There are only 2 reasons for a startup to rebrand.

(ie. change their visual identity)

1. They are already wildly successful and have become embarrassed of their logo.

OR

2. They are failing and don’t know what else to do.

Pssst...

...a new logo isn’t going to save you...

...it's just the death rattle before you close up shop and say things like "we were too early", "we had the wrong business model", and "the economy wasn't good."

———

Here are a few examples of extremely successful startups that did not rebrand until they reached significant revenue milestones.

Apple — They rocked their drawing if Isaac Netwon under a tree for over 30 years, getting to $7 billion in revenue before rebranding into the "apple" we know today.

Zendesk — Had a very simple green flower with their name, running up to $300 million before rebranding.

Asana — Used the 3 dots in 2008, but didn't rearrange them until 2015 after they were doing over $20 million in revenue.

SurveyMonkey — As you might guess, they always had the monkey, but their first monkey was a straight-up cartoon character in 1999.  They didn't rebrand until 2010 after hitting $75 million in revenue.

Atlassian — They had a blue gumby-looking stick figure holding up the world on their 15 year run to $620 million before rebranding.

Instagram — They used a slightly realistic icon for many years, which including a sales to facebook in 2014 (for $1 billion), before changing it to the icon we know today.

#branding #productmarketing #startups