From Reaction to Recognition: A Better Way to Measure Rebranding Success

Have you ever wondered why it is that when a major rebrand launches, the first conversations tend to be about whether people like the logo and how it is being discussed on social media? Think Cracker Barrel, or Jaguar.

Rethinking How We Measure Brand Success

Rebranding a well-known company is now a part of the larger popular culture conversation. As such, one of the ways that many people measure the success of a rebrand can be how viral the launch is. Visibility and virality are important, but a better measure is how viable the rebranding is. This means, how well the brand achieves its true goal, which requires more than looking at vanity metrics and superficial engagement.

The following things are important when considering whether a brand refresh or rebranding is garnering positive interest:

• Attention & Awareness: Visibility, publicity, and recognition.
• Conversation & Engagement: Social interactions, discussions, and audience participation.
• Recognition & Reaction: Awards, praise, criticism, and controversy.

Don’t get me wrong, those are valid measures of response to the launch. They aren’t necessarily measures of brand success. However, none of those things alone tells us whether the brand-building work succeeded. Launch metrics measure reaction. Brand metrics measure change. 

It’s good people are talking, but what does that mean? By reducing the success or failure of a rebrand or brand refresh to these things, we’re selling the entire process short.

A rebrand is often judged by what people notice immediately. Its real success is determined by what changes over time. We have confused reaction with results. This is a critique of the way rebrands are discussed—not just by the public, but sometimes by the design industry itself.

Beautifully-designed brands can be lauded, and less-attractive designs can be panned, but important context around why certain design decisions were made and not others can often be missing. Creative professionals can sometimes contribute to the noise, reducing the process to a debate about aesthetics, rather than adding valuable informed perspective that elevates the conversation and the craft.

The Questions That Uncover a Better Approach

At Enthuse Creative, we espouse that brands have four basic functions: communicate, differentiate, identify, and connect. When thinking about what makes a rebrand successful, we ask specific questions that tie back into these four functions.

1. Did it make the brand clearer? [Identify]
   [Because of the rebrand/refresh] Can people more quickly understand who the organization is, what it offers, who it serves, and what distinguishes it?

After a strategic brand shift, what the brand is and why it matters should be more clear to all who engage with and experience the brand. Clarity benefits customers, employees, partners, search engines, and AI systems alike.

2. Did it make the brand more distinctive? [Differentiate → Distinguish]
   Can someone recognize it without seeing the company name? Does the organization have identifiable colors, typography, imagery, language, symbols, or other brand assets?

This is more sophisticated than asking whether the new identity is aesthetically original. Research increasingly looks at whether assets are famous, distinctive, and intuitively associated with the correct brand. Keep in mind, different-looking isn’t necessarily more distinctive.

3. Did it strengthen the right associations? [Connect]
   What do we want people to think or feel when they encounter this organization, and is the new system strengthening those associations?

The success metric isn’t “people loved our new website.” It is whether more of the right people begin describing the organization in terms that reflect its desired positioning. Remember, it’s not just getting people to see what you want them to perceive; it’s getting them to think what you them to believe as well.

4. Did it improve brand usability? [Communicate]
   This is one I think designers should talk about much more. Can the organization actually use the new brand?

The brand must function well in all the ways (and all the forms and formats) where the business or organization needs it. For example, it should be usable and work as well in external communications like websites and signage, as it does in internal communications.

A beautiful identity that requires expert designers to make every application work may actually be a weaker brand system for a small organization. If a brand is not usable, it is not useful.

5. Did it improve business behavior or outcomes?
   This is the question with the most far-reaching implications and impact. Depending on the organization, that could mean:

• greater consideration or preference and stronger customer retention
• stronger pricing power and premium positioning
• greater employee pride, recruitment or improved culture/morale
• easier entry into a new market or increased recognition among a particular audience

Here’s an important point. Measurement should begin before the rebrand. You can’t meaningfully say a rebrand improved something if you never established what needed improving.

Having a clear list of goals and objectives before beginning the process is critical. Before beginning the work, practitioners should be asking things like:

• What do we want people to know that they either don’t know or misunderstand?
• What are people currently associating with us and what do we wish they associated with us instead?
• What should remain recognizable as we evolve and what should be removed?
• Where is their tension or the tension between what we say and what we show?

Then the rebrand becomes an intervention against a baseline rather than a creative exercise followed by applause. The brief should contain the seeds of the measurement plan.

If the brief says, “We need younger customers,” “We need to look more credible to enterprise buyers,” “Our five divisions don’t feel connected,” or “People think we only offer X when we now offer X, Y and Z,” those statements should eventually become things you test.

Design discourse often unintentionally teaches the public to evaluate branding primarily aesthetically. We publish before-and-after images. We debate logos. We post mockups. Awards emphasize artifacts. So people naturally conclude:

Branding = the thing I can see. Successful branding = whether I like what I see.

But practitioners know—or should know—that branding is much more concerned with recognition, meaning, memory, differentiation, consistency, preference, behavior and value.

The public isn’t wrong for having an opinion about a new logo. Designers have spent decades presenting identity work in ways that encourage exactly that kind of judgment. But practitioners should be able to move the conversation beyond aesthetics. Our responsibility is not merely to explain why we chose a particular typeface or color. It is to demonstrate what the new brand system is supposed to accomplish.

Creatives Can Reshape the Conversations About Branding

Creative leaders and brand builders have a role to play in reframing conversations about branding. This will elevate the profession and help ward off the threat of AI.

We’re not framing popularity as completely irrelevant. Popularity by itself is incomplete. Branding is not just about making a mark. It’s also about making meaning. Being remembered matters. We don’t want people to have no reaction. We want them to care, to be passionate about what we stand for.

Better brand questions evolve from simply, “Do you like our new identity?” to “Has this changed or strengthened what you understand, remember and believe about us?”

A wise person once asserted (and we agree) that rebranding is a sign (signal) of change, not just a change of sign. Branding should create measurable changes in meaning, memory and market behavior—not merely produce new creative assets.

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Enthuse Creative is a strategic brand consulting firm that helps businesses and organizations create marks and meaning through brand strategy, design and redesign. Contact us today for a free consultation.