the process of identifying product? What terms and phrases
do they use? Do they fit into an
your strategy is alarmingly simple. existing category, or are they
trying to create their own?
“Start with what the brand truthfully, honestly, and accurately is,” says
Weintraub. “You relate that to how the brand is different or better than What do they stand for? If you
•
other brands on the market. There’s something truthful, factual, actual, had to pick three words to
about the brand itself that’s better. You need to find that and then match associate with the product, which
that up with some group of target consumers — not all consumers, three words would you choose?
but a particular set of consumers for whom that particular benefit is
What are they promising? What
•
really important.”
value do they claim to deliver?
What unique attribute or outcome
are they flaunting?
That’s the secret of marketing a brand, Which features and benefits are
•
matching the truthful distinctiveness they highlighting? Are there

certain bells and whistles that
of that brand with a particular, well- they talk about more than others?
defined, target consumer.
Who are they talking to? Are they
•
Bill Weintraub addressing a specific audience?

Do they customize their language
and topics based on certain
The process of uncovering your brand’s points of differentiation starts demographics or segmentation?
with carefully considering your product, audience, and market. You want
What is the brand personality?
•
to identify your unique selling point, the one thing that your brand does
Are they quietly knowledgeable?
better than anybody else. It’s also useful to consider the solution you are
Irreverent? Authoritative? Highly
selling, not just the product. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and
technical? Straightforward?
answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” Finally, you must carefully
Humorous? What is the product
consider the competitive landscape. Use this checklist of questions to
“voice” like?
assess the competition.
How brands can discover new points of differentiation
Identifying new points of differentiation is a skill that can MacMillian and McGrath’s process begins with what they
be learned and developed. “A company has the opportunity call “mapping the consumption chain,” which captures a
to differentiate itself at every point where it comes in customer’s experience in its entirety with a particular
contact with its customers — from the moment customers product or service. The second phase of their process,
realize that they need a product or service to the time “analyzing your customer’s experience,” consists of a
when they no longer want it and decide to dispose of it,” brainstorming session about each step in the consumption
write Ian MacMillian and Rita Gunther McGrath in their chain. The goal of the session is to assemble an inventory
article Discovering New Points of Differentiation of all possible points of differentiation by considering the
published in Harvard Business Review. entirety of the customer’s experience.
“We believe that if companies open up their creative The process is replicable no matter the industry your brand
thinking to their customers’ entire experience with a competes in, but doesn’t alone deliver a successfully
product or service — what we call the consumption executed differentiation strategy.
chain — they can uncover opportunities to position
their offerings in ways that they, and their competitors,
would never have thought possible.”
KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL DIFFERENTIATION IN A COMPETITIVE MARKET
Once you have identified your brand’s points of differentiation, it’s time to execute on your differentiation strategy.
Here are keys to implementing a successful differentiation strategy.
1 Understand the existing customer experience and improve it to exceed your customers’ expectations.
One example of this is Apple’s iPod — it was not the first portable music player but it allowed users to carry
up to 1000 songs with them in their pocket, which was revolutionary at the time.
2 Appeal to the emotions and desires of the consumer.

A study conducted by Google found that “B2B purchasers are almost 50 percent more likely to buy a product or
service when they see personal value — such as opportunity for career advancement or confidence and pride in
their choice — in their purchase decision. This reinforces the importance of stepping into your customers’ shoes
and asking “What’s in it for me?” when identifying your points of differentiation.
3 Embrace that trade-offs are required for effective differentiation.

Your brand can’t be all things to all people — if it tries to be, your differentiation strategy will almost surely fail. Trade-offs
are essential to differentiation strategy. They create the need for choice and purposefully limit what a company offers.
4 Get creative.
Differentiation can come in many different forms from packaging improvements to delivery mechanisms.
For example, toothbrush maker Oral-B turned differentiation into a competitive advantage by patenting the
use of dyed toothbrush bristles that faded in color when the toothbrush needed to be replaced.

3 Rebranding to remain competitive in a crowded market
Many brands, like Chobani, rode a strong

and favorable differentiation strategy to
market dominance only to watch their
competitive edge evaporate amidst a sea
of copycat contenders hawking similar
attributes. When that happens, many brand
managers feel that they’re faced with no
other option than to rebrand.
“I don’t believe in the notion of rebranding; I believe in the notion of

growing a brand because to rebrand it sounds to me like you have to
change what the brand is,” says Weintraub. “You can’t change what
the brand is because you don’t erase people’s memories, so their
memories or their perceptions of the brand aren’t eliminated, ever.”
This reality produces a conundrum from brand managers; if they can’t It starts with finding
rebrand, how can they change the perceptions of their brand in a way that
will once again strongly resonate with a segment of target customers? something in the
“What you can do is identify aspects of the brand that maybe haven’t
product that’s real,
been effectively communicated or that were always there that people not bullshit. It’s the
didn’t talk about,” says Weintraub. “You don’t change the brand, but you
find something in the brand, in the product ideally, that nobody knows
truth of the brand that
about, or you express it in a way that’s clearer, more understandable, or it will sustain success,
more relatable to a consumer. Not all consumers, but a particular target
sustain growth.
consumer so that she or he comes to appreciate what that brand is.”
”
Peter McGuinness
This is exactly the challenge that Chobani CMO, Peter McGuinness,
faced as he aimed to stay one step ahead of his competitors in the
yogurt aisle.
Chobani rebrands Seeking new points of differentiation that would appeal
to consumers, Chobani hired Leland Maschmeyer, the
to find new points company’s first ever Chief Creative Officer. McGuiness
and Maschmeyer then set off to “rebrand” the company,
of differentiation aiming to move the brand beyond just yogurt to become
a “food-focused wellness company.” Much of the company’s
new advertising promotes the overall nutritional benefits
of yogurt, touting its many uses such as acting as a
substitute for recipe ingredients like sour cream —
benefits that were always present in the product, but not
articulated until now.
The brand also rethought its packaging with wellness in

mind. Take a stroll down the yogurt aisle, and you’ll find
shelves filled with white plastic containers with impossibly
bright berries bursting from their sides. Seeking to evoke
the ideals of “organic” and “natural,” on which Chobani
built its business, Maschmeyer found himself drawn to
folk art of the 1800s. The new packaging contains color
palettes that come from nature, dominated by browns,
off-whites, and most noticeably, hand-painted berries
that celebrate the natural imperfections in the fruit.
“When you have a strawberry [on the cup] that’s too perfect,
it’s plastic,” Maschmeyer explains. “We’ve introduced
these imperfections in our brand so it feels more real.”
“This look hasn’t been done in the yogurt aisle,”

McGuinness added. “This is really a new articulation
of what our ethos has always been.”
To the brand manager look to rebrand, or as Weintraub

says, “grow the brand,” Chobani’s work is something
worth aspiring to.

4
Key Takeaways
1
Your brand’s points of differentiation are
truths that are right in front of you —
not invented fictions.
2
There is no such thing as a commodity product;
every product can be differentiated. Consider the
generic product versus the offered product.
3
Differentiation takes the emphasis off of price
and strategically positions your company’s
unique attributes as different and better for a
subset of target customers that care about the
attribute, benefit, or feature.
4
You can’t fully “rebrand” a product because you
can’t erase a consumer’s memory or perception
of your brand. Seek to find a truth in the
brand and communicate it in a way that’s clearer,
more understandable, or more beneficial to
the consumer.
How to create
a cult brand
In March of 1982, Harley-Davidson Vice President
How to create of Marketing, Clyde Fessler, assembled his brand
a cult brand team and advertising agency in Minneapolis.
The task in front of the group was daunting. “We
1 need to save the Harley-Davidson brand,” Fessler
The anatomy of told his team.
a cult brand p16
Under siege from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers like Honda, Kawasaki,
2 Yamaha, and Suzuki, Harley-Davidson represented the last American motorcycle
company in existence — but the company was leaking oil. Over the last
Name thy enemy p17
two decades it had lost significant market share. With rising debt and falling
revenues it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
3 Barely giving his internal team time to introduce themselves to their colleagues
The connective power at Carmichael Lynch — the agency he hired to help — Fessler kicked off 4
of shared experiences p20 days of meetings that would not only rescue his company, but also turn
Harley-Davidson into one of the world’s most admired brands. In doing so,
he created a template for other marketers to use in their pursuit of building a
4 cult brand. This is the story of how Fessler and his team did it.
Cult brands connect their
customers with a better
version of themselves p23
5
Key cult branding
lessons from the Harley-
Davidson rebrand p26
1 The anatomy of a cult brand
A “cult brand” is defined by Heavy interaction — Cult brands focus on creating

brand experiences well beyond a one-time purchase.
Investopedia as “referring to a In order to develop a fervent loyalty and following, cult
brands orchestrate heavy and consistent interaction
product or service that has a loyal amongst their members.
customer base that approaches Lifestyle — Cult brands sell more than a product or
fanaticism. Cult brands have service: they promote an all-encompassing lifestyle
which their members readily embrace.
achieved a unique connection with
A better version of themselves — Cult brands help their
customers, and are able to create a customers celebrate their own individuality; they are a
consumer culture that people want means to realizing the best version of yourself. Douglas
Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, says that the best
to be a part of.” cults and brands share the mantra, “With us, you become
more you.” Grabs prospects’ attention — By intentionally
Cult brands employ many of the same strategies that calling out how your brand differs from the competition,
we’ve seen deployed throughout history in the creation you draw attention to the unique attributes of your brand
of cults. Here are 7 specific tactics often employed in that are meaningful to your target customer.
the creation of a cult brand.
A charismatic leader — Cult brands often have a

charismatic leader who isn’t afraid to challenge the status
quo. Steve Jobs’s charismatic leadership at Apple is the
stuff of legend. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is a more
recent example famous for getting rid of all bosses and
organizational hierarchy at Zappos and instead embracing
the philosophy of self-management.
Membership — Cult brands foster a strong sense of

belonging; often there is a formalized process for
becoming a member.
A clearly identified enemy — Cult brands are not

ambiguous with their beliefs and often have a clearly
identified enemy or adversary. Pepsi clearly calls out
Coke as their enemy; the company’s “Pepsi Challenge”
marketing promotion directly positions Coke as an
inferior product and has been running continuously
since 1975.
Shared lingo, rituals and symbols — Cult brands leverage

shared language, icons, and symbols to clearly identify
their members.
How to create a cult brand | 13

2 Name thy enemy
On the first day of the meetings, Fessler

asked his team to start with a SWOT
analysis of both Harley-Davidson and their
competitors. Harley’s weaknesses were
rattled off quickly: no money, marketing,
brand image, quality. The room fell silent.
“OK, what about our strengths?” Fessler inquired. The group decided on
“heritage,” “All-American,” and “last remaining motorcycle made in the
United States.”
“When you strip down what happened in the 1980’s and you realize
Harley-Davidson was the last remaining American motorcycle brand,
it presented an opportunity for the brand to acquire the personality
traits and associations considered to be American,” said Joe Benson,
author of 57 Brand Haikus. “It’s something Harley could easily claim, it
didn’t require a lot of capital, and it also happened to be the truth.”
Back around the conference table, Fessler’s group turned their attention
to their Japanese counterparts. They were savvy businessmen, who had
built a high quality product and had cash to invest. The room fell silent
once again.
“The Japanese are kicking our butts,” Fessler said. He made it clear
that the company had one enemy and one enemy only. Going forward,
they would pay no attention to the other global motorcycle companies
that were also attacking their market. Instead, they would focus on the
Japanese manufacturers. By “naming the enemy” Fessler stumbled
upon one of the most important elements of building a cult brand.
In the 1970s, psychologist Henri Tajfel showed that groups of people

perform better at a given task when they have a common enemy. In his
study, he arbitrarily divided a room of randomly selected people into
“Team Blue” and “Team Red” and found that this simple act of division
caused in-group favoritism: participants in the study discriminated
against outsiders despite the fact they had nothing to gain. Fessler’s
team decided that they would spend most of their energy united both
their customers and internal team against Honda, Harley-Davidson’s
most formidable rival.
Consumers viewed Hondas as casual, reliable vehicles
best suited to everyday transportation. The company’s
“You meet the nicest people on a Honda,” advertising
campaigns had been winning their agency partner, Grey
Advertising, awards for years. These ads were similarly
designed to develop a sense of community and position
Harley riders — who had developed a reputation as wild,
anti-establishment rebels — as the polar opposite of the
Honda rider.
To make matters worse, the Japanese companies began

encroaching on one of Harley Davidson’s few competitive
advantages when they opened manufacturing facilities in
the United States. Honda’s plant in Maryville, Ohio even
started pumping out bigger, chunkier bikes — clearly a
copycat design and a direct assault on Harley’s business.
Honda Ad Campaign Fessler told his colleagues at Carmichael Lynch to

address Honda’s copycat designs head on. “It’s time for
Harley-Davidson to fight back,” Fessler told the group.
The resulting ad campaign, shown below, directly pokes
fun at Honda’s copycat designs by running copy in
Japanese around the image of a Harley.
Only two years prior, in 1980, Al Ries and Jack Trout

coined the famous marketing concept “Positioning” when
they wrote Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind. Fessler
and his team were some of the first to double down on
the concept. In their book, Ries and Trout wrote, “When
you try to be everything, you wind up being nothing.”
Harley-Davidson, Fessler decided, would no longer try to
Harley Davidson Ad Campaign
win the entire motorcycle market but instead focus on
winning it’s core customer, a group that he had a very
startling introduction to 5 years earlier.

More examples
of brands that have The “I’m a PC” ad campaign is a perfect example of
named their enemy: naming the enemy. The ads aimed to displace the
ubiquity of Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads. Microsoft paid
personalities like writer Deepak Chopra, actress Eva
Longoria, and singer Pharrell Williams to show that
they were in the Microsoft tribe.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Naming an enemy In the spring of 2017, MillerCoors launched their “Know

Your Beer” campaign, in which they attacked Bud Light
is a catalyst to and put billboards all over America claiming, “7/10 people
clear differentiation. in [location] agree Miller Lite has more taste than Bud
Light” The campaign helped MillerCoors boost sales by
This strategy can help
3% and forced Bud Light to respond, giving the company
brand managers free publicity at their competitor’s expense.
position their brand

intentionally, on their
own terms.
One of the most famous examples of naming the enemy
is the Pepsi Challenge. According to Brand Keys President,
Robert Passikoff, “The Pepsi taste test forced Coke
to not only come out with New Coke but change their
formula because they couldn’t stand being beaten in
the marketplace.”
3 The connective power of shared experiences
With an enemy clearly identified, Fessler

turned to a second strategy often seen in
the creation of cult brands: the connective
power of shared experiences.
When Fessler joined Harley-Davidson as Manager of Advertising and

Promotions in 1977, it didn’t take long for him to realize that he and the
typical Harley-Davidson customer lived far different lives.
“That spring I came face-to-face for the first time with unruly bikers in
Daytona,” said Fessler. “I had only been with Harley-Davidson for a few
months and Daytona was my trial by fire.”
Dressed to the nines, Fessler arrived in Daytona for Harley’s annual

spring rally. As he left his hotel, he stopped to admire a particularly
beautiful Harley-Davidson bike parked by the curb. A mean-looking
biker approached, his massive mitts wrapped completely around a
16-ounce beer.
“I work for Harley-Davidson,” Fessler said pointing at the bike.
Picking Fessler off the ground, the biker buried his face in his chest,
then spit out the Harley-Davidson pin Fessler had been wearing on his
breast pocket.
“What do you think of that, dude!” the biker snarled before dropping
Fessler and storming off.
Fessler ditched his dress slacks for biker gear the next day. “I learned
an important lesson in that moment,” said Fessler. “It’s not enough to
get close to your customers, you need to bond with them.”
For Fessler to truly understand Harley-Davidson’s customers, an academic

study of them would not suffice. He’d need to get out and truly live the
Harley-Davidson brand experience alongside them. He started riding a
Harley-Davidson bike and spending time with other riders.

