Just like people, brands change and evolve. And when it comes to that point in the life of a brand, a rebrand is the answer. What may seem like a simple change, is a process that spans months and includes some of the hardest decisions a brand can ever make.
Earlier this year, drink company Pepsi went through a rebrand and though it looked somewhat similar to what it looked like a year ago, the change meant so much more.
The rebrand came at a time when Pepsi is set to reach its 125th milestone and the beginning of its “new era”.
Pepsi’s new look is labelled to reflect its moving stance towards sustainability, a core value the company is now embracing for the long-run.
Through the years of running a business, a company’s vision can become clearer, and for skincare brand Veletta that is exactly what they are experiencing.
“Brands evolve and the look and the sound and the tone that you start with often doesn’t reflect the brand a few years down the track,” says founder Sarah Bacon.
For any business, the longer they run the more they get to know about their consumers and brand, and that is exactly what Bacon was finding with her own brand, Veletta.
“Knowing our consumer [better] has been the reason for the rebrand,” she says.
“We always knew who our consumer was, but we didn’t make it clear to them that they were our customer.”
The decision to undergo a rebrand first came to Bacon six months ago when she realised she knew more about her customers than the day she launched the business.
In order to fully grasp how brands undergo change, we asked Veletta to share their journey with us step by step and how they came up with their new look.
Read more: Design 101: Tips on the perfect brand design
Step one: Walk backwards
Every time Apple comes out with a new iPhone, they look back at older models and figure out what needs to be changed.
Lisa Noble, Veletta’s Designer, says that the first step is to “go back right to the foundation” and see if everything is still relevant.
Before diving into the deep end and changing the look, Bacon acknowledged what needed to change.
Veletta as a brand focused on providing skincare for “women who have lived a life” and Bacon says it wasn’t communicated to them at first.
“We realised that where we weren’t communicating effectively was in our messaging,” adds Noble.
Bacon says six months ago she realised they needed to change their tone in the copy, so that the change in design “works together”.
Step two: Ch-ch-changes, but not by David Bowie
Bacon began her transformation for Veletta by changing their copy to meet their new needs.
The brand wanted to be up to date with everything, but also remain authentic to its original message that will never change.
Both Bacon and Noble aimed to find the perfect balance between “maintaining what you’ve built and building on that”.
“Our new copy reflected that,” adds Bacon.
The design process saw changes to the logo whilst also sticking the original concept from 2017, with Noble saying the oil drop monogram has such “longevity” and “uniqueness” to it to let it go.
However, Noble has separated the oil drop from the entire logo to make playful, and with it embedded in the logo, “we actually can tell [the] story more”.
Noble is slowly moving away from Veletta’s original colour palette of bronze and white and starting to incorporate more colours such as coral, the brand’s new colour.
Though they are going through a rebrand change, Bacon says Veletta is not starting anew, but rather just a new iteration of the brand to further their brand story.
Step three: Soft launch or hard launch, whatever floats your boat
There is a really popular trend floating around social media called ‘soft launching’, a strategised social media move to give their followers a sneak peek into their dating life without revealing too much through pictures with their significant other’s hand in the corner, or two plates to reflect that they may be on a date.
Weeks into a ‘soft launch’, the person will then ‘hard launch’ their relationship by posting a picture of their significant other with their full eyes, nose and lips.
That is the third and final step of a rebrand, soft launching or hard launching, whatever fits your brand.
For Veletta, they have been slowly soft launching their rebrand to their customers.
“We’re starting to use the model photos on the website, we have the new copy which will go into the old structure and then we will launch the brand new website,” says Noble.
Once Veletta hard launches their new brand look, Bacon says she is excited for their customers to see how they have evolved.
By following through these three steps, a brand’s rebrand can be a successful start to a new era.
