What Car “Restomods” Teach Us About Rebranding
A bit about the process of doing a brand refresh or a rebrand: Consider a brand that has existed for a long time, let's say two, three, four or more decades. The longer you've been in business and the more connection you have with your customers or community, then the stakes are just going to be higher for a rebrand.
Some have gone wrong. The Gap one is probably the most famous. You get the sense that like when Gap did that 2010 rebrand and it was just terrible, I think they pulled it back and said, “just kidding”.
"JK JK JK"
Still, we don't want to paralyze ourselves based upon all the things that could go wrong. And that applies to every aspect of life, right? When it comes to keeping your brand fresh, you just have to do it. And the longer you wait, the harder it gets.
This reminds me of the term “resto-mod” : it’s obviously a combination of the words ‘restoration’ and ‘modernization’. As an example, my old jalopy of a car was manufactured in 1976, so it's getting on for 50 years old. Things were a lot different back then, and let’s face it – some things were just much worse. So when we restored the car, we modernized it to a degree as well, to make certain bits better & more comfortable.
It's a common practice these days, and very profitable too. You can't beat the way an old car looks or smells or any of that great stuff that we love. But what you can do is you can make the engine more powerful, more efficient. You can make the brakes better. You can even improve the technology of the paint job quite a bit. That's just a couple of examples. There's a lot you can do. Keep the good stuff about the old and add the good stuff about the new. Bring them together. Restomod. That's how it works.
It's the same kind of principle with a heritage brand, right?
If you're going to rebrand, you don't just want to scrap everything – certainly not your historical nostalgia, accumulated over the years. Take the lightest touch that you possibly can get away with to keep it fresh and modern, but to fully preserve – or maybe even capitalize on – historical elements of the brand.
After all, many good people for a lot of years put hard work into building this thing to what it is. It would be disrespectful for people like us to come in and be like “you know, we're going to totally burn the room and change everything so that we can get attention for the design work that we’ve done. And completely at the expense of your brand because we don't care about it.” That kind of stuff does happen.
Unfortunately, it happens a lot. Respect the history of the brand. Employ a light touch. The best of what's old the best of what's new – that's the winning combination.
