Capítulo 1
When Disruption Becomes Your Brand
In today's business landscape, brands face a stark reality: disrupt or be disrupted. While we often associate disruption with tech startups, Jacob Benbunan argues it should be a mindset for all brands. This perspective has resonated deeply with business leaders-Carlos Munoz, founder of Volotea and Vueling Airlines, calls it "a must-read for anyone wanting to cause abrupt change" in any industry. The book has become required reading at prestigious business schools, with professors praising its practical approach to brand-building in turbulent times. Drawing on decades of experience with clients like YouTube, A1 Telekom, and the V&A Museum, Benbunan and his co-authors show how disruption isn't something to fear but rather an attitude of creativity and innovation that all brands should embrace. In our connected world with empowered consumers, brands must continually challenge themselves to deliver exceptional experiences-not just once, but as an ongoing commitment to relevance.
Capítulo 2
Navigating a Converging World
We're living through the fourth industrial revolution, fundamentally altering how we live, work, and relate to one another. This transformation has created a world where previously separate concepts now converge: digital merges with physical, consumers become producers, and global blends with local. For brands, this means operating in a completely different context than when they were invented.
The global village phenomenon has transformed brands into reference points we all share and understand, from Chile to China. Success often comes from thinking globally while acting locally. Food brands exemplify this convergence-Starbucks opening in a Kyoto tea house, Coca-Cola distributing branded headdresses at Rio's Carnival, or McDonald's adapting menus with vegetarian Maharaja burgers in India and avocado puree in Chile. As McDonald's CEO Don Thompson acknowledged, "The reality is we haven't been changing at the same rate as our customers." This localization strategy helped McDonald's achieve their best sales performance in six years.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift has been the transformation of consumers into "prosumers"-a term coined by Alvin Toffler in 1980 to describe someone who both produces and consumes. Social networks have revolutionized brand-consumer relationships, enabling instantaneous, free interaction. Where consumers once had limited options for engagement, they now actively shape brands through feedback and participation.
The rise of "influencers" exemplifies this trend, as they create value for brands by sharing personal experiences on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Their seemingly authentic endorsements often prove more effective than traditional advertising. Gap's 2010 logo change demonstrates this power shift. After unveiling a new design replacing their iconic blue box logo, customers voiced overwhelming disappointment on social media. Within a week, Gap reverted to the original logo, acknowledging they'd "heard customers say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo."
Meanwhile, the physical-digital divide continues to collapse. Rather than seeing online and physical stores as separate entities, successful brands recognize that digital permeates throughout the physical world. While physical retail hasn't disappeared as early predictions suggested, digital interactions now influence 56 cents of every dollar spent in brick-and-mortar stores. Modern consumers research products online before visiting physical locations, particularly for items where touch and feel matter.
Interestingly, this convergence works both ways. Amazon Books represents a digital-first company establishing physical stores, using vast customer data to curate displays based on online metrics like review counts and reading speed. This approach acknowledges that while online shopping excels for known purchases, physical spaces remain valuable for discovery.
While these convergence forces reshape the landscape, some brands find success through deliberate divergence from competitors. GoPro exemplifies this approach-founded in 2002 by Nick Woodman who, frustrated with existing camera options, created a small, simple, waterproof and shockproof camera specifically for action shots. Rather than competing with feature-packed devices, GoPro focused on a single core product with minimal variations, positioning themselves distinctly for adventurers and sportspeople. Nearly three decades later, their concept remains uncluttered and undiluted.
The key is finding ways to respond-either by embracing convergence or diverging to offer something completely new. Brands must be authentic, relevant and differentiating to disrupt; everything is a brand today; they must act both globally and locally; consumers are becoming "prosumers" with power to criticize and demand change; and as physical-digital lines blur, brands need to be channel- and technology-agnostic to avoid disruption.
Capítulo 3
Finding Your Brand's North Star
In today's competitive landscape, having great products or services isn't enough. Brands must articulate why they exist and what makes them special. A compelling brand strategy serves as the organizing principle that directs everything an organization does, from marketing to hiring decisions.