In spending time with his customers, Fessler began to see
how important the Harley community was for riders. He
It’s the way the brand
noticed that many customers were organizing weekend
encourages or builds a rides or annual road trips. For some customers, these trips
were the only time they bonded with people outside of
series of associations in the
their jobs or families. For others, it was a chance to escape
mind of the customer that the confines of their normal life and live more aspirationally.
Sitting between these people and their experiences was
not only encourages them
Harley-Davidson — and Fessler saw opportunity.
to buy a product, but
Cults — and psychologists — have long understood the
influences how they use it. power of shared experiences. The Klu Klux Klan would
”
famously ride together through the night to remote
Clyde Fessler
VP, Marketing, Harley Davidson locations where they’d burn crosses and practice their
rituals. The Rajneeshees, a “sex cult” depicted in the
recent Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, held an
annual carnival that brought together followers from
around the globe for a week spent practicing free love
and meditations. Fessler knew that if he was going to
turn Harley-Davidson into a cult brand, he would have to
tap into the power of shared experiences to extend the
brand experience beyond just the purchase of a Harley-
Davidson motorcycle.
“I had a friend, who if you showed a motorcycle part

couldn’t tell you if it belonged to a Honda, BMW, or
Harley-Davidson,” said Joe Benson. “But when you
applied the logo, he associated these bikes with a totally
different type of riding behavior. He associated the
Harley-Davidson with the Sunday morning jaunt with
friends, the casual ride where the neighborhood kids
crowded around him. It’s the way the brand encourages
or builds a series of associations in the mind of the
customer that not only encourages them to buy a
product, but influences how they use it.”
A study published in Psychological Science known as HOG group members organized cross-country rides and
the “Amplification Hypothesis,” provides insight that philanthropic events and earned discounts on Harley
supports why these associations — and Fessler’s products and apparel. Each ride or event came with its
intuition — proved so powerful. In the study, a team of own patch or pin — a way for participants to
Yale University researchers gave students a square of demonstrate status that was typically adorned proudly
dark chocolate. When two students ate the chocolate on a leather riding jacket.
together at the same time, they reported liking the
After the program launched in 1983, Fessler watched as it
chocolate more than students who ate the chocolate
spread like wildfire. Today there are over 1,400 HOG
alone. They also reported it to be more flavorful.
groups and more than a million members, with HOG
The conclusion: experiences, when shared, are more
group members spending 30% more on rides and Harley-
memorable and are viewed more favorably.
Davidson apparel than their non-HOG counterparts.
Red Bull, whose energy drinks command a premium price,
has deliberately leveraged this insight to develop a strong
customer base in the world of extreme sports. The company
sponsors events that include everything from downhill,
full-contact ice skating to performance aerial shows where
daring pilots maneuver their planes at high speeds through
an obstacle course. While these events have little to do with
Red Bull’s products, they effectively connect groups of the
daring, extreme sports athletes that Red Bull targets through
a series of intense, high-octane events.
As Fessler sought to leverage this tactic, he figured that

the benefits of shared experiences could be realized by
the formation of riding groups. He assembled his team
for their second day of meetings in Minneapolis and
started with a brainstorming session.
Harley riders had long been referred to as “hogs,” but it KEY TAKEAWAY
was never used as a term of endearment. Harleys and
their riders were seen as slow, heavy, unreliable, and
unsavory. Fessler decided to embrace the term, flipping Experiences, when shared, are
it on its head as an acronym for Harley Owners Groups, more memorable and are viewed
since then affectionately referred to as HOGs.
more favorably. Brand managers
The company enrolled all of its customers in a national
HOG group for one year after the purchase of their
can use shared experiences as a
motorcycle, charging a modest fee for each subsequent powerful tool for connecting their
year of membership. Harley dealers were encouraged to
customers with their brand beyond
sponsor their own local HOG groups, and Fessler’s team
tasked each dealership with sponsoring at least one the purchase of their products.
event each year.

4 Cult brands connect their customers with a better version of themselves
It wasn’t until the last two days of their meetings

that Fessler and his team identified one of the
biggest opportunities that would help them
turn the company around. The only motorcycle
When Fessler joined Harley-Davidson as Manager of Advertising and manufacturer that
Promotions in 1977, it didn’t take long for him to realize that he and the
makes big, loud
typical Harley-Davidson customer lived far different lives.
motorcycles for
During their SWOT analysis, one person on the Carmichael Lynch team
pointed out that most people knew Harley riders as “unsavory lawbreakers.” macho guys (and
He mentioned something everyone in the room knew: that a group of
Harley riders commonly known as Hell’s Angels were considered by the
"macho wannabes")
United States Justice Department as an organized crime group. mostly in the United
But criminals were few and far between in the broader Harley-Davidson States who want to
community, and the bad image overlooked an important detail. In the
conference room, someone on the Harley-Davidson team reminded the join a gang of
agency executive that many of those same riders served in the U.S.
cowboys in an era
military. These riders bought their Harleys in search of freedom after
returning to a society that restricted them. of decreasing
With this in mind, Fessler and his team began crafting a new internal personal freedom.
positioning statement for the company. The output of that work is one
of the most famous positioning statements of all-time:
Self-actualization
desire to become the most that one can be
Esteem
respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom
Love and belonging

friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection
Safety needs
personal security, employment, resources, health, property
Physiological needs
air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction
This movement up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is for military charities. The first line of text you’ll read on
ultimately responsible for increasing customer loyalty to the “About Us” page of Harley’s website fittingly reads,
a brand. “A community based brand builds loyalty not by “We fulfill dreams of personal freedom,” followed shortly
driving sales transactions but by helping people meet thereafter by, “Throughout the world, Harley-Davidson
their needs,” writes Susain Fourier and Lara Lee in their unites people deeply, passionately and authentically.
article “Getting Branded Communities Right” published Being recognized as an iconic brand is gratifying, but
in Harvard Business Review. igniting the fire within people on the many roads of the
world is what we are all about.”
Fessler’s team chose values of freedom and American
heritage, knowing that many of their customers were Back around the conference table in Minneapolis,
returning veterans. They also deliberately sought to connect Clyde Fessler asked his team to wrap up the week by
the two values, launching programs like Harley’s Heroes formalizing a brand statement for Harley-Davidson.
Ride Free initiative, providing all US military veterans with a
He started by asking his team three questions:
free Harley-Davidson Academy riding course.
1. Who are we?
Over the last three decades, the company has continued
2. Who are our customers?
to build on these values, rolling out similar programs and
3. What do they want and expect from us?
providing other benefits to military members and support

After a few hours of discussion and debate they came up
with one of the most successful brand statements of all
time. To a would-be Honda buyer, it may have been
off-putting. But for a Harley-Davidson rider, it spoke to Harley-Davidson manufactures big,
their highest-level needs.
beautiful American motorcycles for
Had Clyde Fessler and his team attempted to please
everyone in their rebrand, they would have failed, and
motor enthusiasts who want their
Harley-Davidson may have gone bankrupt. Instead, they products to symbolize strength,
took the time to understand their customers’ values and
ideals and spoke to them directly. In doing so, they freedom, individuality, Americana,
extended Harley-Davidson’s brand well beyond the bike;
and who want to share and
being a Harley-Davidson rider became “about wearing
the hat, having the tattoo, and the brand becoming part participate in the Harley-Davidson
of the rider’s identity.”
heritage, tradition, and mystique.
Fessler’s career at Harley-Davidson would span 25 years.
Although he didn’t know it at the time, those 4 days of
meetings were pivotal in forming a strategy that would
turn the company from the brink of bankruptcy into a
global brand that’s worth more than $5.5 billion today.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Brand managers should seek to

fulfill higher level needs on
Maslow’s hierarchy, cultivating
higher levels of customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
4
Key cult branding lessons from the
Harley-Davidson rebrand
The same tactics that have been employed throughout
history to build cults have been employed by brand
managers like Clyde Fessler to build some of the world’s
most admired — and most valuable — brands.
Brand managers seeking to develop the type of fervent

customer loyalty that Fessler was able to achieve should
seek to replicate Fessler’s core tactics. Here are the most
important things to remember:
1
Clearly identify your brand’s enemy or adversary
and make it clear how your product or service is
differentiated from theirs.
2
Create an inclusive community that’s connected
by shared experiences. Your brand must exist to
serve this community, rather than the community
existing to serve your brand.
3
Seek to create a brand that helps its customers
realize a better version of themselves. Your brand
should help amplify the best attributes that your
consumer sees in the ideal version of themselves.
How to create
a dynamic
brand identity
It’s game day, and you flip on the TV to catch your
How to create favorite NFL team in action. The announcers are
a dynamic on your screen, running through a roll call of the
starting line-ups.
brand identity
“At offensive tackle, 6 foot 8 and weighing in at 359 pounds, Trent Brown,”
1 the announcer rumbles as the camera pans down to the action on the field.
The players on screen, these sultans of sport in America’s most violent game
What is a dynamic brand?
are...dressed in pink?
p30
Pink socks, pink cleats, pink gloves. You’d be surprised — except you’ve seen
it before. The NFL and its players temporarily adopt the color pink in support
2 of breast cancer awareness month, a move designed to align the NFL with
Assemble your “kit of parts” the cause and attract new audiences to the game. It’s just one example of the
p31 dynamic brand identity that the NFL has created and wielded to its benefit.
In this chapter, we’ll show you how to build a similarly flexible brand that
3 retains its identifying attributes.
Common methods of
creating a dynamic brand
p33
4
Technology to support
dynamic brand identities
p39
5
Key Takeaways
p41
1 What is a dynamic brand?
Throughout history, most brands have been

intentionally static — rigid brand guidelines
developed with the goal of strict adherence,
leaving little or no room for more flexible
expressions of the brand.
Often this included a singular mark, or perhaps two variations of a brand’s

logo intended for use against light or dark backgrounds. The fixed nature
of the brand identity, consistently applied, was one of the most significant
brand-building tools companies had at their disposal as they sought to
create instantly recognizable brands.
But that’s all changing now.
To meet the demands of today’s world, a brand’s identity needs to be

flexible enough to adapt for print-based media, digital channels, the
physical world (like buildings and billboards), and a global economy.
Your brand must be flexible enough to be just as relevant to a consumer
riding the subway and looking at an advertisement on their iPhone in
Shanghai as one walking the streets and experiencing your brand through
a billboard in Times Square. This requires that brand managers learn to
create dynamic brand identities: those that can freshen up, personalize,
or contextualize their brand without losing sight of its core brand identity.
A dynamic brand is defined as a brand with more energy that can show
change, movement and flexibility. Dynamic brands are often called living
brands, because they physically change or move, reflecting the very
definition of dynamism.
“A dynamic identity is essentially opening up one or more of the components

[of a brand] to a dynamic influence,” says designer Paul Davis.
While the concept of a dynamic identity may seem straightforward, there

are countless ways to bring a dynamic brand to life. Companies are
doing everything from temporarily adopting new colors — like the NFL
did — to using new technologies to show different advertisements to
audiences based on the current weather in their geographic location.
Let’s start by looking at how you can break down your brand in a way
that helps you make it dynamic.
How to create a dynamic brand identity | 26

2 Assemble your kit of parts
In order to start making your brand dynamic,

you first need to understand its core identity.
You need to understand your brand’s values, points of differentiation,

and personality. Only once those elements have been identified should
you begin assembling your brand’s “kit of parts.” This is the first step in
designing a dynamic brand identity and should contain the following
elements:
1. A logo and/or mark

2. A typographic system
3. A color palette
If you design an identity
4. Guidelines for using icons, photography or illustration
5. A methodology of approach where the system is very
rigid, it becomes boring
“Liquid identity is the term I use to describe the “kit of parts” that we make
very quickly and it means
to design something,” says Paula Scher, Partner at Pentagram. “If you take
the notion of how identity was thought of in the Swiss international style that it’s likely to be
there might be a mark or logo, type, and maybe some other trademark overthrown because
issues that were all put together very neatly in a corner. You can’t really
do that today because information exists in every form of media, so you people need change.
need to have something that’s really more fluid than that. If you want something to
The kit of parts Scher describes brings systemization to a brand, while last a long time, you
still allowing for the brand to express itself with a sense of intuitive spirit.
Ultimately the kit contains “the things you are doing over and over to
need to have the ability
identify a place.” for flexibility.
Paula Scher
”
Partner, Pentagram
Take for example Microsoft, one of Scher’s clients at
Pentagram. The company’s primary competitor, Apple,
has long reaped the benefits of having products
identified by the same logo, brand colors, and a common
naming convention (iPad, iPhone, iTunes, etc). Microsoft,
by contrast, was struggling to get “credit” for a laundry
list of products that had disparate logos and branding.
There was no cohesion or consistent application of brand
identity to make the company’s products instantly
recognizable as belonging to Microsoft.
As Scher’s team worked to assemble a kit of parts that would

make Microsoft’s products recognizable, the existing
Windows logo was particularly problematic — it was
curved (which doesn’t make sense for a window), and the
four colors used in the logo didn’t have any meaning.
The kit of parts that Scher’s team delivered locked in on

the idea of a window pane through which you can see
the world, a consistent element that unifies each of the
products while giving the brand lots of flexibility in its
advertising to show different contexts through that
window. Note the appearance of the window pane both
in the advertisement below for Windows 8, as well as in
the new logo for Microsoft’s Office product suite.
Next we’ll explore a few commonly used tactics that often

provide the anchor of consistency for dynamic brands.

3 Common methods of creating a dynamic brand
While there are many ways to express a liquid

identity, we can learn a lot by studying
companies that have successfully created
dynamic brands.
Here are a few of the more common strategies for anchoring your brand
in something consistent and recognizable, while maintaining the flexibility
to adapt your brand to varying circumstances, events, and audiences.
Containers (dynamic elements

within a fixed container)
Many brands looking to create a more flexible identify choose to use their
logo or mark within some set of boundaries. While the logo or mark is
always present and recognizable, designers are then given the freedom
to experiment and create something new within the boundaries of the
container. The boundaries themselves and the logo or mark become the
identifying aspect of the brand, but everything else is subject to change.
One of the best examples of this approach is Warner Brothers, who since
1923 has been adapting the expression of their logo shown at the beginning
of movies to reflect the character of the movie itself.
In the examples above, the general framing of the screen and the WB mark
is consistent, but the colors, fonts, and other visual treatments of each are
uniquely adapted for each respective movie. The brand expression to the
far left, for example, shows snow and icicles accumulating within the logo
— this variation was used for the The Polar Express.
Wallpapers Using flexible wallpapers or background imagery behind
a consistently applied logo or mark is one of the most
(fixed logo or mark, common ways to create a dynamic brand.
flexible backgrounds) Music streaming service Spotify has recently riffed on

this tactic, drawing inspiration from duotone jazz album
covers from the 1960s. Spotify wanted a flexible system
that allowed them to apply their brand alongside imagery
for almost any musical artist. With their duotone wallpapers,
they’re able to tie together imagery for countless artists
despite the fact that they were shot in different styles.
Spotify even created its own software called “The Colorizer”

that allows them to easily create brand imagery for
any artist using duotone wallpapers. The system has
successfully helped the company associate millions of
unique artist images with their brand.

Generative Adaptations for seasonality, holidays, or other current
events — as we saw with the NFL’s actions for Breast
content (adaptable Cancer Awareness Month — are another way for a
brand to be dynamic.
to current events)
Few brands have employed this strategy more consistently
or effectively than Google with their “Google Doodles.”
Company founders, Larry and Sergey, first altered the
Google logo back in 1998, before the company was even
incorporated. The duo was attending the Burning Man
festival in Nevada, so they updated the company logo to
include the festival’s stick figure logo behind the second
“O” in Google. The move was intended to inform Google
users that the founders were out of office for the event
— and from there, the idea of altering the company’s logo
to reflect current events was born.
Two years later, in 2000, Larry and Sergey asked webmaster

Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce an updated
Google logo for Bastille Day. Hwang’s Bastille Day logo
was so well received that Dennis was appointed Google’s
“Chief Doodler,” and doodles became a regular fixture on
Google’s homepage.
In every instance, the Google wordmark is consistent,

with the rest of the logo design adapted to celebrate
everything from ice cream sundaes to Senegal’s
Independence Day. This gives the brand the opportunity
to consistently reinvent itself in new and fun ways,
while delivering a more meaningful and relevant brand
experience to consumers. For example, Senegal’s
Independence Day is seen by many as a point of national
pride; this variation of the Google logo allows Google
to celebrate in a small way with its Senegalese users.
A full archive of Google Doodles can be found here.
Product Another popular means of creating a dynamic brand
identity is allowing customers to customize some aspect
customization of a product or service. Doing so increases feelings of
uniqueness and individuality for the consumer, while also
fostering the positive associations of brand belonging.
“These days, brands that matter and resonate with people

are the ones that feel like they’re authentically made and
designed just for you,” says Tracy Lloyd, Co-founder and
Chief Strategy Officer at Emotive Brands.
Nike is one brand using product customization to their

advantage. Nike’s ID program allows customers to design
their own shoes — the famous Nike swoosh being the
one non-negotiable element — while the rest of the shoe
becomes ownable on an individual level.
Coca-Cola has taken a slightly different approach to

product customization, launching their famous “Share a
Coke” campaign in 2011. Designed as an effort to reach
millennials, Coke began offering bottles that displayed
popular first names for the generation on the side of their
cans. Over 800 first names were offered, and consumers
felt a deeper connection to the brand when they found a
can labeled with their name. Coke now offers the ability
to customize your own cans at ShareaCoke.com. The
depth of this brand connection is evident in customers’
willingness to pay five times the normal price of a Coke
for their own customized version.

