When Is A Rebrand Truly Essential?
If you are looking for a design agency in Milton Keynes to produce a new company logo or packaging as part of a rebranding exercise, a key question that will underpin how this process is why you want to change.
A particularly notable alteration has just occurred with Nokia, with many news outlets observing that the key motivation behind this is to highlight the fact that it is no longer a leading maker of mobile phones and is instead focused on being a B2B technology and innovation company. This has led to the first change in its logo and branding in 60 years, with a key change being to the typeface. The name remains the same, but it looks different.
While some may want to keep the same brand name but alter a logo to emphasise something different, others might be offering the same product but want to change its name. A recent example of the latter was Lilt, which has now been rebranded Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit by owner the Coca-Cola company. This was a significant change after 50 years, which begs the question of why.
Speaking to the BBC, Cleopatra Veloutsou, a professor of brand management at the University of Glasgow, suggested the decision was being made because the similarity of Lilt and Fanta meant they were “cannibalising” each other’s sales.
There were suggestions that the motivation lay elsewhere. The Daily Mail highlighted claims that the change was a ‘woke’ move as the Caribbean image associated with the drink was seen by some as ‘cultural appropriation’. Guardian columnist Nels Abbey actually took such a view, calling it the “fake dreadlocks of soft drinks”. Of course, there are instances where cultural and racial sensitivities undoubtedly apply, such as when Robertson’s removed the Golly mascot from its jam jars in 2001.
The key is always that of relevance: Your logo and packaging says what you are as a company and also what you are not. That can be just as important whether you are showing yourselves to be not racist, or simply not a mobile phone company anymore.