A brand strategy articulates what a company excels at, how it operates, and why it differs from competitors. The "why" question-why a company exists and why anyone should care-requires careful discovery through conversations with employees, customers, partners and industry experts to identify patterns that reveal authentic differentiation. From this emerges the Brand Idea: a clear, compelling narrative that makes the brand authentic, relevant and different.
This Brand Idea serves three crucial functions: it supports growth by guiding management decisions about expansion opportunities; it motivates employees by providing meaning and purpose in their work; and it differentiates the organization from competitors in meaningful ways that resonate with customers.
Amazon exemplifies how a brand idea guides growth-expanding from an online bookshop to a global giant in groceries, deliveries, television, AI and healthcare. This expansion makes sense through their brand idea: "Earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can find and discover anything they might want to buy online." Similarly, Nike's idea "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. (If you have a body, you are an athlete)" gives them scope for continuous expansion while remaining true to their purpose.
A clear brand idea is essential for establishing an employer brand that inspires current staff and attracts new talent. Research shows that employees who believe in the value of their work are almost three times more productive than uninspired colleagues. With people spending about a third of their time at work, they seek meaning from their employers.
Apple exemplifies how a brand idea drives differentiation. Their idea "To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind" positions them not as mere computer sellers but as enablers of human potential. This positioning permeates all touchpoints-from advertisements focusing on creativity to stores designed as exploratory labs rather than retail spaces. Apple's 2013 manifesto reinforced this positioning: "We are engineers and artists. Craftsmen and inventors. We sign our work. You may rarely look at it. But you'll always feel it. This is our signature. And it means everything."
Without a clear brand idea, even successful companies eventually hit stumbling blocks. Many digital giants are now facing increased scrutiny from users and regulators, along with shifting societal expectations about corporate behavior. Internet startups have traditionally prioritized product development over brand building, treating brand as an afterthought. This creates problems as organizations grow and face increasingly complex decisions and challenges, as exemplified by Uber's tumultuous journey despite its unicorn status.
An effective brand strategy must be more than documentation of the status quo-it should be an ambitious target that takes time and effort to achieve. A strong brand idea points to the horizon, pushing the organization forward even during turbulent times. The best brand strategies are both ambitious and enduring, allowing room for growth while maintaining relevance.
Defining a great brand idea involves four key steps: Ask (introspection about your brand's strengths and purpose), Listen (gather external perspectives from customers), Think (identify insights and articulate them meaningfully), and Refine (test the idea for relevance, authenticity, and resonance with both external and internal audiences).
For a brand strategy to remain effective, organizations must consistently live up to their stated values and promises. Companies like Barclays and BP demonstrate the consequences of failing to align actions with brand positioning. A genuine brand idea must infuse every aspect of the organization-from hiring processes to product development-rather than existing as mere buzzwords. As Aristotle noted, "You are what you repeatedly do," making consistent, on-brand behavior essential for building trust with both internal and external audiences.
Capítulo 4
Making Strategy Visible Through Design
Design transforms brand strategy into tangible expressions that connect with audiences across all touchpoints. As the visible manifestation of a brand's purpose and values, design plays a crucial role in creating differentiation and emotional connection.
Like brand strategy, design affects both internal and external parts of your organization. Externally, design plays a crucial role in product and customer experience. At Saffron, we say a brand delivers on a promise made to customers-design makes that strategy tangible across all touchpoints. Internally, design establishes a visual culture, translating strategy into attributes expressed through words, colors, images and a design language that convinces your people of its importance.
Without top-level support, brand projects rarely succeed. The quality and longevity of a redesign diminish proportionally to the influence its project leaders have within an organization. Direct involvement from the CEO and top management ensures tangible results and prevents silos. At Apple, Steve Jobs and chief designer Jony Ive were famously close, with Jobs calling Ive his "spiritual partner." The New Yorker noted that "Apple's designers have long had an influence in the company which is barely imaginable to most designers elsewhere."
