Rebranding Guide: When To Rebrand + Real-World Examples

Rebranding is the process of changing how your business presents itself to customers, whether that means updating your name, your logo and visual identity, your messaging and brand strategy, or all of the above. 

You may rebrand to reach a new audience, stand out from competitors, align with a new business model or product offerings, or better reflect what you’ve learned about your primary audience. 

For example, skincare brand Three Ships originally launched as New Body with youthful pink-and-floral branding, only to discover that its customers were older than its founders had anticipated. After relaunching as Three Ships with branding better suited to that audience, the company gained momentum. 

“That really allowed us to accelerate our growth and raise money,” Cofounder Laura Thompson says on Shopify Masters. “Without the rebrand, I’m not sure we would’ve been able to get there without a lot more luck and determination.”

Learn what rebranding is, why companies rebrand, and how to execute a successful rebrand campaign step by step.

What is rebranding?

Rebranding is when a company changes elements of its brand identity to influence how customers perceive the business. A rebrand can include new brand or product names, imagery, messaging, tone of voice, brand positioning, or other elements. Depending on the company’s goals, it can take the form of a full or partial rebrand: 

• Full rebrand. Involves a significant change in presentation across all brand touchpoints. A major shift in business strategy, such as a new business model, product line, or target audience, might prompt this type of rebrand.

• Partial rebrand. Often referred to as a brand refresh, this involves updates to some elements while retaining much of the existing brand identity. This might mean introducing a new logo or color palette or an update to messaging or the brand narrative. This approach can help an established brand evolve without abandoning the recognition it has already built.

Alex Matthews, founder of Mexican soda brand De La Calle, explains the choice as one between revolution and evolution. 

“Do you want to revolutionize your look and feel, as in a complete 180,” Alex says on Shopify Masters, “or do you want to take what you have and basically evolve it?”

Common reasons to implement a rebranding strategy

• Differentiating from competitors
• Reflecting changes in the business
• Reaching current customers and new audiences
• Improving company image or reputation

Companies typically rebrand when their existing brand no longer reflects their business, resonates with their audience, or distinguishes them in the market: 

Differentiating from competitors

Companies may opt for a rebrand as a way to stand out in the market. Use competitor research to learn how you can differentiate yourself from other brands in your industry, and then use a rebrand in tandem with your competitive analysis and marketing strategy to emphasize what makes you distinct.

Reflecting changes in the business

As a business evolves, its existing brand may no longer accurately represent what the company sells, who it sells to, or where it’s headed. 

Potential reasons to rebrand include: 

• Launching a new hero product

• Shifting the product mix

• Entering a new market

• Changing the business model 

• Mergers, acquisitions, or changes in leadership

Reaching current customers and new audiences

Rebranding can be a way for companies to appeal to new audiences or better connect with customers it already has. Market research, customer feedback, and social listening may reveal your existing branding doesn’t appeal to the people you want to reach. 

Updating your visual identity, messaging, or positioning can help align your brand with those customers while supporting expansion into new demographics.

Improving company image or reputation

A rebrand can be a way of improving or restoring a brand’s public image following a negative event or incident. As part of a broader public relations strategy, a new name, visual identity, or messaging can signal change and help reshape how customers perceive the business. 

However, rebranding alone can’t repair a damaged reputation; companies also need to address the issues that caused it.

Rebranding examples

• Zero Waste Store
• Stratus
• By Rosie Jane

These three brands show how rebranding can support different business goals. 

Zero Waste Store

Formerly known as Earthy Shop, Zero Waste Store rebranded after Cofounder JJ Follano identified an opportunity to align the company’s name and domain name with keywords customers were using to search for its products. 

“I saw a trend of a lot of people looking for zero waste products particularly and found out that that domain name was not being used,” JJ says on Shopify Masters. “It got searched 10,000 or 15,000 times a month.” 

After the rebrand, the company grew from a few hundred orders a month to more than $1 million in sales within a year. Follano calls the rebrand a “huge lever of success” for the business.

Stratus

Originally named North 45, Stratus rebranded to better reflect its identity as a performance-focused outdoor brand and its commitment to sustainability. The new name references the Stratus clouds found around elevations where the company’s customers ski, while its “Rise Above” tagline connects the brand to ski touring and the mountain environment. 

Founder Ricky Jones says the stronger brand identity has produced tangible business benefits. 

“Our choice to rebrand has helped our credibility with consumers and has lowered advertising costs,” Ricky says on Shopify Masters. 

“Through experience, we knew that a strong brand would have that effect on not just our intangible parts of the business, but the tangible costs of acquiring new customers into the Stratus brand.”

By Rosie Jane

Fragrance brand By Rosie Jane originally operated under the name of its first fragrance, Leila Lou. But as Founder Rosie Johnston prepared to expand the product line, she realized the existing name could limit the growing business. 

