Spring cleaning your brand identity—the right way

It’s that time of year again — the time where we take stock of what’s still needed and what’s just taking up space and gathering dust. 

Your brand identity needs the same kind of attention.

Brand identities tend to drift. A logo that felt bold in 2018 might feel dated today. A tone of voice chosen for one audience might be alienating to newer ones. Most companies know something feels off long before they do anything about it, usually because a rebrand feels like a massive, expensive undertaking. But a brand refresh means doing the necessary research to uncover what should stay, which new ideas resonate, and which old ones should be retired. 

It’s a crowded market. Your brand identity is doing the heavy lifting 24/7, on your website, in your emails, on social, and everywhere else. If it's not accurately reflecting who you are, you could be losing easy points with consumers. A well-researched refresh can re-align your visual and verbal identity with where your business actually is and where it's going. 

Audit, then act

Key point or argument: The most common (and costly) mistake in a brand refresh is skipping straight to redesign. 

Before you touch a single font or start considering reverting to nostalgia marketing , you need a clear picture of your current brand health.

A brand audit is a structured inventory of every place your brand shows up. The goal isn't just to check for consistency (though that matters), but to identify which elements are genuinely working and which ones are doing your brand a disservice. 

Here’s some examples of rebrands that went awry, and what we can learn from them: 

• Tropicana. Once in 2009 and then again in 2024. The first time, consumers were disillusioned with the “refreshed” visual packaging redesign that departed from the original one—they just didn’t like it, and sales dropped 20%. The second time was a bottle packaging redesign that had consumers accusing the brand of succumbing to “shrinkflation” (changing packaging to contain less product while the price stays the same). Not a good look.
• Frida Baby. Just this year, Frida Baby was met with major backlash after introducing a packaging redesign for their products that included sexual innuendo, and it drew all the wrong kind of attention on socials. Consumers found it wildly inappropriate and called for a boycott. While they walked it back and retired the offending assets, the damage has been done. For a brand that makes products for parents to use with their children, that brand identity probably should’ve been tested first.

Leave guesswork in the past

A brand refresh is about what will genuinely connect with your target consumer while still differentiating you from any competitors.

Real-world research, not guesswork, is the best thing to bridge that gap. 

Collecting rich customer data will help you to see patterns in how consumers describe you versus how your brand defines itself. In that gap lies the insight. It’s important to understand how your consumers talk so you know how to talk to them. Making guesses, no matter how well-intentioned, and making assumptions about what consumers value has the potential to undo years of work in terms of trust-building. 

If you think about the modern brands that have stuck with you, chances are, you didn't just tell someone about it IRL. You posted, commented, tagged, or reposted about it. That conversation is happening, and the ones who are listening have a serious advantage. In the wild testing tells you what real people are saying about your brand, your competitors, and your category across social platforms, where they live. No one's trying to give you the "right" answer or falling into bias traps. It's just real insights from the real world. If you’re planning on refreshing your brand identity, this kind of research is what can enable you to make well-informed go-to-market decisions. It tells you not just what people think of you today, but what language they use to describe you, which is exactly what a successfully refreshed identity needs.  

A brand refresh done right starts at the right kind of research.

It begins with an honest audit of where your brand stands today, continues with real-world research into your audience and competitive landscape, so you can get grounded, make clear decisions, and set your brand up for success about what to evolve versus what to protect. 

The brands that refresh most successfully aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets, they're the ones who do the homework first. Research allows a brand refresh to not only stick, but to resonate.