The attraction of beautiful design is undeniable. Brands that invest in design raise the bar of customer expectations everywhere. As Bridget van Kranlingen of IBM notes, "The last best experience that anyone has anywhere, becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere." Digital bank Monzo exemplifies this principle-launching in 2015 with no branches, just an exceptional app, they gained a 20,000-person waiting list within a year. Their user-led design philosophy included weekly testing sessions with customers and online forums for feedback, creating an intuitive interface that differentiated them from traditional banks with clunky apps. Even their coral-colored debit cards became status symbols.
Ideally, design should be incorporated from the very beginning of building a brand. However, in the scramble of launching a company, design is often neglected. Many digital brands initially used simple wordmarks with little attention to creating coherent visual identity systems based on well-defined brand strategies. This "undesigned" style can work temporarily, but growth and commercial success eventually compel brands to implement proper design systems.
Applying design principles to your organization requires having people with the right skill set in the right place. The brand/design lead should report directly to the CEO, championing the brand internally while providing the customer's perspective. Since design touches everything an organization does, employees must understand the customer journey and consider it in business decisions.
Once brand strategy is defined, the creative process follows four phases: 1) Exploration-defining visual territories that connect with positioning through shapes, colors, typography and imagery; 2) Design-developing promising visual territories into concepts and testing them on key touchpoints; 3) Development-establishing governing principles rather than rigid rules, aiming to reach the organization's culture for maximum buy-in; 4) Implementation-rolling out the design, testing it in real conditions, and making necessary adjustments with the right partners and standards.
Making strategy visible requires defining how your identity system needs to perform across all brand touchpoints. Understanding the tasks your design system must fulfill is crucial-whether for communications, product design, environments or behavior. Different brands have different needs: communications-driven brands need defined style and typographic systems, while digitally native brands require functional elements optimized for digital platforms. Beyond traditional elements like logos and colors, today's brand identities must consider tone of voice, sounds, scents, motion principles and UX principles.
Three common roadblocks can derail even the best design projects. Process should facilitate great results, not dominate decision-making or become dogmatic. Politics-particularly lack of internal alignment and unclear decision-making-can undermine projects through rivalry and short-sighted thinking. Power, the combination of the previous two, requires leadership that empowers experts and acts with determination to build an authentic brand foundation.
Capítulo 5
Engaging Your People as Brand Ambassadors
For disruptive brands, strategy is as relevant inside an organization as outside. The culture of a company should be driven by brand with the entire organization taking responsibility for its success. A good brand idea can persuade employees to believe and shape internal behaviors and workspaces.
As Wally Olins noted, unlike products, service-based brands rely on people who can have bad days. While product and service businesses were once clearly distinct, convergence has changed brand expectations. We now see brands as transparent entities beyond just what they sell. Human teams create and maintain the services that accompany products, making internal engagement crucial.
Engaged employees who understand their goals beyond financial gains are more productive, motivated and consistent. This is especially important as millennials and GenZs-who seek purpose-driven work-form larger portions of the workforce. Modern workers prefer flexibility in hours, spaces and devices, focusing more on results than process. They create their own career paths, share information freely, use collaborative technologies, and emphasize adaptive learning rather than following traditional corporate structures and practices.
Internal engagement requires more than just communication-it demands involving people and their individual tasks through a comprehensive Engagement Programme. This long-term effort introduces the brand, familiarizes staff with it, and permanently influences behavior. Whether launching new brands or managing established ones, employee engagement is crucial for managing disruption.
Effective brand engagement requires clarity about business challenges and how they relate to brand. Leadership must understand how employees should address these challenges, using brand not as a goal itself but as a conduit to solve cultural issues. Targeting specific problems like bureaucracy or slow decision-making makes the engagement program more serious and measurable.
Since businesses constantly change, brand engagement programs must remain flexible. Rather than rigid sequences, disruptive brands develop modular initiatives that familiarize employees with the brand through varied approaches. Success comes from managing opportunities elastically, like providing self-paced tools for over-burdened senior managers rather than mandatory multi-day retreats.
