4 Mistakes Companies Make with (Re)Brand Launches

Shannel Wheeler
4 min readApr 12, 2023
A Group of People Discussing Charts, an aerial view
Photo by Mikael Blomkvist from Pexels

Most growth companies that care about overall perception will complete a full brand exercise at some point. This could include an initial launch or a rebrand/refresh to move the needle for next-level growth. The larger the company, the more strategic this undertaking should be; however, some companies still get a few things wrong. Those mistakes that seem small could have a big impact on the influence and effectiveness of the brand:

Lack of clarity and distinction about what changed and why

Is the business case compelling? Are the company’s purpose, personality, and values clear and distinctive? Is the brand exercise actually going to influence perception for the better? No one wants to launch a rebrand just for people to ask, “What was the point?”

Brand guidelines not thorough enough

I cannot tell you how many brand guidelines I have read that are too vague, providing basics but not the necessary nuances to create the critical consistency that a rebrand needs to hold strong. Color codes, fonts, graphics, logo use, etc. are listed but there aren’t enough use cases displayed on how to use those elements together. Of course, the build-out of new visual collateral is most likely still in progress, but a few scenarios of…

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Shannel Wheeler

Left-brain creative | Brand/Design Implementation | Design Instruction and Inspiration | Creating with Purpose: https://shannelwheeler.com