“How could I bring another fragrance out when my entire brand name is the name of one fragrance?” she says on Shopify Masters. 

She rebranded as By Rosie Jane, creating a brand extension and broader identity to accommodate additional products as the company grew.

How to rebrand your business 

1. Set goals for your rebrand
2. Identify your audience
3. Write a positioning statement
4. Update your brand and visual identity
5. Test and mitigate risks
6. Launch your new branding
7. Listen and adapt

Rebranding can affect many things about your business, such as customer recognition, your website traffic, and product packaging, so careful planning is important. 

Here are steps to help make the transition without losing what’s already working for your brand: 

1. Set goals for your rebrand

Start by establishing what you want to accomplish with your rebrand and how you will measure success. Your goals can also help determine whether you need to perform a partial or full rebrand. Rather than implementing a complete overhaul by default, identify which elements of your brand support your objectives and which need to change.

Set specific, SMART goals with key performance indicators (KPIs) and growth metrics, such as changes in brand awareness, customer engagement, return on investment, or sales. Establishing baselines and benchmarks for brand tracking before the rebrand helps evaluate its impact after launch. 

This is especially true for things like brand recognition and brand awareness. To get valid data, you may include a brand awareness survey as part of your market research and rebrand planning phase. 

2. Identify your audience

Clarify whom you hope to reach with your rebrand. You may want to reach a new demographic, such as older rather than younger buyers, a niche market, or expand your audience while continuing to appeal to your existing customers.

Learn how and where your target market shops and what draws them to your products or services. Also consider your competitors and your value proposition, i.e., why your audience would choose your brand over another. Surveys and market research can help you understand customer pain points, needs and tailor your rebranding measures.

3. Write a positioning statement

Once you’ve established your goals and target audience, define how you want customers to perceive your brand. Your positioning statement should identify who you serve, what you offer, and your unique selling proposition (USP). Consider your purpose, brand values, brand personality, and how your brand fulfills its mission.

Use your positioning statement to guide the rebranding process and keep your team aligned around a consistent direction. Use it to inform decisions about messaging, tone of voice, visual identity, and other brand elements. If you’re working with an agency, these should be part of the branding package.

4. Update your brand and visual identity 

Use your positioning statement to develop updated elements that align with your new direction. Depending on the scope of your rebrand, this may involve changing your brand name, messaging, tone of voice, tagline or slogan, or copy and content strategy.

Next, develop a visual identity that complements your brand identity and appeals to your target audience. This can include designing a new logo, choosing new fonts and typography, selecting brand colors, or creating imagery and other visual assets that reinforce your branding.

Shopify store owners can manage brand assets and brand guidelines, such as logos, colors, cover images, slogans, and descriptions, from the Brand settings page to help keep branding consistent across sales channels, themes, and apps. Depending on the extent of your rebrand, your changes may be global or localized for different markets.

5. Test and mitigate risks

Before launching your rebrand, test key changes with customers where possible. A/B testing can compare different versions of an asset by showing each to a subset of your audience, while focus groups can help you understand how existing and prospective customers respond to changes you may make. 

Testing can help you identify potential problems before rollout, such as customer confusion or loss of brand recognition. A rebrand can also introduce technical risks online, particularly if you’re changing your name or domain. These can include lost search traffic, broken backlinks, improperly updated assets, and pages that no longer work. 

“A lot of brands aren’t redirecting a lot of the URLs from the old domain to the new one, and you get a lot of dead links in Google search,” Zero Waste’s JJ says. “You could save a lot of traffic if you do your due diligence and make sure everything is redirecting correctly.”

To mitigate these risks, communicate upcoming changes to customers through marketing channels such as email and social media. If you’re changing domains or redesigning your website, map existing URLs to their new destinations and establish 301 redirects so customers and search engines can find the corresponding pages on your new site.

Ricky says that Shopify made this process easier during the Stratus rebrand. 

“You can download your sitemap online and see all the pages that are there and make sure that each page is getting transferred,” he says. “That’s a diligent step-by-step process where you make sure everything’s transferring over.”

6. Launch your new branding

Implement your new branding using a structured launch timeline that establishes when and where each change will take place. Coordinate the rollout so your updated identity appears consistently across customer touchpoints and the customer journey map. 

Account for both physical and digital updates, including product packaging, marketing materials, your website, social media accounts, and internal communications. Create a checklist of every asset and channel that needs updating, assign responsibilities and deadlines, and confirm that everything is ready before taking your rebrand to market.

7. Listen and adapt

After launching, monitor how people respond to your new branding and use customer feedback to make adjustments as needed. You may need to refine your visual elements, messaging, or other aspects of your brand based on what you learn. 

Measure the performance of your rebrand against the success metrics you established during the planning stage. Depending on your goals, these might include sales performance, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), web traffic, brand awareness, or changes in the demographics of your customer base.