Since engagement programs use brand to influence organizational culture, senior leadership must visibly support and embody brand principles. Only when employees see leaders "walking the talk" will the brand gain credibility internally. Richard Branson exemplifies this approach, personally spearheading brand efforts at Virgin Group to the point where he has become the personification of the Virgin brand.
Employees have both legal and emotional contracts with their organizations. Since brand implementation often happens beyond regular duties, it's crucial to recognize what motivates different employee groups. Incentives might range from overtime pay to career advancement opportunities or involvement in brand decision-making. For true commitment, create a system of varied incentives where alignment with brand strategy becomes a fundamental factor in recognition and potentially even remuneration.
Brand engagement programs should follow a structured approach through several distinct phases: Planning establishes current brand engagement levels and identifies improvement areas; Launching ideally occurs before any external brand launch, giving employees several weeks to familiarize themselves with the brand; Creation and training implements the planning work through workshops and events; Activation takes the program live across the broader organization; and Reinforcement ensures the brand becomes embedded in company structure through ongoing initiatives.
Two particularly important initiatives for disruptive brands are developing an employer value proposition and treating the employee journey with the same importance as the customer journey. An Employer Value Proposition (EVP) describes the promise an employer makes to employees, similar to how product companies make promises to consumers. Companies with strong EVPs are five times more likely to report highly engaged employees.
Only when employees feel genuine ownership of a brand can they bring it to life for external audiences. This ownership requires coordinated efforts across HR, internal communications and marketing to engage the entire organization. Importantly, engagement isn't a one-time event but a sustained, long-term commitment that continues years after initial brand launch.
Capítulo 6
Delivering on Your Brand Promise
Brand is fundamentally a promise of an experience-delivered. While branding has existed since people began trading, today's brand experiences are far more complex than simply product quality. In our digital, globalized world, brands compete for attention across countless touchpoints, making consistent experience delivery essential for authenticity.
Brand experience encompasses all perceptions-positive, negative or neutral-that individuals form before, during and after brand interactions. These interactions can be intentional (like purchasing products) or passive (like seeing advertisements). Everything from visual identity to communication creates lasting impressions that shape brand perception. Disruptive brands deliberately design these experiences to ensure touchpoints convey consistent messages across their ecosystem of visual, tonal and behavioral elements.
Today's prosumers have heightened expectations and judge all brands by the same standards regardless of industry. Brands with disjointed or inauthentic experiences risk disruption by competitors offering better experiences. Importantly, successful experiences don't need to be premium-they must simply be authentic to the brand promise. Ryanair exemplifies this with its no-frills service that aligns perfectly with its low-price promise. Despite occasional service issues, Ryanair thrives because customer expectations align with the experience delivered, demonstrating that authenticity matters more than luxury.
While related, brand experience and customer experience serve different functions. Brand experience represents the holistic manifestation of brand strategy across all touchpoints-whether someone interacts with them or not-and encompasses both external and internal audiences. Customer experience specifically involves interactions that paying customers have with the brand to receive services or products. Apple stores illustrate this distinction: browsing without purchasing is brand experience, while buying and using Apple products constitutes customer experience.
When designing brand experiences, identifying the various touchpoints where audiences interact with your brand is crucial. These touchpoints should be aligned with your brand idea to ensure consistent delivery of your brand promise. The touchpoints typically fall into four key areas:
Products are often the touchpoints customers associate most strongly with a brand. Everything physically produced offers an experience that must align with your brand idea. For example, Mercedes ensures all aspects of their cars-from engine sounds to leather feel to interface performance-remain authentic to their brand identity while evolving to stay relevant to customers.
Every staff interaction, whether with each other or external audiences, forms part of the brand experience. Ritz-Carlton exemplifies this with their brand idea "We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen," translated into Three Steps of Service: giving warm greetings, using guests' names while anticipating their needs, and providing fond farewells.
Physical environments-from retail spaces to aircraft cabins-must embody your brand's message. In today's convergent marketplace, physical retail spaces are evolving beyond traditional stores to offer memorable experiences. Glossier, the e-commerce beauty brand founded on "democratizing beauty," uses pop-up stores to bring their online community-focused experience into physical spaces, with areas designed for customers to try products, interact, and share advice-perfectly reflecting their people-first ethos.
