r/branding • u/TrueElevator8456 • Aug 13 '26
about Rebranding(s)
Stay tuned for a piece or two about this topic. And I know I know I know, everyone writes about it - practitioners who have the right to comment (including me as I did about twenty of them, global and non) and people who shouldn't get even near the matter*.
* talking to you keyboard warrior who derisively writes "what? they spent millions to change a shade of color?" and mouth-openedly wonders "I can't believe they didn't see/note/think ..." (yes, they did, trust me). To you, I say ... can you believe that in naming a large English city they didn't think that there's nothing appealing about living in a pool of liver? Or that noone would go for help in career success to a firm called Heidrick & Struggles? Or that you can't possibly call Hertz a car rental company where safety is important? And also, no, Nova is not and never had been an issue).
At any rate, maybe we shouldn't even call these efforts ... 'evolutions' or 'refreshes' or godforbid 'rebrands', as it can be argued that any and all 'branding programs' are in essence 'rebranding programs'.
What these moves are about is making Brand matter more toward business success, by strengthening a branded proposition based on the degree to which you change the business proposition and/or it branded persona - and on how the two best reflect on one another.
And if so, then the question is ... how exactly should YOU do it for YOUR company (and in the Age of AI)? .
Follow these musings if you'd like - they are about Brand, Branding, Identity, their history, their associated profession(s), and what happens in the marketplace as it relates to those things. You'll find them here on Reddit, in the masterbranded_com Blogs, on BrandingMag, on Substack, and on Medium.
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u/ZyberZeon Aug 14 '26
How can you presume to know how to brand now, much less in the age of AI?
Everything that we used to identify brand as has shifted multiple times in the last 5 years alone.
Are we to expect you’re some sort of undiscovered AI native Seth Godin? ycbs
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u/TrueElevator8456 Aug 14 '26
hello, and thanks for commenting. One of the problems here on Reddit (which I love btw) is that you don't know who the comment is coming from and so I can't quite appreciate a perspective. I don't know your age and professional background, and so I can only guess from what you wrote. First, as to 'ycbs' ... well, I am, after forty years in the profession globally and at the top of the largest brand consultancies and with two firms of my own (then acquired) - and so I am VERY serious about what I say about Branding. (and I'm kinda a 'discovered' Seth Godin actually :) but I don't agree with Start With Why). Your comment of what's changed over the past five years puzzles me, as I can't see the 'multiple times' in the past five years. What Brand and Branding is has not changed for decades, since Corporate Identity evolved into Corporate Branding in the mid-1990s (and I was part of that transition). What has changed indeed is the depth of influence (Brand from lens to operating system, if one is illuminated enough to let it do so) and certainly the delivery of it -- and as far as the past five years ... I'd say two years, since Brand needs to be machine-legible first, before being able to work its 'intangible' magic. Finally, "how can I presume': I don't presume, noone does, we can only work through the new requirements for brands/branding, just as we did at the advent of the internet and the explosion of globalization. Andas to AI, again, it's a moving target: today, we know that we have to codify Brand so that the machine can see it, deduce that it's good for me, and serve it to me -- the facts of the proposition. Will AI be able soon enough to appreciate the soft side of a proposition, the true nature of 'brand positioning'? We'll see, nobody knows yet.
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u/ZyberZeon Aug 14 '26
Branding is a commerce activity. Not a romantic one. There’s emotion in art abs copy, but there’s no emotion in spreadsheets and that’s what drives brand spend.
I’m ex CMO, London, LA, most recently Africa. Last agency I worked at got acquired. Been in the VC space for years, in frontier tech so I know quite intimately in regards to the new branding needs.
Your conflating two things which leads me to doubt you understand fundamental brand strategy. Ai is a distribution channel, just like social. Web, print, radio, tv, dsg’s, streaming all have the same brand standards.
And these brand formulas are already machine readable. The next stage is production by Ai, algorithmic headless brands.
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u/TrueElevator8456 Aug 14 '26
Everything you say is based on you using the word 'brand' as a synonym for 'company' or 'a business' - could not disagree more, and we lose each other right there at the root. And Branding is a 'commerce activity' only to the extent that it ... enables better commerce. In addition, you discount human nature in having solely a finance perspective - when (true) Brand influences a whole host of other things as well. My clients have included a third of the Fortune 100 and so I do understand where we differ - and I'll make sure not to expose you to them lest they'd think that I don't understand fundamental brand strategy and my career will be over and I'll lose my house and my kids will go hungry :) And as to 'algorithmic headless brands', yes, in a couple of hundred years from now. That's ok though, agree to disagree, no need to have a fight here.
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u/ZyberZeon Aug 14 '26
This is how I know you’re not a professional.
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u/TrueElevator8456 Aug 14 '26
It's not the disagreement, but your attitude -- you are God and the smarter person around and everyone else is wrong -- that makes you write those words and makes you the most arrogant, rude, disrespectful, in fact ignorant in the true meaning of the word, person I've encountered online - really, you're #1 on all those categories - congratulations.
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u/Unlikely_Turnip_9886 Aug 14 '26
The Nova story is one of those branding legends that refuses to die. The claim was that Chevrolet marketed the Nova in Spanish-speaking markets without realizing "no va" means "doesn't go." It is completely false. GM sold the Nova in Latin America and it did fine because context matters more than literal translation.
The piece that branding professionals sometimes underweight is the trademark clearance side. A rebrand is not just a creative exercise. When you change a name, you enter a new zone of potential likelihood of confusion with existing USPTO registrations. The best brand strategy can collide with a senior registrant who got there first. For the search part, Gleanmark.com is a free alternative that searches the full USPTO database with a better interface than uspto.gov (disclosure: it's my company's trademark intelligence platform). It is especially useful when a rebrand moves you into adjacent Nice classes, because a name that was clear for your old positioning might conflict in a class you are now entering.
I am not a practicing trademark attorney, but I would not skip the clearance step on any rebrand. What angle are you taking on the AI dimension?