Coca Cola branding

The Difference Between A Brand Refresh And Redesign

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a brand refresh and a brand redesign?

Simply put, it’s a question of how your existing brand is serving you. Is your brand strength helping you generate and keep new customers? If so, you might be thinking about keeping your existing assets or making small changes to your brand via a brand refresh.

Taking On A Brand Refresh

Think of Coca Cola – 132 years in business, and they’ve gone through a dozen changes in their logo. Notice anything similar between their designs? They’ve kept their signature red theme since 1950, leveraging the strength of their brand to keep their core audience while making small adjustments over time.

Coca-Cola-logo-history
image courtesy of 1000logos

A brand is never stagnant – it is constantly evolving, and growing to meet new changes in the market.

Going Through A Brand Redesign

Businesses that disconnect with their core audience eventually become irrelevant.

When you’re scaling up from a startup to a fully-fledged change maker in the industry, it’s easy to lose sight of where you started from. A smaller team, closer attention to your clients and frequent strategic discussions can be lost as you’re focused on new issues and events.

These “growing pains” can seriously damage your branding if you aren’t crystal clear on what keeps your business unique.

Many startups begin by doing “everything for everyone,” attempting to fill as many value propositions as possible to get a bigger slice of the pie. However, most quickly learn that it’s much more effective (necessary, even!) to focus on a singular offering that not only brings you the most profit, but the best reputation in the industry as well.

A brand refresh maintains the direction of your brand, while a brand redesign helps align your efforts to move your brand in a different direction. Click To Tweet

A brand redesign is what you need if you’ve always worked with a “catch-all” service or a product that attempts to do way too many things.

You can’t be “sharp and professional” while also trying to be “goofy and relatable” – if you’re struggling to keep a consistent image, a brand redesign may be what you need to gain the reputation you strive for.

Learn how to judge the strength of your brand and more during Cucumber Marketing’s branding month! If you have any questions about branding or marketing in general, contact our marketing team or visit our marketing agency in downtown Vancouver.