Your brand should stand for what you want your customers to believe about your product or service offerings. However, sometimes customers can change their minds. This is typically brought on by one of three factors: something bad happened within your business or industry and it was linked to your brand, something changed in the marketplace and you did not adapt when your competition did, or your target market has shifted. When one of these events happen to your brand, it is time to consider rebranding yourself. Here is an example of three companies. One that got burned by their own branding when they couldn’t back up their claims, one that should have rebranded when technology shifted, and one that rebranded but misread their customers.

The BP oil spill at the Deep Water Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is commonly looked at as one of the biggest corporate branding disasters. BP had used the tagline "Beyond Petroleum” for about a decade prior to the oil spill. It touted BP’s environmentally friendly way of doing business. When it was found guilty of negligence two years after the disaster, their brand had already lost credibility with most people who were environmentally concerned consumers. BP did not rebrand. Could the company have staved off the exodus of credibility in their green branding efforts by changing their logo design and creating a new tag line? Unless the logo is tied to a new direction, probably not. However, BP did attempt to get their customers to think of something other than the environmental disaster when they launched a customer loyalty program and introduced a cleaner burning gasoline called "Invigorate” that was engineered to clean your engine as you drove and, thus, save you money. They refocused their brand to stand for cost savings. Did it work? In time, the oil spill was contained and the beaches were cleaned. Many people forgot the oil spill and worried about something else at the BP pump: the price of gasoline. However, up to this day, you will find experts who believe the company should have ditched their green Helios logo (which was mocked in oil laden water versions of it) and came up with a different tag line to express something other than their environmental stewardship. The take away: if your branding does not align with the reality of how you are doing business, don’t fake it! Sooner or later you will be exposed for a fraud in the mind of consumers.

Blackberry was once the king of mobile phones. However, when smart phones were introduced with Android or iOS systems, Blackberry failed to change with the technology. Could it have saved itself with a rebrand? Only if it were truly going to change. Staying atop the pile in technology is a daunting task. When you are the king of the mobile devices and a new suitor comes along, staying relevant often means making massive changes to your products. When that happens, rebranding is key to getting consumers to notice you are on the cutting edge. Blackberry didn’t do that. They are still around and are trying to climb back into the game. A new look would certainly help their efforts because in the minds of their target market, they look as if they were as irrelevant as the typewriter. The lesson here is simple: it is one thing to come up with something new that everyone wants, but if you don’t keep your brand fresh, it looks like a day old banana pretty quickly.

For decades, Kellogg’s cereals had a niche with women with their brand, Special K. It was marketed as a great breakfast food for women who wanted to be fit and watch their weight. It was seen as the dieting version of breakfast cereal. The branding worked for a long time. Then came along a new generation of women who started to shelve the red swimsuit image on Special K boxes as an archaic stereotype that most women could not live up to. Kellogg’s tried a new approach with a new campaign slogan, "Own It!” in 2017. The ad told women to embrace who they were and eat Special K to celebrate their unique shape and to free themselves from old-fashioned stereotypes. There were a couple of problems that Kellogg’s overlooked. For one, studies have shown that women, more than men, are self-critical of the way they look. They may not be the very fit woman in the red swimsuit, but they wouldn’t mind if they were. The other problem was the campaign felt too political. It became too left-wing for many, espousing a lifestyle with no barriers that offended many women. Besides, what does Special K have to do with just being yourself? Special K was the cereal that had helped perpetuate the perfect body type in women perception for decades. There was more than a disconnect, there was a revolt and the campaign was ditched for another a few months later. The new slogan, "Powering You” took a different approach. Special K could give you the energy you needed to make it through the day. That made a lot more sense for breakfast cereal than be the shape you want and screw your perfect perception of yourself that our company helped perpetuate. The lesson here: making bold political statements are great if you are a political campaign. If you want to brand your product to the masses, you don’t want to offend half of your target market by leaning one direction or the other with your brand.