Is It Ever Too Late To Revert An Unpopular Rebrand Campaign?

It is said that the best time to change your mind is before you make a mistake, but the second best time to do so is now.

This saying, one that has been used to describe everything from planting trees to city planning and personal health, could just as easily apply to the world of marketing and branding. 

Sometimes, an agency will advise that a previous campaign or rebranding exercise possibly should not have taken place, but the second best time to reverse course is as soon as possible.

This is what happened with the infamous rebrand of the clothing company The Gap. Whilst it should never have been created and certainly should not have cost the amount that it did, upper management saw the issue and reverted to the old logo after just six days.

However, either due to a belief that they will be rewarded for staying the course with their marketing or due to the sunk cost fallacy, many businesses will continue with a rebrand even if focus testing and market research a level of unpopularity wider than expected.

Is it ever too late to cut your losses and return to a more familiar and more popular brand identity? Some recent and not-so-recent examples suggest that is not the case.

Pepsi

Whilst not as dramatic nor as unpopular as the infamous New Coke rebrand and reformulation of the 1980s, Pepsi’s 2008 logo rebrand by the Arnell Group was a major news story for several years, lauded in some design circles and lambasted in many others.

Not helping this was a rather infamous 27-page design document that managed to reference the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the Vetruvian Man, the curvature of the earth, human smiles and the “Gravitational Pull” of the Pepsi brand. It is still uncertain as to whether this was a hoax document or a work of satire.

The result was a far more subtle change than this, replacing the Pepsi red-and-blue Globe design that had been used in some form since 1962 with a far more irregular shape designed to slightly vary and shift across the range of products, although this was quickly abandoned.

It was in a strange place as a brand design; whilst it was generally disliked, it was not despised enough by the general public to significantly impact the bottom line, unlike New Coke or the Tropicana rebrand.

The problem with it, as a later Chief Marketing Office would note, is that the irregular waves, lowercase font and lighter colour palette were remarkably muted for a brand that has historically been brash and confident in its presentation.

The brand that once made an advert mocking the New Coke rebrand using a relatively understated logo seemed incongruent and in 2023 it was replaced with a logo that was far more reminiscent of the historic Pepsi Globe.

The only major change is that the wordmark has been changed from blue or blue and white to black, which was meant to symbolise a focus on zero-sugar drinks such as the black can of Pepsi Max.

Ultimately, this rebrand has been far more warmly received for reasons that go beyond nostalgia, and highlights that there is as much value in changing back as there is in change.