Personalization Personalization occurs when a dynamic brand uses
information about a consumer to deliver a more relevant
brand experience. This form of 1-to-1 marketing is typically
more effective than traditional advertising, as brands
can engage with consumers based on factors like their
unique interests, preferences, past behaviors, and
geographic location. According to a survey by Infosys,
86% of consumers say that personalization has some
impact on what they purchase, and one quarter admit
personalization significantly influences their buying
decisions. Marketers have taken notice: 56% of marketing
leaders increased their personalization spend in 2018.
Uber’s new brand is dynamic by design, allowing the brand

to tailor itself to provide a more contextually relevant
experience to consumers across the globe. The brand’s
logo, iconography, and composition are very much
consistent, but the brand is flexible enough to support
the use of location-specific imagery, so that people living
in a given area see ads more relevant to their daily lives.
For example, a surfer emerging from the water in
Southern California might see a billboard like the one
shown below.
Toyota has taken this concept a step further, creating

multiple variations of television commercials promoting
their best-selling car, the Camry. Toyota sought to deliver
a brand and advertising experience more relevant to
consumers based on their ethnicity, filming Camry ads
targeting African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American
consumers. The company is then able to provide advertising
partners with a full suite of commercials, with the most
relevant commercial being aired based on the demographic
make-up of the audience for a particular television
program. For example, ABC’s Scandal has a relatively
high percentage of African-American viewers, making
that variation of the commercial most likely to air during
the show.
This concept can be extended all the way to the individual YOUR BRAND’S POSITIONING
consumer, too. For example, Target assigns every SHOULD NOT BE DYNAMIC
customer a unique Guest ID number after their first
interaction with the brand. The ID is used to track each While the strategies outlined above
individual’s demographic information, ranging from are commonly employed to help
ethnicity to job history, as well as buying behaviors. make a brand more flexible, one
element of your brand that should
“Once consumers’ shopping habits are ingrained,
always remain constant is your brand
it’s incredibly difficult to change them,” writes Charles
positioning. You don’t want to
Duhigg in his article How Companies Learn Your
personalize what your brand stands
Secrets published in The New York Times. That tends
for or why someone should buy your
to ring true until a major life event takes place that
products. No matter how many
changes consumer behavior &mash; like finding out
different buyer personas you serve,
that you’re having a baby. Working with a team of
your buyers’ motivations for choosing
marketing analysts, Target’s team was able to build
your product over your competitors’
a “pregnancy prediction score” to deliver more
are almost always the same.
relevant advertising and showcase products relevant
to expecting mothers. For example, a shoe company
wouldn’t want to tell Sally that their
While brand personalization is proven to influence
new shoe is designed to be worn with
consumer behavior, delivering this level of personalization
dress clothes, while telling Tom that
comes with a new set of challenges. This likely includes
the product is best for long distance
requiring additional creative capacity, increased data
running. The elements of your brand
management expertise, and use of emerging technologies
identify that can be flexible need to
like artificial intelligence as a delivery engine for
be able to extend your brand in
personalized advertising at scale.
relevant ways without losing sight of
Let’s look at some of the emerging technologies that your brand’s unwavering positioning
brand managers can use to help bring dynamic brand in the market.
identities to life.

4 Technology to support dynamic brand identities
Artificial intelligence (AI)

In Gartner’s 2018 Marketing Technology Survey, marketing leaders rated
AI as their first choice of emerging technologies that will have the greatest
positive impact on marketing over the next five years. AI has already
shown results in terms of increasing engagement and conversion rates,
which leads to better marketing ROI.
In order to take advantage of AI technology, marketers are beginning to

invest in customer data platforms and personalization engines necessary
to feed the AI.
For example, TruGreen has been testing AI-generated ads that personalize
lawn care tips and recommendations based on weather conditions in the
user’s geographic area. Using IBM’s Watson platform, TruGreen serves ads
that leverage images, video, and text adapted to the weather outside.
The company then uses chatbots to capture further insights from the
consumer, delivering product recommendations specifically tailored to
their users’ lawn conditions.
While similar applications of AI show great promise, as an emerging

technology, there are some drawbacks. Many modern marketing terms
lack the technical or analytical skills (like algorithm development)
needed to test and analyze the impact of personalization programs at
scale. Additionally, many teams are struggling to produce the volume of
content needed to deliver personalized brand experiences; with so many
possible permutations, additional creative capacity is a prerequisite.
“I estimate that for mid-market and top global brands the number of
creative assets in motion for any given brand is 10 times what it was
seven years ago,” says Brandfolder CEO Luke Beatty. “This is further
complicated by increased omnichannel endpoints like email, social,
e-commerce, and other channels.”
Digital Asset Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions like Brandfolder
are quickly becoming a key tool for brand managers
Management solutions looking to ensure that their dynamic brand identities are
being applied with consistency. As a company’s number of
internal employees, agencies, and other partners grows,
so does the possibility of the brand’s identity eroding if
brand guidelines aren’t followed closely.
DAM solutions allow users to search for a specific brand

asset, while providing guidelines around how that asset
should be used. Providing this level of regulation is
critically important as a brand scales, helping to ensure
that assets are being used correctly and consistently
while building credibility and trust for the brand.
As we’ve seen, there are a number of ways to create a more

fluid, dynamic brand identity — one that’s able to constantly
reinvent itself in more personalized and contextually relevant
ways. Here’s a summary of the most critical points to
remember as your brand begins building its own dynamic
brand identity.“I estimate that for mid-market and top global
brands the number of creative assets in motion for any given
brand is 10 times what it was seven years ago,” says
Brandfolder CEO Luke Beatty. “This is further complicated by
increased omnichannel endpoints like email, social,
e-commerce, and other channels.”

5
Key Takeaways
1
Dynamic brands allow brand managers to
consistently reinvent themselves and present
fresh and contextually relevant versions of the
brand without losing their most identifiable
characteristics.
2
Brand managers must decide which components
of their brand will be dynamic and which
components will always remain static. There are
a number of common approaches to choose
from, but the consistent application of one
approach is key.
3
Don’t try to personalize what your brand stands
for or why someone should buy it — these
attributes of your brand should remain constant.
4
Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence
can help deliver more dynamic and personalized
brand experiences, but will likely require
additional creative capacity and technical skills
to leverage successfully.
How to
create an
international
brand
When Dara Khosrowshahi opened the door
How to to Uber’s San Francisco headquarters on the
create an final day of August 2017, the pressure in the
company’s corporate office sucked the door
international
closed behind him.
brand
2017 had been a trying year for Uber, with scandal after scandal and the departure
of their founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick.
1
How Uber rebranded The brand’s image had been tarnished — perhaps irreparably so — but that
did nothing to alleviate the lofty expectations of the company’s investors who
to support
had already poured $24.2 billion into the company. Media outlets spoke of a
international expansion p46 potential IPO for the company on the horizon in 2019. Then there was Lyft,
the thorn in Uber’s side, with the pink logo and the happy-go-lucky drivers
2 that just seemed to be doing everything right.
How to build an Khosrowshahi felt the weight of those expectations fully for the first time that
international brand p50 morning — he needed to take one of the fastest growing technology start-ups
of all time and make sure that its growth trajectory didn’t miss a beat. And
with 90% of the earth’s population expected to live in developing countries by
3 2030, he knew he’d need to accelerate international expansion in search of the
Create a “glocal” growth he’d just signed up to deliver.
brand strategy p52
4
Key Takeaways for building
an international brand p55
1 How Uber rebranded to support international expansion
Uber had already rebranded —

just a year before, in 2016.
The effort had been deemed a colossal flop, and aside from the negative
associations the new brand had taken on amid the turbulence of the
subsequent 12 months, Khosrowshahi and his team knew that the brand
they were inheriting would not support the international expansion the
company now required. So for the second time in two years, a complete
rebrand commenced.
Khosrowshahi turned to his Executive Director of Brand, Peter Markatos,

to lead the charge in early 2018. Markatos began by assembling a
cross-functional team comprising Uber's own brand team, agency Wolff
Olins, and typeface designer Jeremy Mickel. The task in front of them
was ambitious.
"This rebrand represents Uber's transition from a San Francisco start-up

to a global company," said Markatos. "As we expand our reach into our
other markets and modalities, it's super important that it's very clear that
when you're getting into an Uber car or on an Uber scooter, you know
that is an Uber product. This has implications when it comes to safety,
when it comes to accessibility, so we took this very seriously."
The team's goal was clear: "We want Uber to be known as a global platform
for mobility," Markatos said. Here's how the Uber brand team delivered.
How to create an international brand | 40

Start by listening Markatos’s group began the rebrand effort by listening,
gathering feedback from Uber users and drivers around
the globe. After more than 1,000 hours of “listening to
what the brand needs globally,” they identified a set of
key findings that informed their next steps.
1. Uber’s existing brand strengths were brand

recognition and the association with the color black.
2. Movement meant opportunity in the eyes of the of
the consumer — as did Uber’s product. Markatos
and his team embraced this finding, as it gave the
brand nearly endless ways to express the brand
through movement.
3. Consumers didn’t associate the brand’s existing
symbol — the letter U on a black background — with
the company. In fact, they found that many Uber
drivers were actually turning around the decal in their
card, revealing the other side that showed the entire
company name. “It doesn’t make sense to build more
equity into something that people don’t understand,”
Markatos said.
This final finding was of particular interest to Markatos and

his brand team. Logos containing a full brand name are
most often seen in early stage companies looking to build
brand awareness for the first time. Uber already had strong
brand recognition, so reverting to a logo that leveraged
the full brand name would be abnormal, but there was no
denying what they’d seen when observing drivers out in
the field.
Many of the brands that he admired had developed instant

recognition of logos without any word mark whatsoever
— the Nike swoosh and Apple’s signature apple with a
bite taken out of it came to mind. But there was some
precedent for global companies with short names, like eBay
and Google, using their full name in their logo.
Uber followed suit.
Key elements of the new Uber brand
Logo
Uber’s new logo moves the brand beyond the previously
used symbol, this time taking full advantage of the company’s
name recognition.
“It may not be as cool, not by any means,” says Armin Vit,
co-founder of UnderConsideration, “But more importantly,
it’s easy to identify.”
Iconography
Typeface
Uber’s new iconography also draws inspiration from the
Uber’s new typeface — dubbed “Uber Move” — was
global transportation world. The arrow is a key part of
designed for the company by Jeremy Mickel. Mickel
their iconography and is internationally recognizable
drew inspiration from other typefaces associated with
shorthand for connecting destinations.
transportation, including Johnston (used in the London
Underground) and Highway Gothic (used on American Voice and tone
road signs). The typeface is available in every alphabet
Molly Watson wrote the brand’s new voice and tone
that’s used in a city where Uber is available.
guidelines, built around the following guiding principles:
Designer Massimo Vignelli, famous for his work
1. Audience first communication
overhauling the typeface used in the New York City
2. Straightforward and easy to understand
subway system, approved of the straightforward
3. Recognizability through consistency
typeface Mickel designed.
An emphasis on straightforward, functional design runs
“I don’t think that type should be expressive at all,” Vignelli
through all aspects of Uber’s new brand.
said. “I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typeface and it
doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that
[think that] when they write ‘dog’ it should bark.”

Results of Uber’s rebrand After the disastrous results of the company’s 2016 rebrand,
Khosrowshahi and Markatos couldn’t afford another
misstep, and the emphasis they put on “listening to what
the brand needs” appears to have paid off. While few
would call the new brand daring, it’s firmly rooted in design
function over form — a key tenet of the brand’s ability to
communicate across cultures.
“It was a smart play that repaints the company as more

accessible, and readies the company for its inevitable
IPO,” says Mark Wilson in Fast Company. Results of an
UnderConsideration poll also show favorable opinion of
the new brand.
“This new logo marks the apex of the extreme simplification

trend in logos that we’ve been seeing in the past year or
two and manages to take it to the farthest end of that
spectrum,” says Armin Vit. “You might disagree with me:
but it’s actually perfect.”
Uber poll results after rebrand
2 How to build an international brand
While Uber is still actively unveiling their new brand, the process that
Markatos and his team employed is worthy of imitation.
As the economy becomes more global, brand managers must

make sure that their brands can communicate across cultures
Host listening sessions
and avoid unintentionally insulting anyone in the process. to help you understand
“Culture is created and preserved mainly by communication. the nuances of each market
For decades, communication had circulated mostly within
the borders of countries, helping to build strong national The 1,000+ hours that Markatos’s team spent “listening to
cultures,” writes Holt, Quelch, and Taylor in their article what the brand needs” is a process now commonly referred
“How Global Brands Compete,” published in Harvard to as user experience research. Long before that term
Business Review. “Toward the end of the twentieth century, became commonplace, Massimo Vignelli took a similar
much of popular culture became global. As nations approach to redesigning the signage for the New York
integrated into the world economy, cross-border tourism City subway system.
and labor mobility rose; TV channels, movies, and music
In the middle of 1966, when Vignelli landed the project
became universally available to consumers; and, more
that would change his life, the subway system was over
recently, Internet growth has exploded. Those factors force
60 years old and in a state of disarray — there wasn’t any
people to see themselves in relation to other cultures as
cohesive visual hierarchy to the subway map or signage.
well as their own.”
But before Vignelli began bringing order to the system,
Today brand managers must take a deliberate approach he spent the first few years of the project underground
to making sure their brands translate well across cultures. watching passengers get on and off of trains and navigate
This process begins with listening. their way through the stations. His designs needed to
serve these passengers, so he studied their habits. Where
did they go? Where did their eyes look for information as
they moved through the stations?
“The problem wasn’t about making a great looking

visual system and gridded map for the design community
— it was about effectively helping people navigate a
complicated infrastructure by giving them the right amount
of information when they needed it,” says Alexander
Tochilovsky, Design Curator at the Herb Lubalin Study
Center of Design and Typography.
As with Uber’s rebrand, design function was of greater

importance than design form — and a functional design
could not have been delivered without carefully observing
users’ needs.

How to host listening sessions to understand your users’ needs
Clearly identify your goals or objectives IKEA is another brand that’s reaped the benefits of
Brand managers seeking international expansion must carefully observing their customers’ lifestyles and use
first clearly identify the goals of their rebranding efforts. of their products across cultures. While their furniture
How can a rebrand help solve the problems that your style remains decidedly Swedish, the company regularly
brand’s customers are experiencing globally? Start by conducts interviews via home visits, so that they can
clearly defining what “success” looks like for your make furniture that relates directly to how it will be used.
customers in each new market. The room setups in IKEA stores are also adapted for each
market. While the sets may contain the same furniture,
Get out of the building stores in Japan, for example, have floors covered with
Neither Markatos nor Vignelli delivered their successful tatami mats — a mainstay of the Japanese household.
rebrands sitting in their offices or a boardroom. Start by
getting out of the office and observing how customers
Research existing competitors in each market.
experience your brand “in the wild.” Ideally, immerse Brand managers should also research any existing
yourself in each international market to see how your brand competitors — and their customers’ experiences of
is experienced (or will be experienced) there. If you “those brands — before moving into a new market.
don’t have this opportunity, hire local help — boots on the This can provide valuable insight into how your brand
ground who can conduct this research for you. is differentiated in the market; after all, your points of
differentiation in your home market may not be the
Perhaps no brand has experienced this challenge as same as those in international markets. If you’re unable
significantly as Airbnb. When the company launched, to find competitors in new markets, carefully consider
CMO Jonathan Mildenhall was tasked with convincing why — there could be regulations harmful to your brand
people around the globe that staying in a stranger’s that you’re unaware of.
house wasn’t awkward or dangerous. Mildenhall
recognized early on that some elements of his brand Compile your findings and connect the dots
were global — everybody wanted clean sheets — but After witnessing your target customers and the problems
beyond that, localization would be a key to his success. they face in each international market, think about
how your rebrand can help solve their problems. This will
Under his guidance, Airbnb built a dedicated localization
define the objectives and goals that your rebrand should
department responsible for making the site accessible
seek to address.
around the globe and for local storytelling, which was
essential for developing trust and a sense of community With a solid understanding of how your rebrand can
between hosts and travelers. The move proved effective, serve your target customer, you’re now ready to begin
as Airbnb now operates in more than 190 countries and creating your “glocal” brand strategy.
34,000 cities — more than double that of Uber.
3 Create a “glocal” brand strategy
The most successful leaders in creating

global brands — from Markatos at Uber to
Mildenhall at Airbnb — recognize that while
their brand needs consistent messaging and
positioning, it has to be combined with an
understanding of local culture and tastes.
Holt, Quelch, and Taylor refer to this tactic as “Glocal Strategy” in their
article “How Global Brands Compete.”
One easy way to create a glocal strategy is to position your product or

brand next to cultural icons or celebrities. During the 2018 FIFA World
Cup, Coca-Cola’s international homepages featured local celebrities and
cultural references alongside instantly recognizable and consistent
Coca-Cola branding.

Important considerations 1. Make sure that your logo is sensitive to local
cultural norms
for your glocalization strategy For example, a logo featuring a woman’s face may
not be appropriate in many Middle Eastern markets.
Branding agencies with experience researching
cultural sensitivities can help you avoid such mistakes.
Airbnb considered this thoroughly when they launched

their logo, the “Bélo,” designed to be an international
symbol for belonging.
2. Consider registering country-specific domain names.

Most websites can be easily translated these days,
but you should also consider registering country-
specific domain names for each of the markets your
brand is entering. The United Kingdom’s Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills found that a
monolingual approach to business costs the nation’s
economy £48 billion a year — 3.5% of its GDP.
3. Trademark your products to the extent that you can.

Knock-offs are rampant in many parts of the world, and
trademark laws vary greatly by country — it’s worth
having whatever protections you can as provided by law.
Start by registering with the US Patent and Trademark
Office: you can apply directly on their website.
The World Intellectual Property Office is a good resource

for looking at trademark laws by country. Consider
using the Madrid System, which allows you to register
trademarks with one application in 119 countries.
4. Make sure your product names and copy are

culturally sensitive across markets.
Don’t trust computer translations when naming your
products or writing copy for international markets.
Instead, hire native speakers that live locally.
For example, Starbucks’s Gingerbread Latte didn’t sell well in

Germany, even though gingerbread is a popular holiday
cookie in the country. Sales of the drink increased
dramatically when Starbucks began using the German word
for gingerbread and rebranded the drink the Lebkuchen Latte.
International • Clairol failed to do their homework when they launched
the Mist Stick, which translated to Manure Stick
branding bloopers in Germany.
• Colgate made a similar misstep when they decided to

sell a toothpaste in France called Cue — which is also
the name of a French pornographic magazine.
• Gerber marketed baby food in Africa with a cute baby

on the label. They didn’t know that, in Ethiopia, for
example, product labels usually have pictures of what’s
inside since many consumers can’t read.
• Coors translated its slogan, “Turn It Loose,” into Spanish,

where it’s a colloquial term for having diarrhea.
• KFC made Chinese consumers a bit apprehensive

when “finger licking good” was translated as “eat
your fingers off.”
• The American Dairy Association replicated its

“Got Milk?” campaign in Spanish-speaking countries,
where it was translated to “Are You Lactating?”

