When hugely popular companies announce a rebranding of their visual appearance and directional focus, it is always interesting to witness their evolution and to learn what works with their new approach, and what does not.
It makes sense to assume that rebranding is easiest for large companies who already have a loyal audience and the resources to make a change happen. However, as we have seen with some of the biggest brands out there, wealth and notoriety are not necessarily the only worthwhile characteristics needed to develop and execute a strategic and beneficial re-brand.
If you don't already know who I'm thinking about, then take Twitter as an example. It has been almost a year since the company rebranded to "X" and the official URL of the site remains "twitter.com." While the social media site may have a new logo and blatant disregard for the branding legacy that precedes it, major news networks continue to preface each mention of the company or a tweet with the contextual disclaimer, "formerly known as Twitter." In fact, I personally have yet to read or hear a single news outlet reference the social platform with "X" alone.
If we were to boil it down to one reason why this branding transition is so wishy-washy and hard to latch on to, it would be because the rebrand did not need to happen in the first place. There was not a branding-related problem that needed to be addressed, nor was there an issue with the visual strength and recognition of the Twitter aesthetic.
Of course, this is all simply my own opinion.
But now let's take a look at an instance of rebranding that did a lot to boost the success of a business. Dunkin Donuts did this when they announced a subtle tweak to their company name, shortening it down to simply "Dunkin" back in September of 2018. The change was not reflected in marketing and packaging until January 2019, but this branding decision was effectively accepted and remains a strong example of brand identity transformation.
To simplify this one down, it was smart of Dunkin Donuts to condense and modernize their name, as "Dunkin" was already what customers lovingly called the company for short. To this day, the Dunkin rebrand is praised as one of the more successful rebrands because they did not attempt to reinvent the wheel or attempt a makeover that left them unrecognizable. Dunkin leaned into the magenta and orange colors of their brand, the playful roundness of their font, and confidently nicknamed their already newly nicknamed name by dropping the vowels for an alternate logo design. They did all of this masterfully while managing to show love to the apostrophe in their title - securing it as a symbol of the company in and of itself. That's something that only the most success brands can do (i.e. the wordless Nike swoosh).
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