Digital presence has become essential for nearly every brand. Monzo bank positions itself as "The bank of the future" and ensures its digital experience delivers on this promise through intuitive, simple interfaces with features that anticipate users' needs, fulfilling their brand promise of banking "that works with you, for you."
Creating a cohesive brand experience requires knitting all touchpoints together. LEGO exemplifies this holistic approach with their brand idea "Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow." Everything from their stores with Pick & Build Walls and play areas, to their theme parks with interactive attractions, to their "Serious Play" business methodology, consistently fosters creativity and imagination.
Truly disruptive brands combine authenticity and relevance in a single powerful idea that evokes emotion and challenges industry conventions. This disruption comes from thinking outside the box-like Zara did by creating luxury-like environments that differentiated them from low-price competitors while making high fashion accessible to everyone. Stimulating multiple senses creates memorable, holistic experiences that reinforce your message, as seen in "scent branding" by retailers like M&M and Lush, or airlines using mood lighting to enhance different journey phases. The more senses you engage, the more powerful and distinctive your brand experience becomes.
Capítulo 7
Products as Brand Proof Points
For a brand to truly succeed, its products must deliver on the brand's promise. This chapter examines how products and brand identity reinforce each other, arguing that neither can thrive without the other. Whether physical objects or digital services, products are the primary way customers experience a brand, making them crucial touchpoints that must authentically embody the brand's values and ideas.
Many iconic brands originated from a single product-whether a sports car, fizzy drink, or personal computer. The product expressed what the company and founders stood for, with the brand identity developing around it. This remains true for contemporary disruptive brands like Uber and Airbnb, which began with core products (albeit digital ones). The first product a company creates plays a crucial role in defining brand identity and perception, becoming part of company lore and influencing its culture. Without quality products, no amount of marketing can create lasting success.
While products are vital, companies can't rely solely on great products without a coherent brand strategy. This is particularly true in tech startups, where founders often focus exclusively on building a "minimum viable product" without considering how to communicate their business to investors or attract talent. Similarly, in consumer goods industries where products are nearly identical, brand differentiation becomes crucial for standing out. Products need authentic, relevant brand ideas to create meaningful differentiation in consumers' hearts and minds.
When brand ideas are expressed through products and services, they become mutually reinforcing. BMW exemplifies this relationship-their cars and motorcycles serve as the strongest proof points of their brand promise of "driving pleasure." Every detail, from how doors close to how buttons feel, reinforces this promise. The passionate relationship customers develop with BMW vehicles transfers to new models and extensions through the power of the brand. Though BMW's range has expanded dramatically, each new model maintains recognizable brand elements that consumers can identify even in hypothetical brand extensions like hotels.
Products don't need to revolutionize categories, but they must excel at what they do and offer something distinctive. Hiut Denim Co illustrates this principle-launching premium jeans (150+) during a fast-fashion era seemed doomed, but their concept of reviving manufacturing in Cardigan, Wales, where 400 jobs were lost when production moved overseas, gave them a compelling story. Their purpose of preserving local craftsmanship and knowledge differentiated them in a crowded market, proving successful when the Duchess of Sussex wore their jeans, causing sales to spike. Products need not be groundbreaking but must authentically stand for something meaningful.
When developing new products, companies often feel tempted to create separate sub-brands, believing new offerings deserve special treatment. However, this approach frequently results in confusing product architecture that fails to build master brand equity. Companies should generally demonstrate their master brand's ability to innovate across different products while maintaining brand connection. This benefits both the product (which leverages existing brand equity) and the brand (which gains from the product's success).
Creating products that align with your brand requires three key ingredients: Authenticity, Relevance, and Differentiation. Authenticity means ensuring products reflect your organization's unique approach and values-the "how" and "why" that differentiate you from competitors. Relevance requires understanding customer needs through research and prototyping to create products that genuinely solve problems. Differentiation means finding ways your product stands apart from competition, whether through features, delivery channels, or pricing.