5
Key Takeaways for building an international brand
1
Use straightforward visual communication that’s
easily understood by customers across cultures;
design function trumps design form.
2
Keep your product’s messaging and positioning
consistent, but adapt your tactics for the nuances
and sensitivities of each international market.
3
Brands should seek to become associated with a
single, universally accepted idea — like Uber has
done with mobility.
4
Enlist the help of native speakers living locally or
agencies with experience identifying cultural
sensitivities to avoid using inappropriate
language or iconography.
How to rebrand
to change your
brand positioning
The International House of Pancakes (IHOP) has
How to had hamburgers on its menu since it opened its
rebrand to doors on Riverside Drive in Burbank, California in
the summer of 1958.
change your
brand But nearly as steady as the flow of pancakes making their way out of IHOP’s
kitchens was a series of failed attempts to grow the chain’s lunch and dinner
positioning businesses. Despite being open 24/7, more than half of IHOP’s revenue comes
from breakfast, with dinner generating merely 16% of the company’s earnings.
As IHOP President Darren Rebelez and his team considered this problem,
1 it was obvious to them that the company’s name was responsible for its
IHOP rebrands as IHOb positioning in the market: IHOP had understandably become synonymous
p60 with pancakes. A new line of black angus burgers was being introduced
at IHOPs around the globe, but Rebelez knew that he was heading toward
another failed attempt to grow IHOP’s lunch and dinner business — unless
2 he could change his brand’s position in the market.
How to change your
“We knew if we were going to really get into the burger business in a
brand’s positioning
meaningful way that we were going to have to do something bold and
through a rebrand creative,” Rebelez said. In the summer of 2018, they did just that.
p61
3
Key Takeaways
p68
1 IHOP rebrands as IHOb
Rebelez’s plan began on June 4, 2018, when

IHOP’s corporate Twitter account sent out a
tweet hinting that the company would soon
be changing its name to IHOb.
“We came up with the idea of flipping the ‘p’ to a ‘b’ to really grab
everyone’s attention,” said Rebelez.
A social media firestorm ensued, as IHOP fans wondered aloud what the
newly introduced “b” stood for. “Breakfast” was the obvious answer —
such a move could easily reposition the company to offer a wider array
of breakfast items aside from just pancakes. Bacon? Biscuits? The
ambiguity of it all was maddening, and countless other brands jumped
on the conjecture bandwagon.
One week later, IHOP made the name change official: IHOP was now IHOb,
and the “b” stood for burgers. Not everybody was amused, but the results
of the change were undeniable: the campaign generated over 30 billion
social media impressions and 20,000 news articles. According to YouGov,
which tracks the perception of more than 1,500 brands daily through
its BrandIndex, IHOP’s Word of Mouth score rose from 19 percent to 30
percent in the week following its announcement.
Then, just one month after announcing the name change, IHOP shocked
the world again when it announced that the name change had been nothing
more than a publicity stunt to promote its burger business; the company
was reverting to being called IHOP once again. While the “rebrand” was
technically a hoax, the story perfectly illustrates the power of rebranding
to change your positioning in the market. IHOP’s burger sales quadrupled
in the subsequent quarter.
Let’s explore how brand managers can use a rebrand to change their
positioning in the market — like IHOP, but without the hoax.
How to rebrand to change your brand positioning | 52

2 How to change your brand’s positioning through a rebrand
Repositioning a brand is a major undertaking and can mean anything from

expanding people’s perceptions of you brand — as IHOP did — to changing
their perceptions altogether. There are plenty of reasons that you may
need to rebrand to change your brand’s positioning, but let’s explore a few
of the most common.
Common reasons brands need to change their positioning

The brand has changed its focus or direction. Often this to shed the perception that all the brand offers is donuts.
occurs as single-product brands grow and introduce Without doing so, the brand feared it would lose
additional products; a rebrand is required to better relevance and the brand loyalty of its younger customers.
encompass all of the company’s products.
Regardless of your reasons for considering a rebrand,
The brand needs to alter or improve its public perception. your customers’ perceptions of your brand are your
Brands that have fallen on hard times or suffered from brand’s reality. Any successful rebrand starts with
tarnished reputations often rebrand with the goal of carefully analyzing what those existing perceptions are.
improving public perception of their brand. Uber recently How? Through customer research.
did so in the face of workplace harassment and
discrimination charges. Uber’s moving forward and
diversity pages are examples of this rebrand in action.
They even released a TV spot using the video at the
top of their moving forward page.
The market has become increasingly competitive, and

the brand needs to evolve to distinguish itself from
the competition. Copper, a CRM software company,
recently rebranded for this reason. Formerly called
ProsperWorks, Copper competes in a hyper-competitive
category that’s long been dominated by the color blue
and companies with very literal names; for example,
Salesforce, SugarCRM, and Salesloft. By adopting a less
literal name and magenta (a shade of bright pink) as their
brand’s primary color, Copper sought to distinguish its
brand in an increasingly homogenous market.
The brand is struggling to remain relevant as market or

consumer preferences change. Faced with a younger
generation of customers who are more health conscious,
Dunkin’ Donuts recently rebranded to Dunkin’ in an effort
Start with customer research
Businesses can’t change consumer perceptions of their brand — or their positioning in the market — until they identify
what those perceptions are. “Marketing is not about merely sharing what you, the marketer believes,” says bestselling
marketing author Seth Godin. “It’s about what we, the listener, believe.” Follow the steps outlined below to begin
understanding the existing perceptions of your brand.
How to perform customer research on your brand perception

1. Start with social—Social media interactions can be a 4. Talk to your frontline employees—Include as many
useful place to start capturing insights into consumer frontline employees as possible in the customer research
perceptions of your brand. You can start by simply process; they are the ambassadors of your brand on a
scrolling through your social media feeds looking for day-to-day basis. “I think the biggest mistake people
mentions of your brand. Keep an eye out for both praise make when they do a rebrand is they don’t involve enough
and criticism, as it’s typically emotional responses to people internally,” says Morgan Norman, CMO of Copper.
your brand that will surface useful insights. Also look
5. Document and share your findings—Your brand
at any online reviews of your product or service. Social
perception ultimately starts with your own internal
media monitoring tools like Google Alerts or Mention.
team, and your rebrand won’t be successful without
com can be helpful in consistently surfacing new brand
them. It’s critical that you document and share your
mentions that occur online.
findings openly, so that your team understands why
2. Interview your customers—Use surveys or interviews a change in positioning is necessary.
to ask your customers open-ended, leading questions
While performing customer research may feel time
about your brand. Ask them questions like:
consuming, it’s the foundation that your rebrand will be
- What perceptions do you have of our brand? built upon. “Sometimes one sentence said by one
- What values do you associate with our brand? person within hundreds of hours of conversation unlocks
- What values are important to you as a consumer? a powerful new idea,” says Peter Muhlmann, CEO &
Founder of online reviews site Trustpilot. To illustrate the
- If you could change one thing about your experience
importance, let’s take a look at two brands that failed to
with our brand, what would it be?
take this critical step.
3. Empathize with your customer—Now that you know
what your customers think about your brand, you must
uncover why they think that way. Ask them directly
what’s led them to their perceptions of your brand.

Two brands that In 2011, online retailer Overstock.com decided to rebrand,
starting with a change to their company name. But the
moved too fast: Netflix company made a critical misstep, failing to conduct ample
customer research and instead hinging their rebrand on a
and Overstock.com desire to be more “hip.”
After unveiling a new brand name — O.co — the company

proceeded to update its website, its advertising, everything.
It even changed the name of the NFL stadium in Oakland
for which it owned naming rights. The brand name fell
flat with consumers, many of whom were confused and
navigated to 0.com rather than O.co after seeing the
company’s new commercials. “We were going too fast
and people were confused, which told us we didn’t do a
good job,” President Jonathan Johnson said.
Netflix, the online service for streaming digital TV shows

and movies, made an even grander blunder that same year
after failing to gather sufficient customer feedback to
inform their rebranding project. The company decided
to rebrand its DVD rental business as Qwikster, a move it
would retract only a few weeks later after 800,000
customers canceled their subscriptions. “I messed up,” said
CEO Reed Hastings. “It’s clear from our research over the
last two months and we owe our customers an explanation.”
Only once you have a solid grasp on consumers’

perceptions of your brand can you begin the process
of repositioning so that it better resonates with your
target customers. “It is incredibly powerful to tell
your customer, ‘We have listened to you, and we are
going to do things a little differently now,’” says Anurag
Harsh, SVP and Founding Executive of Ziff Davis.
Maintain the core, Questions to inform your new brand position
1. Why do we exist? This question helps you define your
favorable attributes of your organization’s reason for being aside from just making
brand; toss the rest profits. It’s important that you dig into your brand’s
purpose and values first, so that when you get to the
With your customer research in hand, it’s time to make details like designing a logo and choosing a typeface,
some decisions: What’s the overarching objective of your you have a better idea of what you are trying to express.
rebrand? What positioning in the market do you want your
2. Can we lead the world in what we do? The most
new brand to lay claim to?
favorable positioning for your brand is likely the one
Peter Muhlmann, CEO of Trustpilot, recently faced these that you can claim more than anyone else. This question
decisions as he sought to reposition his brand to support helps you dig into your company’s core competencies;
international expansion and combat a growing distrust of strive to identify a brand position your company can
online review sites. “In the end, we re-discovered our core fight for and win.
by highlighting all of the good and tossing what needed to
3. What attributes of our product or service are
be changed,” said Muhlmann.
differentiated from competitive products? In what
This is a common thread in most rebranding projects. ways is your brand differentiated from your competitors?
Your brand, regardless of its state, holds onto some You need to identify these attributes before you can
undeniable truths that will likely always be core elements decide which ones to hinge your positioning on.
of its brand identity. The key is to maintain these elements
4. What attributes of our product or service do (enough)
while discarding the perceptions that are unfavorable,
target consumers care about? Your brand may be
too narrow, or no longer relevant. These questions can
differentiated on attributes that simply aren’t important
help you identify and make decisions about the positioning
to prospective buyers. The key is to identify points of
your rebrand aims to support.
differentiation that matter to at least some segment of
target customers. Not all target customers, but some
specific group. Identify the group that cares about your
points of differentiation, and use that to your advantage.
5. Where is the “white space”? Particularly in crowded

markets, seek to identify the “white space” — the
corners of your market that nobody is fighting for.
As you go through the process of answering these

questions, an agency partner can often provide an
enormous amount of value. It’s not that your own internal
team is lacking in knowledge or skill, but more that an
agency can hold up an unbiased mirror to your business.
Let’s next look at a brand with a particularly challenging

product that successfully rebranded to dramatically
change their position in the market.

Kellogg’s rebrands
All-Bran around its cancer
fighting superpowers
When Bill Weintraub took the reigns as CMO at Kellogg’s,
he inherited a particularly challenging brand with lagging
sales: All-Bran cereal.
Kids would fly by the box in the grocery store in search of

Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes, and even for the most
health-conscious consumers, All-Bran was a tough sell.
“In the case of All-Bran cereal, it’s not very appetizing,”

says Weintraub. “It’s not appetizing-looking and it gets
very soggy. It tastes like you’re eating straw.”
And a diet that is rich in dietary fiber reduces the risk of
Weintraub knew that he’d need to reposition the brand in
certain kinds of cancer, so the National Cancer Institute
order to successfully turn sales around, a process that began
said, ‘We will support your brand, and we will endorse
with carefully considering the existing characteristics and
your brand.’ So the Food and Drug Administration was
truths of the product. Weintraub noted that All-Bran had
not happy that we did this with a different branch of the
more dietary fiber than not just any cereal, but any food
federal government. But there’s nothing they could do to
on the market. Otherwise, the product wasn’t exactly
stop this, because the National Cancer Institute was
ripe with attributes that could be used to reposition the
interested in preventing cancer, and so we went ahead.”
brand. “The only other possible benefit that this brand
has is it helps you if you’re constipated; and that’s not In doing so, All-Bran became the first food product in
something easy to talk about or discuss,” Weintraub said. the United States to successfully make a health claim
— one that resonated deeply with health-conscious
Dietary fiber it was.
consumers and turned sales of the product around.
Until that time, food brands in the United States were not The dietary fiber had been present in All-Bran all along,
allowed to make health claims without going through a but it took the cancer prevention claims to successfully
prohibitively expensive and time-consuming process that reposition the product.
included clinical trials and getting formal approval from
Next, we’ll look at a shift that many modern brands are
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Weintraub saw
making in order to command a premium price, increase
an opportunity to circumvent the FDA and position All-Bran
brand loyalty, and accelerate the speed at which their
around the benefits of a diet that’s high in dietary fiber —
brands claim a new position in the market.
namely cancer prevention.
“All-Bran had more dietary fiber than any food,” says

Weintraub. “The National Cancer Institute, who is a
government agency, doesn’t give a shit about brands,
but they do have an interest in preventing cancer.
Move from a purchase brand to a usage brand
Once you’ve identified the attributes of your brand that At that point, it’s only logical that a potential customer
you’d like to exploit, you should carefully consider the looking to purchase makeup would buy the product that
strategies you’ll use to bring your new brand positioning they were taught specifically to apply. Cosmetic stores
to market. Mark Bonchek and Vivek Bapat make a that rely on glossy magazine advertisements showing
compelling case for a strategy they describe as moving models wearing makeup products are not able to reap
from a purchase brand to a usage brand in their article similar benefits.
“The Most Successful Brands Focus On Users Not
Here’s how you can help transition your brand from a
Buyers,” published in Harvard Business Review.
purchase brand to a usage brand.
Bonchek and Bapat surveyed consumers about their
perception, usage, preference, and advocacy for 50 How to transition from a purchase brand to
different brands, the responses resulting in two clusters a usage brand
the authors refer to as purchase brands and usage
Focus less on what your advertising says, more on
•
brands. The differences lie in the approach these brands
what your customers do. Influencer marketing, user-
take to positioning their products in the market.
generated content, and referral programs represent
Purchase brands worry about what they say to customers; opportunities for your customers to help change your
usage brands worry about what customers say to each brand positioning for you. The words and opinions of
other. Purchase brands try to create differentiation in actual customers are typically viewed as more credible
brand perception in the hope it will influence consideration and trustworthy than those of brands themselves;
and purchase. But usage brands are focused on how their leverage your existing customers to your advantage.
products will make a customer’s life better.
Create great brand experiences, even for non-
•
The role of advertising, then, becomes very different. customers. As we saw with Sephora, focus on creating
While purchase brands leverage advertising in hopes great content and brand experiences for non-customers.
that consumers will consider buying their products, Doing so allows you to build brand credibility, so when
usage brands use advertising as a means of getting the time for a purchase presents itself, your brand is
useful content and experiences into the hands of top-of-mind for the consumer.
prospective customers. The message for usage brands
The benefits of making the transition from a purchase
shifts to “Look at how easy, great, or convenient our
brand to a usage brand are reinforced by Bonchek and
brand is making your life — imagine what it will be like
Bapat’s survey findings. On average, customers of usage
when you become a customer of ours.”
brands were willing to pay a 7% premium, were 8% less
Take for example Sephora, a retailer of makeup and other likely to switch, and were more than twice as likely to
cosmetic products. Sephora’s sales model relies heavily make a spontaneous recommendation of the brand.
on the in-store experience, where the company focuses
on educating consumers about various makeup products,
giving in-store demonstrations, and even teaching
potential customers how to apply each product properly.
Before a purchase is ever made, the in-store experience
educates the buyer, teaching them something new.

