Identity is an operating system, not a logo
4th September
Brand & Positioning
The wordmark isn't the story.
Instagram just did its first major brand refresh in over ten years a new wordmark and visual system, built mostly by their own in-house team (It's Nice That). It's tempting to read a story like that as being about fonts and colours. But it's really about something much simpler: a brand built for one era doesn't automatically survive into the next. If your look has outgrown itself, it's usually because the business behind it has outgrown its own story too.
The hard part of any refresh isn't the redesign. It's knowing what not to touch. Take KFC's recent refresh, done by Jones Knowles Ritchie. They kept the Colonel and the brand's history front and centre, while modernising everything around it (Transform). That's the whole skill, really evolving what people already love rather than throwing it out.
New leadership too often wants a change
I've seen this go wrong plenty of times. New ownership or new leadership comes in, and the instinct is to wipe the slate clean. But the years of trust and recognition a brand has already built are usually the most valuable thing it owns and the hardest to rebuild once it's gone. Knowing what to protect and what to actually change is the difference between a refresh that adds value and one that quietly destroys it.
And here's the thing, people aren't fooled anymore. The general view from brand strategists this year is that audiences can spot a surface-level change instantly, and a new look without real change behind it tends to do more harm than good (Celerart; Rising Above The Noise). A new logo slapped on right before a big announcement isn't a rebrand. It's a gamble.
The old argument, back again
This all comes back to something marketers have argued about for decades, and it's worth restating simply: most people aren't in the market to buy from you on any given day. So building your brand is what makes people remember you and think of you when they finally are ready. The sales and performance side of things captures the people who are already looking. The best thinking this year points back to roughly a 60/40 split between the two, brand building and performance (Leadgen Economy).
The problem is, when a business comes under pressure to hit quarterly numbers, the brand-building half is always the first thing to get cut. And that's exactly why sales pipelines dry up in ways that no amount of extra ad spend can fix on its own.
For Investors
Think of identity as something the business actually runs on, not decoration on top of it. Protecting what already works, and keeping that 60/40 balance between building recognition and chasing sales, is what stops a pipeline from slowly starving.
A refresh that reaches all the way into how the business actually operates adds real value. One that stops at a new logo doesn't and can even hurt you.
For founders
If you've ever felt like your business has hit a ceiling, it's often not bad luck. It's usually a story that was never told properly, sitting on top of a business that's always been chasing the next sale instead of building something people remember.