Starbucks disrupted the coffee market not by inventing new products but by transforming coffee drinking into an "affordably-premium experience." They combined quality coffee with comfortable spaces, creating a "third place" outside work and home. Their differentiation came through exceptional customer service and establishing a quality coffee culture globally, positioning themselves as a small daily indulgence rather than competing on price with Dunkin' Donuts or McDonald's.
When designing new products, your brand must be central to the process. Products and services need to be authentic (proving the brand means what it says), relevant (adding value to customers' lives), and differentiating (standing out in meaningful ways). Disruption doesn't necessarily require radical new product ideas-it requires insight into unmet customer needs and addressing them.
Capítulo 8
Service Excellence as Competitive Edge
When we think of groundbreaking brands, we often focus on innovative products, charismatic founders, logos or memorable advertising campaigns. However, customer service is equally crucial for disruptive branding. While great design might attract customers initially, excellent service keeps them returning. In today's competitive marketplace where customers have more choices than ever, prioritizing service excellence provides a critical competitive edge.
Customer service has evolved beyond merely supporting products-increasingly, it is the product itself. While this has always been true in luxury sectors like fashion and hospitality, globalization and digitalization have made service excellence a key differentiator across all industries. The airline industry exemplifies this shift, where increased competition has pushed companies to compete on service quality rather than just routes or prices. Asian airlines particularly excel at this, dominating global service rankings with carriers like Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines consistently earning top positions.
Shifting customer expectations have created opportunities for disruption in sectors with historically poor service. Bulb, a UK energy supplier founded in 2015, has capitalized on this gap by making exceptional service central to its brand. Built on three principles-Simpler, Cheaper and Greener-Bulb has transformed the customer experience in an industry where the actual product (energy) is identical regardless of supplier. This strategy has proven remarkably effective; Bulb entered the Money Saving Expert rankings at second place with 95% of customers rating them "great," while signing up over 450,000 households in just three years. Meanwhile, established players like British Gas saw their parent company's share price plummet 40%. As Bulb's head of brand Clementine Hobson notes, "Delivering great service helps us grow. If you have a great experience with Bulb, you are more likely to talk about us to your friends."
Quality customer service means making customers feel valued and responding to their needs. The path to excellent service follows three main steps: focusing on your people, your processes, and your communication.
Great customer service begins with satisfied employees who feel valued and recognized. The Four Seasons exemplifies this approach with their "Golden Rule"-treating employees the way you would want to be treated. This manifests in employee benefits, clean back-of-house areas, recognition of successes, and executives who know every employee's name and help with tasks when needed. Employee satisfaction is a key performance indicator for managers. The results speak for themselves: Four Seasons has made Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work List for 21 consecutive years while setting records for five-star ratings in the Forbes Travel Guide.
Beyond creating happy employees, brands must empower staff with authority to resolve customer problems quickly and effectively. Nordstrom exemplifies this with their single instruction to employees: "Use good judgement in all situations." This empowerment leads to legendary customer service stories-from recovering lost diamonds in vacuum bags to driving to airports to return forgotten items. By removing rigid rules, Nordstrom encourages creative problem-solving and demonstrates trust in staff.
Even exceptional employees need effective systems to deliver great service. Brands must identify customer pain points and develop innovative solutions. Macy's exemplifies this approach by enabling mobile checkouts through their app, allowing customers to scan and pay for items on their phones before visiting express lines for security tag removal. CEO Jeff Fennette identified checkout as "the single biggest pain-point in our stores," making this innovation directly responsive to customer frustrations about finding registers and waiting in lines.
Modern customers expect brands to be available everywhere-phone, online, in-person, in-app, and increasingly on social media. While brands were initially wary of handling customer service on social platforms due to their transparency, they've recognized that social media complaints are inevitable. Smart brands like Virgin Trains have turned this challenge into opportunity by responding quickly and solving problems publicly. When a passenger tweeted about lacking toilet paper on a train, Virgin's swift response generated positive global media coverage, transforming a complaint into PR success.