Launch your new brand
With your new position in the market identified and your strategy taking form, it’s time to launch and take your rebrand to
market. Here are four important strategies to leverage to make sure your new brand lands effectively and begins to take hold.
1. Make a big splash. Rebranding to change consumer 4. Stay the course, closely adhering to your new
perception of your brand is hard. You’ll never be able to brand guidelines. It’s exceedingly rare that any
permanently delete your customers’ memories or past rebrand occurs without some form of confusion or
experiences with your brand; you can only hope to criticism; prepare yourself for this ahead of time and
change their perceptions going forward. Changes in trust in the process that you’ve followed. Continue to
perception don’t happen with small incremental tweaks, adhere to your new brand guidelines in everything
so make a big splash when you launch your new brand. that you do. IHOP’s rebrand, while short-lived, went
Remember IHOP? Faux name change or not, the so far as replacing signage for stores in highly visible
company’s “rebrand” was successful largely because locations like Hollywood, California, even though
they dared to be bold. the company knew the rebrand would be reversed.
2. Launch the new brand in conjunction with another Rebranding to change a brand’s positioning in the market
significant milestone or event. Launching your new is a challenging task for even the most experienced brand
brand in conjunction with another major milestone offers marketers, but sometimes it’s the only path forward.
a few benefits. First, it provides another newsworthy By conducting in-depth customer research, maintaining
reason to shine light on your brand and often draws in a the favorable aspects of your brand, and mobilizing your
new audience who cares about that event or milestone. customers to help bring your new brand position to
Additionally, it take the focus off of the rebrand, helping market, you can effectively reposition your brand to
to ensure that the rebrand isn’t being viewed as “a achieve the business results you’re looking for.
rebrand for the sake of a rebrand.” For example, IHOP
launched its new brand alongside a partnership with
DoorDash, announcing that the company would deliver
either burgers or pancakes. “I always believe in launching
around an event,” says Morgan Norman, whose rebrand
of Copper launched at Google’s Next conference.
“It makes it real for people and real for customers.”
3. Build a cross-departmental team. A rebrand is not

simply a marketing project. Delivering your new brand
requires a cross-functional team that includes resources
from all parts of the organization. You may need your
legal team involved if you’re changing your brand name,
you’ll need customer service to help update service
messages, and your sales team will need to communicate
with prospects to explain why the rebrand is happening
and how it’s beneficial to them. If your employees don’t
buy into the rebrand, your customers never will.
3
Key Takeaways
1
Many rebrands fail in their efforts to change the
brand’s positioning because they are too busy
saying what they want to say, not what the
audience wants to hear. Customer research will
help you avoid most rebranding pitfalls.
2
Maintain the core, favorable attributes of your
brand, but drop the aspects of your current
positioning that are no longer relevant or
favorable for your brand.
3
Strive to move from a purchase brand to a usage
brand. Your customers represent your biggest
ally in quickly and effectively changing
perceptions of your brand.
4
Make a big splash when launching your new
brand. Changing consumer perceptions is hard
— be bold!
What brand
managers can
learn from
DTC companies
Over the last decade, direct-to-consumer
What brand (DTC) companies like Warby Parker, Away,
managers can and Chubbies have reinvented how people
buy consumer products.
learn from
DTC companies For established retail brands, this represents both an existential threat and
one of the biggest growth opportunities since the advent of TV advertising.
With niche brands popping up every day, “death by a thousand cuts” is a top
1 concern at many consumer product companies (CPC). But the smartest
amongst them have cherry-picked the best DTC marketing strategies and
Chubbies and Away fly out
leveraged them with their competitive budgets and established distribution
of the gates p73 channels. In this article, we’ll give a short history of the DTC market and
break down these companies’ strategies so that you can use them in your
2 next rebrand or marketing campaign.
Your brand should sell In February 2008, Neil Blumenthal emailed three of his friends and proposed
more than your products that the four of them start an online eyeglasses company. Two years later on
p74 February 15, 2010, they launched their site, Warby Parker, and received a flood
of orders after GQ wrote an article dubbing them the “Netflix of eyewear.”
3 Over the next three years, the company grew faster than almost any other
company in America. By April 2015, investors valued the company at $1.2 billion.
Tap into the brand-building
power of user generated By manufacturing their own glasses and then selling them online, Warby
content p75 Parker helped invent an entirely new business model now called direct-to-
consumer (DTC). Following their success, there’s been an explosion of
4 companies selling everything from toothbrushes to toilet paper, looking to

replicate the same model.
DTC brands can leverage
in-person experiences to
their advantage p77
5
A new blueprint for
DTC growth p78
6
Key Takeaways p79
At first, DTC companies appeared to have the perfect
business model: they could save money on retail rent,
I think there’s a reckoning
cut out the middleman, and undercut large corporate
coming for these people ... competitors in the process. By connecting directly with
their customers, DTC companies could also better control
These venture-funded
their messaging, gather valuable data on consumer
companies trying to scale purchasing behavior, and rapidly fold their learnings into
new product development. But the benefits of the DTC
are going to find out
model are now proving to be short-lived.
there’s just no way to
“I think there’s a reckoning coming for these people,”
make the numbers work. says Wharton professor of Technology and Digital
Business Kartik Hosanagar. “These venture-funded
Kartik Hosanagar
Wharton professor of Technology
companies trying to scale are going to find out there’s
”
and Digital Business just no way to make the numbers work.”
New DTC companies have seen their competitive advantages

evaporate almost overnight as new middlemen have
emerged in the form of digital advertising giants like
Facebook and Google. According to marketing analytics
company Adstage, from Q2 to Q4 of 2018, the median cost
per click (CPC) for Facebook ads climbed 32%, while the
medium click through rate (CTR) fell by over 65%.
As an increasing number of DTC companies have become

hooked on paid digital advertising, the rising costs of
Facebook and Google have swelled to approach the cost
of paying rent on a brick-and-mortar store, putting
many out of business or forcing them to significantly
raise their prices.
But a few DTC companies, like Away Travel and Chubbies,

have figured out a way to avoid costly paid advertising.
They’ve learned that the only defense against competition
and rising advertising costs is a company brand.
In this story, we’ll break down how these two companies

and other DTC success stories have managed to build
successful brands.
What brand managers can learn from DTC companies | 63

1 Chubbies and Away fly out of the gates
Away’s founding story is similar to many

other DTC stories: on a trip to Switzerland,
Jen Rubio — the company’s founder —
became frustrated when her suitcase broke.
She posted a photo asking friends for suggestions and got nothing. She
could either buy a junky suitcase at T.J. Maxx or shell out a small fortune
for designer luggage. She saw an opportunity to sell “first class luggage
at a coach price.”
Years later, Rubio met another DTC founder, Tom Montgomery of Chubbies
shorts, at a start-up conference one Friday afternoon in late June 2017.
Montgomery told the audience a similar tale: he’d initially designed some
short length men’s shorts for himself and his buddies and found that he
was being stopped on the street by young guys wondering where he’d
bought his shorts. Soon after, he launched Chubbies, hinging his DTC
start-up to the matra “Sky’s out, thighs out!” Before long, Chubbies sold
10,000 pairs of shorts in one day.
Rubio and Montgomery both went on to raise venture capital for their
companies, joining more than 400 other DTC start-ups that have raised
a collective $3 billion in venture capital since 2012. But while so many of
these companies have fallen victim to increasing advertising costs,
Chubbies and Away have continued to deliver impressive growth metrics
— doubly impressive when you consider Chubbies is selling $60 men’s
short shorts, and Away is selling $250 luggage that comes with a lifetime
warranty. Both companies have relied on brand strategies built on three
core concepts:
1. Brands should sell more than their products.

2. Brands can leverage user-generated content to reduce customer
acquisition costs.
3. DTC brands can still leverage in-person experiences to their advantage.
2 Your brand should sell more than your products
Both Rubio and Montgomery realized early

on that in order to continue to grow We don’t consider
ourselves a fashion
aggressively, their brands would need to sell
company, we are a
more than just their physical products.
beer brand that
Both brands now deliberately sell a lifestyle.
happens to sell shorts.
“We don’t consider ourselves a fashion company, we are a beer brand Tom Montgomery
Chubbies
”
that happens to sell shorts,” Montgomery says.
Nowhere is this more visible than on Chubbies’ YouTube channel,

aptly named ChubsterNation where viewers are promoted to
“Chubscribe.” The videos, like one entitled “How do we add men’s
synchronized swimming to the summer games? BECAUSE IT’S
GLORIOUS,” have little to do with Chubbies’ products, but are a fun
extension of a brand that wants to “feel like hanging out with the boys.”
Rubio saw a similar opportunity in the luggage market. “The marketing

[of luggage] was really bad,” says Rubio. “There was really no storytelling
in a place that was ripe for storytelling.” Under Rubio’s direction as
President and Chief Brand Officer, Away has established a brand that
evokes the adventure and romance of travel.
“We’d created a brand that was so synonymous with better travel that
customers were calling us to get our thoughts on way more than just
luggage — they were reaching out to our customer service line asking
for tips and recommendations ahead of upcoming trips,” Rubio said.
The company’s brand team set out to embrace that distinction head on.
Last year, the company launched Here, a beautifully designed print and
digital travel magazine, and “Airplane Mode,” a podcast that “explores
the reasons we travel and places we find ourselves.”
Both brands look for every opportunity to stoke the broader lifestyles
their brands help their customers realize. “Every customer touchpoint
is an opportunity to be exceptional,” says Chubbies co-founder Preston
Rutherford. “Think of every customer touchpoint as an opportunity to
provide an entertaining brand-building experience.”

3 Tap into the brand-building power of user-generated content
The real genius of both Chubbies’ and Away’s

brand-building strategies lies in their reliance UGC provides authentic
information about the
on user-generated content (UGC): videos,
brand’s products and
social media shares, and other content
services from previous
voluntarily generated by their customers.
customers, saving
“Customers who have good experiences with your brand are motivated resources and boosting
to inform their peers by sharing their experiences. Referrals are one brand credibility. UGC
of the cheapest and fastest ways to expand your customer base,” writes
Pius Boachie in his article User-Generated Content Brings Authenticity is among the hottest —
To Brands, published in Adweek. “UGC provides authentic information not to mention most
about the brand’s products and services from previous customers, saving
resources and boosting brand credibility. UGC is among the hottest —
scalable—ways for
not to mention most scalable—ways for marketers to showcase products, marketers to showcase
celebrate fans and drive revenue on the web today.”
products, celebrate fans
For Away, it was an influencer marketing strategy focused on user-
and drive revenue on the
generated content that sparked the company’s initial growth.
web today.
In late 2015, Rubio and her co-founder, Korey, realized that their first
shipment of suitcases would not be ready for the holiday season. Pius Boachie
”
Panicked, they pulled an audible by recruiting 40 photographers,
artists, and travel writers to contribute articles to a hardcover gift-book
titled The Places We Return To. The duo sold out all 2,000 copies of
he book that were produced, mostly to successful, influential customers.
Included in the book was a gift card for a free Away suitcase — an
unexpected surprise — and a barrage of social media activity ensued
from pleasantly surprised customers.
“We knew that we only had one opportunity to debut the brand in a
meaningful way,” Rubio recalls. The company was off and running,
and it continues to use a similar influencer marketing strategy today.
They never pay for posts but provide influencers with a free suitcase
— and the rest takes care of itself.
Brands looking to employ a similar influencer marketing strategy should study the approach of Scentbird founder,
Sergei Gusev, whose company sells DTC perfume subscriptions. After stumbling across a woman reviewing products
that she loved on YouTube, Gusev noted that she had 150,000 followers. He sent her free perfume and asked her
for a review. The subsequent review generated 100 sales in 2 days — a customer acquisition cost of about 14 cents.
Scentbird relied on this process almost exclusively to grow the company to about $75,000 in monthly recurring revenue
with basically no marketing budget. Here’s the process they used:
Scentbird’s influencer marketing strategy While Away and Scentbird specifically looked to
to create user-generated content influencers with large online followings to help
them create and spread user-generated content,
1. Search YouTube for similar product reviews: Gusev
Chubbies has relied on their everyday customer
started out by searching for “perfume reviews” then
to create content for them.
“{Competitor Name} reviews.” The search results
returned thousands of influencers who had already “Our customers are our best content producers,” says
posted reviews of similar products. Montgomery. “Users send us photos and content and we
try to caption them in a fun way. It’s not salesy — we
2. Create a spreadsheet of influencers: You can start
never try to sell product on our social channels.” Instead,
building your spreadsheet of influencers manually,
the objective of Chubbies’ strategy is “making the
hire interns or a virtual assistant, or use a site like
customer the hero.”
Upwork.com to hire someone with web scraping
expertise to extract website data and add it to your The strategy was born largely out of necessity, as
spreadsheet automatically. Chubbies sought ways to scale the business as they saw
the cost of Facebook advertising continue to climb.
3. Reach out to influencers: Send the influencers that
you’ve identified an email offering them your product Montgomery’s team responded by creating a giveaway
for free in exchange for a product review. In Gusev’s that promised to send a beer koozie to anyone who shared
experiments, about 30% of influencers replied to his a Facebook post about the brand — if the post earned
first email, with 20%-30% replying to his second or 50,000+ shares. The post was shared more than 75,000
third email attempts. times, and Montgomery realized that the cost of 75,000
koozies was delivering a far lower customer acquisition
4. Track your reviews and sales: Make sure to clearly
cost (CAC) than traditional Facebook advertising.
ask your influencers to send you a link to your product
review once it’s been posted. Tracking sales from The brand has since innovated on this customer acquisition
YouTube can be difficult, but coupon codes, bit.ly model, once sending out 1,000 packs of Big League Chew
links, and UTM parameters can help you more gum to past customers, who responded by tweeting photos
effectively measure the influencer-generated sales. of the gum to Chubbies and their friends.
5. Adopt technology to scale your influencer Delivering unexpected customer experiences like these
marketing strategy: Once you’ve seen success with aligns with the lifestyles these companies’ brands
influencer marketing, it may be time to invest in a support. It’s a growth strategy that works both online
platform that can help you find and manage influencer and in-person, as you’ll see next.
relationships at scale. Scentbird scaled their influencer
marketing strategy using AspireIQ.

4 DTC brands can leverage in-person experiences to their advantage
While DTC brands have historically focused

the vast majority of their marketing spend on Brand to us is the
emotional association
online customer acquisition channels, many
your customer has with
DTC brands are rediscovering the value of
your brand and with
in-person experiences with their customers.
your products
DTC brands like Bonobos, Warby Parker, and Away Travel have Tom Montgomery
Chubbies
”
gone so far as to start opening up retail stores — a strategy that
Rubio’s co-founder at Away, Korey, was skeptical of at first.
“Our hypothesis turned out to be totally wrong,” said Korey. “We had
person after person coming in and being like, ‘Oh, I’ve been on your
website, but who knows what seven pounds really feels like? Oh, that is In another similar instance, the Chubbies
light. OK, I’ll take the green set.’” Every time Away opened a store in a team received an email from a customer
new market, it found that web sales in that market lifted. “It’s almost like saying his shorts had been stolen from
we’re opening a profitable billboard,” Korey says. his gym locker. Chubbies not only
replaced the shorts free of charge,
No brand has realized this effect more strongly than Warby Parker. but they also sent the customer a week’s
After building the company solely on online sales, Warby has now worth of karate lessons so he could
opened 66 retail stores in markets across the globe. In an unexpected defend his shorts the next time around.
twist of events, Warby’s retail stores are now generating more revenue Chubbies’ fun-loving brand has been
for the company than all of their online orders combined. built on acts like these, whose costs are
Chubbies has found an even more cost effective way to tap into the trivial when you consider the emotional
power of in-person experiences. “Brand to us is the emotional connections and brand associations they
association your customer has with your brand and with your products,” have generated.
says Montgomery.
A brand can connect with its customers more effectively on an emotional

level if the experience of the brand occurs in-person rather than relying
solely on online interactions — and Montgomery’s team actively looks
for opportunities to exploit this phenomenon.
For example, a Chubbies customer sent them a video of himself asking

Miss Texas out on a date. The video ended up making it onto the news,
and Miss Texas unexpectedly accepted. The Chubbies team saw a
brand-building opportunity and pounced, paying for a limo, a bouquet
of flowers, and of course sending the customer a few pairs of Chubbies
shorts. Social media went wild.
5 A new blueprint for DTC growth
DTC companies will need to continue to find new, more cost-effective

customer acquisition strategies in order to continue to grow their brands
and deliver on the expectations of their investors.
But what Away and Chubbies learned is a timeless lesson While nobody is certain what will come next in the digital
of marketing: brand is a company’s best defense against advertising market, it’s likely that Away and Chubbies
competition and shrinking margins. will continue to thrive as they double down on their
brand and create something that inspires envy in any
As these companies have demonstrated, sometimes
brand marketer.
the best way to thrive is to allow your customers to
market your business for you by providing a brand
experience that connects with them on an emotional
level. Rather than sit back and hope that it works,
however, both companies actively sought ways to
promote the content and inspire people to share more.

6
Key Takeaways
1
DTC brands should strive to sell something
greater than their products — often a lifestyle
desired by their target customers.
2
Brands that can tap into user-generated content
achieve significant advantages when it comes to
paying for exposure, especially on social media
platforms.
3
DTC brands should not ignore the power of
in-person experiences; often they represent the
strongest brand-building opportunities by
appealing strongly to customers’ emotions.
Rebranding
around mission
and values
When Jim Collins and Jerry Porras published
Rebranding their book Built to Last in 1994, it spread
around mission through the business community like wildfire.
The duo had studied the founding, growth,
and values
and development of a series of “visionary”
1 companies that had stood the test of time —
Defining mission and companies like Hewlett-Packard, Procter &
core values p84
Gamble, Sony, Disney, and Walmart —
2 comparing each to a similar company that hadn’t
Consumers are increasingly performed as well. Their findings were stark.
voting with their wallets p85
“In 17 of the 18 pairs of companies in our research, we found the visionary
3 company was guided more by a core ideology — core values and a sense of
purpose beyond just making money — than the comparison company was,”
Which brand are you?
writes Collins. “A deeply held core ideology gives a company both a strong
Three strategies to rebrand sense of identity and a thread of continuity that holds the organization
around your mission and together in the face of change.”
core values p86
The visionary companies had existed for an average of 100 years and had
performed 15 times better than the overall stock market — evidence enough
4 to ignite a full-blown mission and core values craze that swept through
Key Takeaways p94 the business world throughout the latter half of the ‘90s. Companies began
rebranding in droves, but many leaders and boards found themselves
asking, “Is rebranding around mission and values really going to benefit my
business? Where’s the ROI?”
1 Defining mission and core values
Words like mission statement, purpose, and

vision are often thrown around interchangeably, Core values are the deeply
ingrained principles that
and they’re used to convey the same
guide all of a company’s
sentiment: that organizations have a core
actions; they serve as its
ideology or reason for being beyond simply
cultural cornerstones ...
making profits. They are the source of a
We’ll define and use the words “mission” and “core values” from here on out
company’s distinctiveness
for the sake of consistency and clarity. and must be maintained at
Mission all costs.”
An organization’s reason for being. A company’s mission should be Patrick Lencioni
”
CEO of The Table Group
aspirational: it defines why the company does the work it does,
rather than how it does it. According to Jim Collins, your mission should
represent a “big hairy audacious goal.” Here are a few examples:
Patagonia: “We’re in business to save our home planet.”

Values — much like brands — are
TED: “Spread ideas.”
ultimately all about trade-offs. “They limit
IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” an organization’s strategic and operational
freedom and constrain the behavior of its
Core Values people,” continues Lencioni. “If you’re not
Build the best product
• willing to accept the pain real values incur,
don’t bother going to the trouble of
Cause no unnecessary harm
•
formulating a values statement.”
Use business to protect nature
•
Not bound by convention

• Next we’ll look at new data that provides
leaders and boards with the evidence that
These values are designed to influence the company’s behaviors and they are looking for: rebranding around
decision-making, while reinforcing their mission to “save our home mission and values delivers bottom-line
planet.” To “build the best product,” Patagonia focuses on creating business results.
durable goods that will remain in use to limit environmental impact.
They also use eco-friendly materials and manufacturing processes so
that they “cause no unnecessary harm.” In both cases, the core values
drive behaviors in support of the company’s overarching mission.
Rebranding around mission and values | 73

2 Consumers are increasingly voting with their wallets
While Collins and Porras popularized the

importance of mission and core values Values can set a company
apart from the competition
more than two decades ago, only recently
by clarifying its identity
have we seen these attributes begin to
influence consumers’ buying behaviors. Patrick Lencioni
”
CEO of The Table Group
According to a 2018 survey of over 30,000 consumers by Accenture,

two-thirds of consumers around the world prefer to buy products from
companies whose purpose “reflects their personal values and beliefs.”
On the flip side, Patagonia showed that it
“Five years ago, trust in a company was really that they did what they
wasn’t afraid to speak out against mass
said they would,” said Rachel Barton, Managing Director at Accenture
consumerism when they famously took a
Strategy. “In the last few years it has moved to trusting the foundations
stand against Black Friday in 2016. Rather
and purpose on which a company is built.”
than seeing Black Friday as an opportunity
Aligning your brand with your company’s mission and values isn’t just to line their pockets, the company instead
a nice idea; it’s a brand strategy with tangible business benefits. “Having acted with their mission in mind and
a brand that is consistent with your company’s public values can garner decided to donate 100% of Black Friday
consumer loyalty and make people feel good about the purchases sales to environmental organizations. The
they are making with your company,” says George Ball in his article move resonated deeply with consumers:
“The Importance Of Sticking To Your Company Values.” Patagonia had forecast sales of $2M-$4M
for the day but ended up generating over
According to Lencioni, mission and values can even serve as an important $10M in sales.
point of differentiation. “Values can set a company apart from the
competition by clarifying its identity,” he says. With mission and values increasingly
influencing consumer behavior, we’ll
There have been many recent examples of consumers voting with their next look at three specific scenarios
wallets, and the results go both ways: if a brand doesn’t live its values, that leaders may encounter as they
consumers will boycott its products, while brands that do live consider strategically rebranding with
their values are seeing increased sales. Consider cosmetics company mission and values top of mind.
Sephora, whose core values include respect for all, expertise, and
initiative. The company’s customers recently called for the company
to drop its partnership with Olivia Jade Giannulli when she was ousted
as part of a cheating scandal where she paid to gain admission into
the University of Southern California. As an ambassador of the brand,
her actions were clearly not displaying “respect for all.”
3 Which brand are you?
Three strategies to rebrand around your

mission and core values.
There are a few common scenarios that present an opportunity for a

company to rebrand around its mission and values; in this section, we’ll
explore three of the most common.
“When undertaking a rebrand, whether it’s a logo update or total overhaul,

the goal is to translate the brand’s internal core identity into an external
brand identity using every communication tool possible,” says Josh
Ritchie in his article “Why A Good Rebrand Starts With A Brand’s Core,”
published in Forbes. “No matter how beautiful the logo or powerful the
tagline, if a brand doesn’t know its core — who or what it truly is — it is
pretty much impossible to build their brand and a headache to even try.”
Consider which of the following scenarios best describes your situation

as you undertake your rebrand.
The brand that needs to rebrand to

better align with its mission and values
Many brands first consider rebranding when they realize that they have
a deeply held mission and set of core values that their existing brand
doesn’t reflect. The goal of the rebranding effort, then, is to realign the
brand with the company’s mission and values. This circumstance is
rarer than you might think — if the company’s mission and values were
truly meaningful, they’d likely already be reflected in the brand.
One company that encountered this scenario is Vungle, a mobile

advertising and app monetization platform. As an adtech company,
data and performance have always been an important part of the
company’s identity — but so had creativity. The ethos of the company
was summed up in the phrase “Powered by Creativity. Driven by
Performance.” Yet the company was competing in a market dominated
by companies trying to convey a polished big-brand image; lot of blues
and grays with very little human expression.

“We call this the ‘sea of sameness,’ where visual
representations of a brand don’t do justice to its true
personality,” says Vungle CEO, Rick Tallman.
At Vungle, we realized that people knew our name,
but they didn’t know who we really are. Our visual
identity failed to capture our character.”
The Vungle team set out to rebrand around the idea

of “Powered by Creativity. Driven By Performance.”
Here’s a look at some variations of Vungle’s new,
more dynamic logo after rebranding.
The right arm of the V in the logo is always solid, moving up

and to the right, evocative of the results and performance
Vungle’s product drives for their customers’ businesses.
The left arm of the “V” and the color palette, however,
connect the brand to its creative side. “The Vungle V
has many colorful variations in the wild to represent
the flexibility, creativity, and prevalence of our work,”
says Tallman.
Actions to take
If you find yourself in a similar situation, here are
some specific questions to ask as you go through
the rebranding process:
1. Can the brand’s mission be reflected through its logo,

either obviously or abstractly?
2. Do the images, illustrations, and photography the
brand uses reflect its core values?
3. Does the color palette elicit certain emotions?
4. If the brand were a person, who would it be?
5. Does the brand’s tone and voice align with its values?
6. Are there words the brand should avoid in its
messaging?
7. How does the brand’s heritage story reflect its mission
and values?
The brand that pays lip you about your day and chat with you about your grocery
selections. “Have you tried this sweet potato gnocchi? It’s
service to its mission and great with our Backbone cabernet,” may seem out of place
at other grocery stores, but it’s the norm at Trader Joe’s.
values but doesn’t live them
“Trader Joe’s is quirky, original, delightful and designed
A second (and perhaps the most common) set of
to create an overwhelmingly positive customer experience,
circumstances is the brand that has an existing mission
starting with the flowers at the entrance,” says Cathy
and set of core values that’s simply not meaningful.
Hotka, Principal at Cathy Hotka & Associates.
This most often occurs in companies where mission and
values are viewed as an “activity” to be handled once Wistia, a video hosting software platform, is an example
during a leadership off-site and then they are forgotten of a brand who strayed from core values that they then
altogether. Defining your company’s mission and values needed to rediscover. The company’s values include
once is not enough and will be harmful to your brand “long-term thinking” and “creativity,” two values that
unless you practice what you preach. Consider the drove the company’s decision-making in the early days.
following core values:
“One of the first big investments we made was in content
1. Communication marketing,” says CEO Chris Savage. “We knew that
2. Respect businesses struggled with where to start when it came
3. Integrity to making video, so we thought it would be helpful
to teach them all of our video-making secrets. And even
4. Excellence
though it cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to
They sound great, right? But they’re the meaningless core produce this content, we gave it away for free. We trusted
values of Enron, a company that became the poster child that if the content was free, more people would see it and
for corporate fraud and corruption in the early 2000s. make videos of their own. Which meant in the long-term,
“Most values are bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest,” more people would become Wistia customers.”
says Lencioni. “And far from being harmless, as some
Wistia’s decision to share their creative secrets and
executives assume, they’re often highly destructive. Empty
invest in content marketing was a long-term play very
values statements create cynical and dispirited employees,
much in-line with their values, but after raising money
alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility.”
from investors, the company began to prioritize
If your brand is guilty of not living your values, your projects designed to show a more immediate return
rebranding efforts need to focus on creating a brand that on investment to their investors.
actively lives your stated values. How do you do that?
“You’d think that pouring money into our business and
Take Trader Joe’s: their values include “Wow customer
running at a loss meant we were taking more [creative]
service” and “The store is the brand.” Beyond the company’s
risks, but we weren’t,” says Savage. “Instead of the
logo and typeface, the design of their physical store
creative long-term risks (in-line with our values) we
locations presents a massive opportunity for Trader Joe’s
relished in taking, we were taking financially-motivated
to live their stated values.
risks in service of accelerated growth.”
When you first enter one of their store locations, you’ll be
greeted by flowers. You’ll proceed to walk up and down
extra-wide aisles, staff will offer you free samples of Trader
Joe’s products and offer recipe tips, and cashiers will ask

In order to prove that the values on their walls were meaningful — both to their employees and their customers — action
was needed. Savage and his co-founder decided to take on $17M in debt to buy out their investors, freeing them from the
need to deliver short-term revenue growth in line with investor expectations. They quickly got back to taking the long-term
creative risks they so relished; the company’s One, Ten, One Hundred video series is just one example.
Actions to take
If your brand is paying lip service to values that it’s not living, the rebrand that you need to undertake does not
necessarily include a new logo, typeface, or voice and tone. Instead, your rebrand should be driven by your actions.
1. Reassess your existing mission and values — Start by 3. Prioritize and take action — Once you’ve created
taking a close look at your brand’s existing mission a list of ways your brand can live its values, you should
and core values, the ones you’ve been paying lip service prioritize the ones that feel most aligned with your
to. Are they the right ones and you’re just not living mission and values. Don’t be afraid to be bold — it
them, or do you need to start from scratch? If you need typically takes making a splash to change consumer
to start from scratch, follow the steps outlined in the perceptions of your brand. In this case, your “rebrand”
next section. is not merely a matter of changing your logo, typeface,
or tagline; it’s about taking actions dramatic enough
2. Brainstorm all of the ways your brand can live your
that consumers take note and making sure that those
values — Assuming that you find that your mission and
actions are directly aligned with your mission and values.
values are still relevant, you should start by identifying
all of the possible ways your brand can possibly live
those values. For example, Wistia didn’t want to take on
$17.3M in debt, but they knew that as long as they had
to answer to investors, they wouldn’t be free to take
the long-term, creative risks that were in line with their
values. As such, it was an action they needed to take.
Start by going through each of your values one-by-one,
and create an exhaustive list of actions you can take
that would bring each value to life.
The brand that needs to much input as we can and then we let them make the
decision - and most importantly be accountable for
discover its identity the consequences of that decision. Consult widely but
make decisions and live with them.” – Didier
A third circumstance occurs when a brand either hasn’t
identified its mission and core values or realizes that 4. “We are there to help our customers solve real
their existing mission and values aren’t the right ones. problems - i.e., we’re not just administering a survey,
In this case, the rebranding process needs to begin by we’re helping them create their ideal culture” – Rod
pinpointing the brand’s identity.
5. “I believe in courage. The courage to challenge the
For agencies that are hired to help with the rebranding way things are done and the assumptions people
process, there are often tell-tale signs of this scenario make (i.e., how to build a sales team, how to position
once they start working with a new client. For example, a brand, etc.) and also the courage required to be
“their feedback is conflicting or they can’t clearly answer emotionally vulnerable at work.” – Didier
simple questions,” says Josh Ritchie, CEO of Column Five.
After sharing their statements with one another, the group
“You end up stuck in rounds of fruitless iteration, and
identified common themes and questioned each other’s outputs
everyone ends up frustrated. If this sounds all too familiar,
until they arrived on a set of core values for the company.
you’re probably running into the most common problem
in branding: The brand doesn’t know who or what it is.” Next we’ll explore two different strategies you can use to
help a brand discover its identity.
Culture Amp, a company whose product helps employers
collect and act on feedback from their employees, found Actions to take
themselves needing to discover their mission and values
for the first time in late 2014. Company founders, Didier Ideally, assembling a company’s mission and values
Elzinga, Doug English, Rod Hamilton, and Jon Williams, should occur early on — and in most cases, the mission
started by assembling in the office late one night and jotting and values will be highly reflective of the personal values
down ideas that they, as individuals, thought were of the company’s founders. If that hasn’t happened,
foundational to the mindset of the company. there’s no better time to start the process than now.
Each member of the group drafted statements that started First, begin by recognizing that your values don’t need to be
with “We are/believe/strive for” and then shared their universally accepted. They should reflect what matters to
responses with the other group members. Here are some your company first, because it’s the people inside the building
examples of the statements they drafted: that will be expected to make decisions based on these
values. But you need to make sure that the values you decide
1. “If there was an overriding theme it was we believe in on are also important to some segment of potential buyers.
the power of feedback... turned into continuous
improvement.” – Jon Second, you’ll want to aim for values that are actionable
and distinct. “55% of all Fortune 100 companies claim
2. “We are courageous - we take risks, but they are integrity is a core value, 49% espouse customer satisfaction,
‘smart’ risks backed by some data.” – Rod and 40% tout team-work. While these are inarguably
good qualities, such terms hardly provide a distinct
3. “I believe in trusting people to make decisions. Not by
blueprint for employee behavior,” says Lencioni.
consensus but by transparency. We decide who the
“Cookie-cutter values don’t set a company apart from
right person is to make a decision, we give them as
competitors; they make it fade into the crowd.”

Defining mission and • Sleep on it — This process can be messy and elicit
some passionate responses from your team; that’s a
values as a small company good thing and an indication that you’ve landed on
some meaningful values. Take a break from this initial
If you’re working with a small company, follow this
activity, and revisit your list after some time has
process to identify your mission and core values.
passed. When you come back to your list, the time
• Poll your team individually — To start, provide you’ve given yourself to ruminate will have helped
handouts to everyone on your team, and give surface the mission and values for your company.
them space to think as individuals. Consider
While this approach is simple and tends to work well for
asking them questions like:
small organizations, it can be problematic in larger
• What do you value as a person? organizations. “Surveying all employees about what values
they believe the company should adopt is a bad idea for
• What unspoken values have contributed to our two reasons,” says Lencioni. “First, it integrates suggestions
success to date? from many employees who probably don’t belong at the
company in the first place. And second, it creates the false
• What’s a big, hairy, audacious goal you’d like to see
impression that all input is equally valuable.”
our company achieve?
• What motivates you to come to work every day?
• What do successful employees here have

in common?
• What values should govern the way we act with each

other and our customers?
• Put all of the ideas on a whiteboard — Next, put all of

the ideas that your team came up with as individuals
onto a whiteboard. It’s best to have everyone jotting
ideas onto the board at the same time to limit the extent
to which they are influenced by one another’s ideas.
• Create a shortlist — Next, ask everyone to select and

rank a shortlist of the top 10 values they see on the
whiteboard. Compare shortlists as a group, with the
most common responses becoming a set of contenders.
Defining mission and values in larger organizations
In Theory: The Corporate Brand Identity Matrix

A corporation’s identity is made up of nine interrelated components. By examining each one and how it relates to the others,
an organization can build a stronger brand.
External Value Proposition Relationships Position

What are our key offerings, What should be the nature of our What is our intended position
and how do we want them relationships with key customers in the market and in the hearts
to appeal to customers and and other stakeholders? and minds of key customers
other stakeholders? and other stakeholders?
External / Internal Expression Brand Core Personality

What is distinctive about the What do we promise, and What combination of human
way we communicate and what are the core values characteristics or qualities
express ourselves and makes that sum up what our brand forms our corporate character?
it possible to recognize us at stands for?
a distance?
Internal Mission and Vision Culture Competences

What engages us (mission)? What are our attitudes and What are we particularly good
What is our direction and how do we work and behave? at, and what makes us better
inspiration (vision)? than the competition?
Stephen Greyser and Mats Urde provide a more the diagonal one that begins in the top-left corner,
comprehensive framework for this process in their competition; the horizontal one, communications; and
article “What Does Your Corporate Brand Stand For?” the vertical one, interaction. If your corporate brand
published in Harvard Business Review. The authors identity is clear, the elements on each axis will harmonize
created a tool that they call the Corporate Brand — each of the elements will inform and echo the brand
Identity Matrix. core, resonating with the company’s values and what the
brand stands for. The brand core, in turn, will shape the
The matrix identifies nine interrelated components.
other eight elements.
Leadership teams are encouraged to work together
to answer the nine questions identified within the Only once a brand has discovered its mission and values
matrix in short, declarative sentences. Your team can it rebrand with these elements in mind — for both
should then gauge how clearly their responses align agencies and brand managers, this presents a very real
along the matrix’s diagonal, vertical, and horizontal axes, opportunity to rebrand in a way that’s more meaningful
which all pass through the “brand core” at the center. to the brand’s customers.
Each axis corresponds to a different kind of organizational

capability. The diagonal one that begins in the bottom-
left corner highlights capabilities related to strategy;