Customers want personalized, human responses rather than robotic interactions. First Direct, an online-only British bank, demonstrates the power of language in customer service, winning multiple awards for satisfaction and service. Their distinctive tone of voice-direct, clear, no-nonsense-builds trust despite having no physical presence.
Even with meticulous planning, things inevitably go wrong. How brands respond to failures often defines their reputation more than everyday successes. These moments of crisis test whether a brand truly delivers on its promises and values.
Customer service is essential to fulfilling your brand promise. When customers feel their needs aren't met, they'll quickly switch to competitors. Building excellent service requires ongoing investment and commitment-it takes years to build customer loyalty but only minutes to destroy it.
Capítulo 9
Reinvention as a Core Brand Value
Disruptive branding means continuously challenging and evolving your brand, questioning accepted practices and improving on previous successes. Branding isn't a one-off activity but a lens through which to examine and influence business performance long-term. This requires both a mindset of constant improvement and the willingness to reinvent even successful brands to maintain relevance-changing to stay the same.
Maintaining a brand requires nurturing a delicate ecosystem of priorities and stakeholders across the entire organization. While defining KPIs and monitoring performance is crucial, establishing an internal culture of constant improvement is equally important to act on the data collected. Sometimes small changes aren't enough, and comprehensive brand overhauls become necessary, especially during industry disruption. While brand strategies once lasted decades, they now typically need refreshing every 7-10 years, with smaller updates in between.
Before undertaking a rebrand, always question whether it's truly required. Rebranding is costly, time-consuming and resource-draining, so it should address genuine business needs rather than personal agendas. Avoid rebranding simply because new management wants to leave their mark, and recognize that surface changes won't fix internal problems-meaningful change must be embraced at every organizational level.
When approaching rebrands, two essential questions must be answered: Is it the right time to change? And what needs to change? A simple framework helps scrutinize the current brand by examining whether it's authentic, relevant and differentiating across all audience touchpoints.
Relevance is essential for any successful brand, especially during disruptive times when audience preferences change rapidly. This requires ongoing conversations with customers while staying true to your corporate ethos. Brands must continuously measure performance and listen to feedback. Your brand might no longer be relevant if you're struggling to attract talent, are out of step with society, or experiencing dropping sales.
Norwegian oil company Statoil faced this challenge when graduates began favoring renewable energy over fossil fuels. Their solution was rebranding to Equinor, removing "oil" from their name to futureproof their brand and signal progressive values to potential talent. Similarly, brands that aren't receptive to changing social expectations risk being left behind. SeaWorld exemplifies this-after the documentary "Blackfish" exposed concerns about orca captivity, they suffered an 84% profit drop and faced widespread boycotts. Their slow, defensive response only worsened matters until they finally repositioned by ending orca performances and emphasizing conservation with messaging like "Park to Planet."
For brands to remain successful, they must stand out from competition, especially in mature industries with similar offerings. A brand is no longer differentiating if it becomes indistinguishable from competitors. Testing this requires removing logos from products and communications to see if anything distinctive remains. The same applies to verbal identity-if mission statements and values sound interchangeable with competitors, it's time for change.
In the pursuit of relevance and differentiation, brands sometimes sacrifice their authentic selves. Organizations focused on meeting market whims can lose their sense of purpose, especially after existing for a long time or undergoing significant changes. Key indicators that a brand is no longer authentic include employee disengagement, often stemming from confusion about the brand's direction or feeling it has diverged from what they originally joined.
Mergers and acquisitions almost always necessitate rebranding. Beyond legal requirements, they demand communicating the new brand essence to both external and internal audiences. While leadership may understand the merger's purpose, employees often feel confused and fearful about job security. Regular, open communication through brand engagement programs is crucial, with implementation plans established long before external finalization.
Maintaining a disruptive brand requires embracing constant change. Despite best efforts, brands eventually need to evolve. The Authentic/Relevant/Differentiating framework helps identify what needs changing and how. Disruptive branding isn't a one-time activity but a mindset of continuous improvement. Successful brands "change to stay the same," sometimes requiring comprehensive relaunches when incremental changes aren't enough. True change must be lived from the inside out-cosmetic changes alone won't suffice.