4
Key Takeaways
1
Consumers are increasingly willing to pay more
for products or services made by companies that
share their personal beliefs and values.
2
Rebranding affords companies with a valuable
opportunity to make sure their brand is reflective
of their mission and core values.
3
Brands must be willing to make sacrifices in
service of their values. Your mission and values
are worthless unless they permeate every aspect
of your brand experience and drive your actions
as a company.
Rebranding
in a crisis
For Malaysia Airlines, a 67-year-old government-
Rebranding owned airline, the beginning of 2014 seemed like
in a crisis a nightmare too improbable to be real.
On March 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 lost contact with air traffic control
1 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur and disappeared from military radar
Crisis takes many forms altogether. Then on July 17, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down while
p98 traveling over Ukraine.
In total, the tragedies resulted in a staggering loss of life. 537 people died, and
2 the remains of Flight 370 were never found. And it didn’t take long for conspiracy
How to develop a theories to take hold in the media, particularly after it was discovered that two
crisis management passengers on Flight 370 were traveling under false passports.
brand strategy The events were devastating for the victims’ families, and the damage to
p101 Malaysia Airlines’ brand was potentially irreversible. The company’s hand was
forced; they had to consider rebranding the airline. The scenario raised some
3 compelling questions: When should a company rebrand in the wake of a
Execute your rebrand crisis? And how do you rebrand in a way that’s both sensitive to the situation
p103 and effective for the business?
4
Key Takeaways
p105
1 Crisis takes many forms
When crisis occurs, it can feel like

the end of the world, the air being
sucked out of your brand’s lungs.
But it’s worth remembering that all enduring brands will

eventually face some form of crisis. While it’s important
not to downplay what happened, it’s equally important
not to let the event cause you to act irrationally in the
heat of the moment.
“Crisis is inevitable for every brand, at every stage of

growth,” says Michael Gaizutis, founder of RNO1.
“While rebranding can usually be a quick win, our tribes
are much smarter than we think and very in tune with
what companies will do and why they do such things.
The key is to stay authentic; be true to your brand and
core values.”
While a company’s brand and core values should guide

its actions — particularly in the face of crisis — rebranding
is just one strategy that companies have at their disposal.
In most instances, rebranding should be a last resort;
rebranding itself is not a crisis management strategy.
For example, Chipotle Mexican Grill faced a crisis in late

2015 when more than 60 cases of E. coli were linked to
their restaurants. The brand addressed the outbreaks
head on, implemented a substantial crisis management
and public relations response, and committed their stores
to enhanced food safety measures.
The tactics were effective, and Chipotle has made a full

recovery, but their brand remained unchanged throughout.
Let’s look at some specific examples and circumstances
where a rebrand was required in order to move beyond
a crisis.
Rebranding in a crisis | 85
When tragedy strikes For Malaysia Airlines, tragedy took the form of a plane
crash. For Dauphin Island, Alabama, tragedy struck
unexpectedly in the form of an oil spill which caused an
environmental disaster. In both cases, the brands
immediately became the antithesis of what they wanted
to be — nobody wants to fly on an unsafe airline or
vacation on a beach resort polluted by oil.
Dauphin Island, Alabama
In early 2010, Alabama’s Gulf Coast had made it out of the

recent recession in pretty good shape — rental bookings
were actually beginning to trend slightly upward.
But then BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded
just 100 miles off the coast of Dauphin Island, spilling
more than 4 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The accident was devastating for the tourism-driven
economy in the area: Mayor Jeff Collier estimated that
95% of the island’s vacation bookings were canceled
immediately following the news of the spill.
While Dauphin Island was not to blame for the accident

(British Petroleum was), they were left to deal with the
consequences and aftermath of the accident. But for
some brands, crises are self-inflicted.
When a company founder,
executive, or spokesperson
screws up
Media outlets from NBC to The Wall Street Journal
Madonna and Pepsi. Gilbert Gottfried and Aflac. Jared speculated that Livestrong would have to rebrand in
and Subway. It’s commonplace that brands have to pick up order to survive and distance the foundation from
the pieces when an executive or spokesperson screws up. their disgraced founder. The decision was made much
more difficult by the strong brand equity the foundation
But Livestrong and Papa John’s faced a particularly
had already developed: the foundation’s yellow wristbands
challenging assignment: changing the perception of
had become an instantly recognizable part of popular
a brand that’s intimately linked to its founder.
culture. The brand now had to publicly distance itself
Livestrong Foundation from Armstrong and clarify its positioning for the future
— all without losing its existing brand equity.
Since 2011, agency Rigsby Hull has been responsible
for the brand image and communications of Lance Next, we’ll look at the steps you can take to better handle
Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation. But the agency’s your next brand crisis.
work became exponentially harder in 2012, when
Armstrong — a seven-time Tour de France winner —
finally admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs
throughout his career. He was immediately stripped
of his medals and resigned from the foundation, an
organization that now appeared to the public as having
been built on an ethos of lies.
“The key rule of building a strong brand is to have a

compelling, authentic, and credible brand promise,
and to defend it,” says Simon Bassett, Managing
Director of EMR. “Livestrong’s brand promise was
built on determination in the face of adversity. So the
narrative went, it was determination that helped
Armstrong recover from cancer and go on to win a
record seven Tour de France titles.”
When Armstrong admitted to using performance-

enhancing drugs, the rug was pulled out from under the
foundation. The narrative was a lie: it wasn’t Armstrong’s
determination in the face of adversity that had propelled
him to his Tour de France titles, but instead illegal doping.
The authenticity of Armstrong’s story and legacy
disappeared overnight.
2 How to develop a crisis management brand strategy
Consumers don’t blame brands for

situations that are out of their control —
but they do blame them for not having
a crisis management strategy.
When a brand crisis occurs, much of the organizational impact will depend
on how you respond to the circumstances. Follow these guidelines to address
the crisis most effectively.
1. Address the issue immediately — If your brand fails to address the

crisis immediately, frustration, anger, and media attention will mount.
Instead, address the crisis directly with a focus on showing empathy
and being human rather than hiding behind a corporate guise. “Publicly
addressing the issue head-on and presenting your intent to improve
helps you get out in front of the issue and can reduce scrutiny and make
your rebrand more successful,” says Bernard May, Founder & CEO of
National Positions.
2. Authentically look for who is at fault — When a crisis occurs, you

need to identify who is at fault — particularly if your company is to
blame. If your brand is responsible for the crisis, you must own up
to your mistakes and make it clear what corrective measures will be
taken to safeguard against a similar event happening again.
3. Don’t move on too quickly — While moving on is a necessary step in

dealing with any crisis, don’t try to distance your brand from the
situation too quickly. Doing so can lead to the perception that you’re
avoiding responsibility and can have negative long-term consequences
— particularly in a situation like Malaysia Airlines encountered where
fatalities were involved. “A brand can almost stand as a memorial
for people who have died and I think moving on too fast and trying to
disassociate itself from its old identity could be misconstrued as it
wanting to disassociate from any responsibility, and that doesn’t bode
well for the organisation’s values,” says Rebecca Gudgeon, Managing
Director at Grayling.
4. Identify immediate actions — In the face of a crisis, 8. Create your action plan — Deciding to rebrand is not
it’s likely that some sort of action must immediately enough: you need to prove to the public that your new
occur, whether it’s the termination of somebody brand is meaningful. Start by creating a list of specific
responsible for the event, stopping an oil leak, or actions that your new brand will take to begin living
simply putting out the fire. You’ve already addressed your new brand promise. For example, Uber hired a
the issue directly, identified who is at fault, and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer and launched
checked yourself from moving on too quickly — their diversity page and communities after rebranding
now is the time to take action. For example, Subway in the wake of sexual harassment and discriminatory
immediately suspended their relationship with practices scandals.
spokesperson Jared Fogle upon learning of a criminal
By following these steps, you’ll have a crisis management
investigation against him for child pornography charges.
brand strategy to help you mitigate the impact of the
5. Decide whether or not to rebrand — Once you’ve crisis as much as possible. Then, all you’ll have to do
taken whatever immediate action is needed, you can is execute on your rebrand. Let’s take a closer look at
begin to consider whether or not a rebrand is needed. the moves the companies we’ve discussed made in the
Has the damage to your brand been so irrevocable wake of crisis.
that rebranding is your only remaining option?
Seek counsel from your internal team, your existing
customers, as well as prospects whenever possible.
6. Consider a name change — If a rebrand is required,

start by assessing whether or not the crisis is so
severe that a name change is in order. You’ll need to
consider how much brand equity your current name
has built up over the years, the cost of changing your
name on all customer-facing materials, as well as
your domain name, web presence, and rankings in
search engine results. For example, Overstock.com
lost 61% of its web traffic when it rebranded its
domain from Overstock.com to O.co. “O.co was my
bad call,” said CEO Patrick Byrne.
7. Go back to the basics — Your brand name aside,

you’ll need to consider the elements of your brand
that you hope to retain versus those that you wish
to discard or distance yourself from in light of the
crisis. For example, Papa John’s decided to distance
themselves from John Schnatter while retaining their
focus on “Better Ingredients.”
3 Execute your rebrand
A hero-turned-fraud, and an oil-covered

beach — the companies we’ve discussed
all faced serious crises. Here’s a closer look
at how each one rebranded to address the
unfortunate circumstances at hand.
Dauphin Island, Alabama
After years of clean-up and litigation, British Petroleum (BP) awarded a

payout to Dauphin Island in an effort to boost tourism. Stamp Destinations
was hired to help with the rebrand. The agency started by refreshing
the island’s logo, with a new mark that was younger and more fun. Also
included was a new tagline, “Sunset capital of Alabama,” that diverted
attention away from the polluted waters (attributes of the brand they
decided to leave behind) and instead focused on one of the island’s other
selling points, great sunsets (a core attribute they wished to retain). Last
but not least, new messaging — “Paradise just the way we found it” —
was used alongside beautiful images of the island shot after the oil spill.
The campaign was a resounding success: “Since the launch of the

campaign, Dauphin Island’s Mayor reports that tourism has been
increasing in the last four years by 10% to 12% each year.”
Dauphin Island, Alabama logo before & after Dauphin Island Outdoor
Livestrong Foundation
Livestrong was faced with a rebranding challenge that

could only be compared to the long, daunting climbs that
once faced their founder in the Tour de France’s 17th stage.
They needed to distance themselves from their hero-
turned-villain founder, but were hesitant to embark on a
complete brand overhaul given the instantly recognizable
brand equity the foundation had built globally.
The vitality inherent in the brand’s bright yellow was The changes to the organization’s brand were subtle but
both its calling card and a color that remained an substantive, while keeping the most recognizable aspects
authentic reflection of the foundation’s soul — it was a of the brand intact.
core attribute the brand wished to retain. And the team
at Rigsby Hull smartly realized an opportunity to
Bitter, eh?
reinforce one of the foundation’s key messages: the Brands that use their founders as spokespeople put
foundation had never been about just one person [Lance]. themselves in some inherent danger, according to Deb
Gabor, CEO of Sol Marketing. “Both brands [Papa
John’s and Livestrong] put all their eggs in one basket
with a single spokesperson and this automatically puts
the brand at risk,” Gabor told CNN Money. Perhaps most
interestingly, both founders revealed their true colors in
the days following their respective crises. John Schnatter
sued his own company, claiming the board organized a
coup against him and then launched his own website
against the company’s wishes: savepapajohns.com.
Lance Armstrong followed suit, tweeting a picture of
himself alongside his seven Tour de France winning jerseys
with the caption “Back in Austin and just layin’ around.”
“The time is perfect [for Livestrong] to consolidate its
strengths, showing that rather like battling cancer,
it is how the organisation responds to adversity, finds
strength and delivers a message of courage to others
— which really matters,” says Jonathan Gabay, author
of The Brand Messiah.
The charity’s overhauled logo dropped Armstrong’s name

and instead reinforced the concept of community by
emphasizing the word “Foundation,” which is set slightly
ahead of the preceding “Livestrong” to suggest
progressive, forward movement.
4
Key Takeaways
1
All enduring brands will at some point be faced
with crisis.
2
Consumers don’t blame brands for situations
outside of their control, but they do blame them
for not having a crisis management strategy.
3
Move swiftly to acknowledge the crisis, own up
to mistakes, and show empathy.
4
Avoid making sweeping changes (like name
changes) in the heat of the moment; doing so can
easily discard years of brand equity that’s taken
years to build.
Rebranding
disasters
Rebranding is a long, arduous process that’s
Rebranding notoriously difficult to get right — but rebranding
disasters a sports team is a particularly tough assignment.
Few industries have followers as rabidly passionate as professional sports

1 and few are as steeped in tradition. The challenge, then, becomes honoring
Common reasons rebrands the tradition and brand that fans likely grew up with, while still moving the
go wrong brand forward.
p110
The team tasked with rebranding the Los
Angeles Chargers prior to the 2018 NFL
2 season faced even further challenges.
How to avoid a rebranding The team had never won a Super Bowl
and had just been abandoned by voters in
disaster
p114
their hometown of San Diego, forcing the
franchise to relocate to Los Angeles. The
move presented an opportunity to rebrand
3 and give the organization a fresh start, but the
Key Takeaways rebrand only added to the franchise’s turmoil.
p116
The team’s new logo was immediately
ridiculed everywhere from Twitter to ESPN,
to the extent that the team claimed it was
just a placeholder. “Clearly, we miscalculated
how the logo would be received, and we’ve taken it out of the rotation,”
said Chargers President of Business Operations A.G. Spanos. The team
responded by simply tweaking the new logo’s color scheme before
scrapping the direction altogether within a week.
What can we learn from the Chargers and other rebranding disasters to help
us avoid similarly costly and embarrassing mistakes?
1 Common reasons rebrands go wrong
There are a plethora of reasons that rebrands go

awry. Let’s review a few of the most common so
that we can avoid these mistakes ourselves.
The rebrand is disingenuous

BP rebranded logo, before & after
Perhaps the most common reason that a rebrand ends in disaster is that
a brand tries to rebrand as something that it simply isn’t. Take, for
example, British Petroleum (BP), which rebranded to replace a logo that
had been with the company for 70 years. The company’s new “Helios”
logo was meant to symbolize the company’s “green” growth strategy:
it was designed to look like the sun. While the concept was well-
intentioned, it certainly missed the mark — any way you cut it, there’s
nothing “green” about drilling for oil.
While the new logo created a bit of an uproar, it didn’t truly come back
to bite BP until 2010, when the company was responsible for the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest spill in the
history of the petroleum industry. As 4 million gallons of oil polluted the Greenpeach mock logos
Gulf and killed wildlife, non-profit environmental groups like Greenpeace

seized the opportunity to make a mockery of BP’s new logo.
The lesson here is simple: don’t rebrand in an effort to be something

that you’re not. Your brand must reflect the company that you are,
not the company that you aspire to be.
Rebranding disasters | 95
The rebrand discards RadioShack was a rare, enduring brand in the electronics
retail space, having opened their doors in 1921. But when
brand equity the company rebranded in 2009, they did so for all the
wrong reasons. While sales were admittedly slumping,
rebranding as “The Shack” was an effort to be hip — not
exactly a compelling reason to rebrand a franchise with
400 locations. The rebrand flushed away years of brand
equity that had made RadioShack a household name.
“Why would anyone throw away decades of brand value,

which actually shows up on the balance sheet as an
Why would anyone throw intangible asset, just to try to be cool for a few minutes?”
away decades of brand asked branding guru Rob Frankel.
value, which actually Brand equity aside, the rebrand was poorly executed
and frankly just didn’t make sense. The new brand logo
shows up on the balance
read “RadioShack The Shack,” and conjured up images
sheet as an intangible of a shack — most of which don’t have electricity, let
alone high-end electronics.
asset, just to try to be
cool for a few minutes? The lesson here is whenever you’re considering rebranding,
stop to think about the value of your existing brand
”
Rob Frankel equity — it likely took years to build and can disappear
instantly with a name change.
RadioShack rebrand as The Shack
The rebrand tries to serve It’s tough going out there for a brand like Pepsi, one that
will always be compared to a competitor that has one of
too many objectives the most iconic brands of all time, Coca-Cola. The
proverbial chip on Pepsi’s shoulder has led the company
to rebrand countless times over the years, a choice that’s
probably hurt the brand more than it has helped.
Any way you cut it, Pepsi’s 2008 rebrand was a colossal flop.
The new logo was designed to represent a “cheeky smile.”
“The white stripe on the new logo varies across Pepsi

products, getting wider or thinner depending on product,”
read an article in Business Insider. “The design team that
spearheaded the campaign explains that they’re supposed
to be ‘smiles,’ but we don’t really see it.”
The smile aside, the goals that agency Arnell Group set
out with for the rebrand were preposterous, attempting
to link the logo to Hindu tradition, the Parthenon, the
Mona Lisa, Earth’s gravitational field, and radiation from
the sun, among a slew of other factors. The “breathtaking
design strategy” may very well be the greatest tragedy
of a design brief of all time. And then there was the cost
of the rebrand: an estimated $1.2 billion.
The lesson here is to focus your rebrand around a single

theme that matters to your customers — trying to
achieve multiple goals or associations with a single
design rarely succeeds.
Pepsi logo rebranded to look like a cheeky smile
The rebrand tries to fix In 2010, clothing retailer Gap rebranded for no apparent
reason during the middle of the holiday season.
what isn’t broken Consumers were confused, and the design community
was quick to torch the company’s new brand.
Gap responded and essentially poured fuel on the fire

by saying that the new brand was just a trial — they
were actually planning to crowdsource their new brand
by testing a series of new logos and letting consumers
choose which they liked best.
While Gap’s old logo was solid and classic, like the company’s
clothes, the new logo was generic and confusing. It used
Helvetica, at the time a 71-year-old typeface that failed
to provide a unique visual identity for the company
— and the same typeface used by one of Gap’s primary
competitors, American Apparel. The blue square used in
the logo was altogether confusing. “The square gradient
is unfortunate because it’s completely gratuitous, like an
asterisk at the end of a word, except there is no footnote,”
said UnderConsideration Co-founder Armin Vit. “It’s just
a vapid reminder that the word Gap used to live within a
blue square in its previous incarnation.”
Amidst the backlash, Gap reverted to their original brand

and logo after just six days. The cost of the rebrand?
A cool $100 million.
The lesson here is don’t try to fix what’s not broken; and if
you do, use a font other than Helvetica.
Gap logo rebrand
2 How to avoid a rebranding disaster
Now that we’ve taken a look at several

rebranding disasters, the question quickly
becomes “How can I avoid a similar fate
when rebranding my company?”
That process begins with making sure that a rebrand is truly necessary.
A rebrand shouldn’t be undertaken to increase your company’s
performance. A rebrand should only be considered if there’s something
fundamentally wrong with your brand that must be changed in order
for you to move forward.
If you do decide that a rebrand is necessary, the scope of the effort can
vary greatly. For example, a complete name change is typically a dramatically
larger and more involved undertaking than simply tweaking your logo
like BP did. Once you decide on the scope of your rebrand, you can test
it to gain some degree of confidence in how the new brand will be received.
How to test your new brand
We’ve learned a lot in this process
Testing your new brand prior to revealing it to the world is
one of the most surefire ways to avoid a rebranding disaster. ... It’s clear that we did not go
And considering the costs we’ve seen associated with
about this in the right way and that
rebranding missteps, it’s absolutely worth doing. Follow
the process below to test your new brand with your we missed the opportunity to
internal team, your existing customers, as well as new engage with the online community.
markets that your brand is looking to enter.
This wasn’t the right project at the
1. Your internal team — Before you show your new
brand to any outside parties, you should test it to make right time for crowd sourcing
sure you have buy-in from stakeholders within your
Marka Hansen
organization. Start by creating a document that clearly President of Gap Brand North America
provides answers to the following questions:
a. Why was the rebrand necessary? Everybody must

understand the reasons for the rebrand.
b. What’s meaningful about the new direction? While 3. New audiences — Often brands rebrand in an attempt
your new brand doesn’t have to (and likely won’t) to reach new or larger audiences; if this is the situation
resonate with everybody, your internal team at least you find yourself in, it’s absolutely critical that you test
needs to understand the new direction. the new brand with prospects from the audiences that
you are trying to reach. Present new audiences with
c. What are the goals of the rebrand? Provide clear your rebranding concepts, and ask action-oriented
guidelines to your team, so everyone will know how questions like “Which of these products are you most
the success of the rebrand will be assessed and interested in learning more about?”
what the project was designed to achieve.
Testing your rebranding concepts should give you peace of
2. Your existing customers — After testing your new mind and help mitigate the risk of your own rebranding
brand with your internal team, you’ll want to make sure disaster. While that’s the case, keep in mind that rebranding
that your brand resonates with your existing customers disasters rarely kill a company. They may be expensive and
and doesn’t alienate them. “A rebrand has to resonate wipe away years of brand equity, but companies like BP,
with audiences without losing touch with the current Gap, and Pepsi have all survived their branding missteps.
customer base,” says Grant Polachek, Director of And if you do find yourself in the midst of a rebranding
Marketing at Squadhelp. Use surveys and focus groups disaster, owning up to your mistakes and learning from
— providing a small incentive to customers usually them is key to minimizing any further damage.
helps with recruitment — to enlist their help in
providing feedback and validating your ideas. Avoid “We’ve learned a lot in this process,” said Marka Hansen,
asking customers if they simply “like it”; instead, ask President of Gap Brand North America. “It’s clear that we did
them directly if the new brand achieves the objectives not go about this in the right way and that we missed the
that it was designed to address. opportunity to engage with the online community. This
wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.”
3
Key Takeaways
1
Rebranding disasters happen for a variety of
reasons, but most are a result of the brand acting
in its own self-interest rather than the interests of
its customer base.
2
Your rebrand needs to be reflective of the
company that you are, not the aspirational
attributes of the company that you’d like to be.
3
Name changes can be particularly catastrophic
— be careful to avoid throwing away existing
brand equity that took years to build.
4
Testing new brand concepts with your internal
team, customers, and prospects from new
markets can help you mitigate the risk of a
rebranding disaster.
Summary of
key themes
Rebranding saved Harley-Davidson from the
Summary of brink of bankruptcy, creating an iconic brand
key themes now deeply associated with a freewheeling
American lifestyle.
1
Rebranding helped Uber expand from a Silicon Valley start-up to a “global
The foundations of a solid
platform for mobility,” instantly recognizable to passengers across the globe.
rebranding effort And IHOP had their new company name off the tip of everyone’s tongues as
p120
they sought to change their position in the market when launching their new
burger business.
2
We’ve looked at rebranding strategies from myriad different angles, and it’s
Reasons to consider
clear that rebranding is a powerful tool if wielded carefully and strategically. In
rebranding this chapter, we’ll review the key themes that we’ve covered and leave you with
p122 actionable suggestions as you look to rebrand your own product or company
3
Rebranding when
things go wrong
p123
4
Rebranding cheat codes
p124
5
Final takeaways
p126
1 The foundations of a solid rebranding effort
Your brand is one of your greatest assets, and you’ll need to have buy-in
from inside and outside your organization to make your rebranding project
a success. The following foundational elements will help ensure that your
new brand resonates with your target audience.
If you compete in a market against very similar products,

User research and remember that — even if you’re selling bottled water —
“listening” come first all products can be differentiated.
Just as an effective sales rep starts the sales process by All it takes is a careful inspection of your product or
listening to a potential customer’s needs, brand managers service to find your points of differentiation.
should begin the rebranding process by listening to the
Whatever your reason for rebranding, you can’t erase a
feedback and perceptions of prospects, customers, and
consumer’s memory or perception of your brand: if you
their internal teams. Many brands fall into the trap of trying
try to completely step away from the brand that you
to change brand positioning in a way that’s self-serving
once were, you’ll likely fail. Instead, seek to find an
rather than based on what their audience wants.
existing truth in your brand and communicate it in a way
A formalized user research process at the outset will help that’s clearer, more understandable, or more beneficial
you discover what is meaningful and important to your to the consumer.
customers. Without taking the time to listen, you’ll simply
Remember Bill Weintraub, the former CMO of Kellogg’s
be guessing when it comes to identifying important points
who rebranded All-Bran cereal around the cancer-
of differentiation.
preventing superpowers of dietary fiber? The fiber was
there all along — it merely took reframing the benefits of
Differentiation within your dietary fiber to differentiate the brand effectively.
industry is essential
Your rebranding effort should fulfill one objective above
all else: It should help differentiate your brand in the
market. Differentiation takes the emphasis off of price
and strategically positions your brand’s unique attributes
as better for a specific subset of target customers. Often,
clearly identifying your brand’s main adversary can help
make your market position really stand out in the mind
of the consumer.
The points of differentiation that you’re looking for are

truths that are right in front of you — not invented fictions.
Summary of key themes | 104

Brands should be Your rebrand must reflect the company that you are, not
the aspirational attributes of the company that you’d like
aspirational for consumers, to one day become.
but not for companies A brand is not a disguise; if you pretend to be something
that you’re not, your customers will quickly expose you.
Your new brand can be aspirational for your customers

— in fact, it should help your customers realize a
better version of themselves. This often takes the form
of a brand selling a lifestyle desired by their target
consumers. Remember Harley-Davidson’s evocative
positioning statement?
The only motorcycle

manufacturer that
makes big, loud
motorcycles for
macho guys (and
"macho wannabes")
mostly in the United
States who want to
join a gang of
cowboys in an era
of decreasing
personal freedom.
The company’s rebrand was massively successful in hinging

their brand on ideals of Americana and personal freedom.
2 Reasons to consider rebranding
Here are three of the most common and compelling reasons to consider
a rebrand. Each of these represents an opportunity for a rebrand to have
a direct impact on your company’s bottom line.
For example, Uber should maintain its focus on mobility

Rebranding to change your across all the markets it serves, but it would be appropriate
position in the market for the company to contextualize its advertising for each
unique market by employing local celebrities in their ads.
If your company is seeking to change its position in the
market — like IHOP did when they rebranded as IHOb
Rebranding around mission
in an effort to introduce their new line of hamburgers —
rebranding can be an effective strategy. and values
This tactic should only be used as a last resort, though, Consumers are increasingly willing to pay more for
as you don’t want to get in the habit of rebranding every products or services made by companies that share
time you introduce a new product or want to change consumer their personal beliefs and values. If your existing brand
perceptions. Doing so will leave your audience utterly confused. isn’t reflective of your core values, this provides an
opportunity to rebrand and create an experience that
As you rebrand to change your market position, focus on
resonates more deeply with your target customers.
maintaining the core, favorable attributes of your brand
while dropping the aspects of your current positioning that Rebranding around your mission and values must be done
are no longer relevant or compelling. And don’t be afraid to authentically. Brands must be willing to make sacrifices in
make a big splash as you unveil your new brand — changing service of their values — that’s how consumers know that
consumer perceptions is hard, so be bold. the brand’s mission and values are real, substantiated, and
meaningful. Patagonia donating 100% of their Black Friday
Rebranding to support sales to environmental charities is a perfect example of a
sacrifice made in service of mission and values.
international expansion
Your mission and values are worthless unless they
For many brands, rebranding to support international permeate every aspect of your brand experience and
expansion is a necessary step in the natural evolution and drive your actions as a company.
growth of the business. Few companies have faced this
challenge as acutely as Uber, whose future growth relies on
drivers and passengers being able to easily recognize Uber
vehicles in markets across the globe.
As you rebrand with this objective in mind, focus on using

straightforward visual communication that’s easily
understood by customers across cultures; design function
trumps design form. You’ll also want to keep your product’s
messaging and positioning consistent, but adapt your tactics
for the nuances and sensitivities of each international market.

3 Rebranding when things go wrong
In business, sometimes things will go wrong. Whether your brand is facing

an external crisis beyond your control or you created your own rebranding
disaster, follow the guidance below to minimize the impact of the event.
Rebranding in crisis Rebranding disasters

All enduring brands will at some point be faced with Rebranding disasters are self-inflicted rebranding
crisis. The mayor of picturesque Dauphin Island, mishaps. They happen for a variety of reasons,
Alabama never imagined he’d wake up one spring but the most common is that the brand is acting in
morning to discover an oil-polluted coastline that its own self-interest rather than the interests of its
threatened the lives of local marine life, let alone customer base.
the upcoming tourist season. When mistakes happen
Name changes can be particularly catastrophic
and crisis occurs, remember this one key tenet:
(remember when Overstock.com rebranded as O.co?),
Consumers don’t blame brands for situations outside of and the benefits of a name change should always be
their control, but they do blame them for not having a carefully considered before taking this disruptive step.
crisis management strategy. Changing your brand’s name can easily throw away
your existing brand equity.
When a crisis occurs, move quickly to acknowledge the
crisis, own up to mistakes, and show empathy to those While any rebranding project comes with some inherent
affected. While you want to acknowledge the event risk, you can mitigate your company’s exposure and
quickly, avoid making sweeping changes (like name increase the chances that the rebrand is successful by
changes) in the heat of the moment; doing so can easily testing new brand concepts with your internal team,
discard brand equity that’s taken years to build. customers, and prospects from new markets prior to
officially unveiling your new brand. Doing so is always
worth the investment of time and effort.
4 Rebranding cheat codes
Your rebrand can be even more effective if you leverage the strategies
listed below. These tactics can make your brand more relevant, create
fierce customer loyalty, and help you compete more effectively while
charging a premium price for your products or services.
Harness the power of in- Create a dynamic brand

person and shared experiences Brands today need to adapt seamlessly to both the
physical and digital world. Your brand needs to be as
In today’s online world, it’s all too easy for brands to
effective on a Times Square billboard as it is on an
ignore the power of in-person experiences. But humans
app icon on the screen of a smartphone.
connect on a deeper level when experiences are shared
and happen in-person. As such, in-person experiences Creating a dynamic brand gives brand managers the
often represent the strongest brand-building opportunities ability to consistently reinvent themselves and present
by appealing strongly to customers’ emotions. Think of fresh and contextually relevant versions of their brand
the motorcycle rides Harley-Davidson organizes for their without losing their most identifiable characteristics.
HOG group members, for example: those experiences This allows your brand to not only meet the demands
create memories that are far more meaningful for Harley of the physical and digital world, but also to adapt to
customers than any sort of online interaction. current events and happenings.
As part of your rebranding effort, focus on creating an As you embark on creating a dynamic brand, begin by
inclusive brand community that’s connected by shared assembling a “kit of parts.” This will help you identify the
experiences. Your brand exists to serve this community, elements of your brand that will remain static while the
rather than the community existing to serve your brand. rest of your identity can be liquid and subject to change.

Leverage your existing Achieve cult status with
customers to create user- your brand
generated content A strong brand allows you to charge a premium price for
your products or services while creating fierce customer
User-generated content can be a particularly effective
loyalty. And with those objectives in mind, brand managers
accelerant to a successful rebranding effort. Consumers
can learn from and adopt many of the same principles
tend to trust other consumers more than they trust
that have been used over the years in the formation of
brands, so content created by your users can speed up
cults. After all, you’re looking to build a loyal following.
the process of changing perceptions about your brand.
Whether it’s leveraging a charismatic leader like Steve
Brands that tap into user-generated content can
Jobs at Apple or formalizing a membership initiation
also achieve significant advantages when it comes
process like Real Madrid has done for their fans, try out
to exposure, especially on social media platforms.
some rebranding strategies from others who have
As the costs of advertising on platforms like Facebook developed a cult-like following. Doing so can lead to
and Google continue to rise, companies like Chubbies rabid evangelism and increased customer loyalty.
have grown largely on the back of marketing strategies
where their customers are producing their marketing
materials for them.
Your customers represent your biggest ally in quickly

and effectively changing perceptions of your brand —
stop and think about how they can help you bring your
rebrand to life.The company’s rebrand was massively
successful in hinging their brand on ideals of Americana
and personal freedom.
5
Final takeaways
1
Rebranding is a major undertaking — make sure
you have valid reasons for taking it on that serve
the best interests of your customers.
2
Rebranding requires complete commitment.
Internal stakeholders, your existing customers,
and prospective customers should all be involved
in the process.
3
Rebranding affords your company or product a
significant opportunity to change its positioning
in the market and differentiate in ways that
matter to your audience.
Brandfolder, Inc. is a Software as a Service
(SaaS) company headquartered in Denver,
Colorado. Brandfolder provides a digital asset
management (DAM) solution, helping
businesses store, organize, manage, create,
distribute, optimize, and analyze their digital
assets more effectively.
Digital assets or brand creative entails an

all-encompassing collection of online and
offline creative assets that a business uses to
represent its brand including social media
content, product imagery, sales materials,
logos, fonts, colors, etc. These materials exist
in hundreds of formats including audio, video,
text, images, 3D renderings, and more.
brandfolder.com

How to Stand Out in Crowded Markets

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Rebranding to

James Winter, Brandfolder

But what makes a great brand? To answer

Words: James Winter

How to create a cult brand p11

How to create a dynamic brand identity p24

How to create an international brand p38

How to rebrand to change your brand positioning p50

What brand managers can learn from DTC companies p61

Rebranding around mission and values p71

Rebranding in a crisis p83

Rebranding disasters p93

Summary of key themes p102

market share to nearly 50% in just a few years.

Virtually everybody’s copied us

Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that

Customer Service Price undercutters — Almost all brands will face

How to differentiate in a crowded market | 3

But all products can be differentiated. One example: Fiji

“There is no such thing as a commodity,” says Theodore

This proves to be true even in commodity exchanges

Particularly with consumer packaged goods, many less

Having worked with products ranging from orange juice to

The differentiation was effective for Coors: during

How to differentiate in a crowded market | 5

The point of differentiation that you choose COMPETITOR DIFFERENTIATION

matching the truthful distinctiveness they highlighting? Are there

Bill Weintraub addressing a specific audience?

KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL DIFFERENTIATION IN A COMPETITIVE MARKET

2 Appeal to the emotions and desires of the consumer.

3 Embrace that trade-offs are required for effective differentiation.

How to differentiate in a crowded market | 7

Many brands, like Chobani, rode a strong

“I don’t believe in the notion of rebranding; I believe in the notion of

The brand also rethought its packaging with wellness in

“This look hasn’t been done in the yogurt aisle,”

To the brand manager look to rebrand, or as Weintraub

How to differentiate in a crowded market | 9

A “cult brand” is defined by Heavy interaction — Cult brands focus on creating

A charismatic leader — Cult brands often have a

Membership — Cult brands foster a strong sense of

A clearly identified enemy — Cult brands are not

Shared lingo, rituals and symbols — Cult brands leverage

How to create a cult brand | 13

On the first day of the meetings, Fessler

In the 1970s, psychologist Henri Tajfel showed that groups of people

To make matters worse, the Japanese companies began

Honda Ad Campaign Fessler told his colleagues at Carmichael Lynch to

Only two years prior, in 1980, Al Ries and Jack Trout

How to create a cult brand | 15

Naming an enemy In the spring of 2017, MillerCoors launched their “Know

position their brand

With an enemy clearly identified, Fessler

When Fessler joined Harley-Davidson as Manager of Advertising and

Dressed to the nines, Fessler arrived in Daytona for Harley’s annual

“I work for Harley-Davidson,” Fessler said pointing at the bike.

For Fessler to truly understand Harley-Davidson’s customers, an academic

How to create a cult brand | 17

“I had a friend, who if you showed a motorcycle part

As Fessler sought to leverage this tactic, he figured that

How to create a cult brand | 19

It wasn’t until the last two days of their meetings