Rebranding: what it is, when you need it, examples and what happens when video changes too

What a rebrand is

A rebrand means renewing a brand. Sometimes people say "brand refresh" or "repositioning", which aren't quite the same thing, and the terms get used loosely by agencies and business schools alike.

It's worth being clear about what's included. A rebrand affects the brand as a whole: what it's called, how it looks, how it talks and what it promises. So it isn't the same as a logo redesign, which is only one part of it, or a campaign, which has a beginning and an end. A brand can change its logo and nothing else, and it can also completely change what it communicates while keeping the same logo.

Two degrees are normally distinguished. A partial rebrand, sometimes called a "refresh", keeps the essence and updates the image: the logo is simplified, the typeface modernized, the colors put in order. A full rebrand changes the brand's direction and sometimes even the name. The first is cheaper and less risky. The second happens when the current brand is holding the business back or when the company has already become something else.

And something that sometimes gets overlooked: a rebrand isn't only what you can see. If your new brand promises to be approachable and customers then get cold treatment, the second thing is what people will remember. That's why good processes start by talking about the business rather than colors.

Which brands need a rebrand?

Not all of them. It's an expensive and risky decision, so something concrete should have triggered it. These are the reasons that make most sense.

Your audience has changed, or you want a different one. The usual people follow you, but the ones you want to attract don't take you seriously.

Your business is now something else. You started with one service and now you do three, or you moved from selling to individuals to selling to companies, and the brand got left behind.

You look too much like everyone else. If you can cover your logo and your communication would work for any competitor, you have a brand problem.

Your image isn't up to the level of your work. This is very common: you do something excellent, your website looks ten years old, and the customer assumes you work the same way.

There's been a merger, an acquisition or a legal change. There can also be a reputation problem, though a name change isn't enough there if what caused it hasn't changed.

And the bad reasons: "we're bored of the logo", "we have a new director who wants to make their mark" or "a competitor has just done it". Tiredness with your own brand is usually internal: you've been looking at it daily for years, and your customers see it far less. Before you change anything, ask them what they see. Sometimes the conclusion is that it's enough to put what you already have in order, which you can do with a good brand manual, and that's a valuable answer too.

Rebrand examples, famous ones and our own

Google always shows the same big cases, and it's worth looking at why they did it. Spanish energy company Cepsa became Moeve in 2024 to go with its shift towards renewable energy: a complete name change, because the old name was closely tied to oil. Burger King returned in 2021 to a retro style close to its seventies and eighties look, to talk about real food and flavor. And Jaguar unveiled a radically different image in 2024 to reposition itself in electric luxury, with plenty of controversy included: a good reminder that a rebrand can get people talking long before anyone knows whether it works.

What matters more to us are the cases at real scale, because that's where most brands are. Three of them are ours.

Paula Valls needed to reinvent herself for her album "Començar de Nou". We did a complete artist rebrand, with an editorial photo session that presented her as more mature and more direct, four music videos with their own identity and the covers for each single. One of them, «És estrany», was nominated for the Enderrock Awards.

Carla Collado was releasing "Coraje", her most ambitious work. The rebrand went with that leap: a music video with live action and 3D, a documentary about the listening party, photography and even the CD design.

Sunriu.Team, a collective of concert and festival photographers, had talent but no identity. We made their logo, palette, typefaces, a visual system that grows with them and their website.

They're different stories, but they share one thing: everything changes at once and points the same way.

What does a rebrand take? The process

In a well-made rebrand, design arrives quite late. This is the order we follow.

First, listening. Talking to the team, to customers and to those who left, and looking at what the competition does. You need to find out what's true about the brand and what you want to be true.

Second, deciding on the strategy. In one sentence: who we are, for whom and why us. If that isn't clear, any logo will be an opinion. You also need to decide what to keep: there's nearly always something recognizable that has value, and throwing it away is throwing money away.

Third, the name, only if needed. Changing it is the most expensive part, so think twice. We explain it in what naming is.

Fourth, the identity: logo, colors, typeface, photography, tone and how the brand moves on video. Here we recommend testing the new brand in real situations, such as a social post, an invoice or a video cover, rather than just on the presentation slide.

Fifth, applying it everywhere. Website, social media, signatures, documents, premises, uniforms, vehicles. Make a complete list, because something always turns up. And write it down in a simple manual.

Sixth, telling people. First the team, who should understand why it's happening before they see it in the street. Then customers. It helps to explain why you're changing and what isn't changing, and a good video is very useful for that moment. If you change your domain or name, don't forget website redirects: a mistake there can lose you positions on Google.

The part many forget: video

Many rebrands stop at the logo. A beautiful PDF gets delivered and, three weeks later, the company's first reel has nothing to do with it. It's the part we most often see fail, and also where we can help most, because these days people get to know a brand mainly on video: on social, on the website or in a podcast.

So when we work on a brand, we also think about what moves. How the logo looks in motion and how captions appear. What color palette gets applied to the images. What music goes with it, what kind of shots we use and at what pace it's edited. What a thumbnail, a subtitle or the first few seconds of a piece look like. We often call that part audiovisual branding.

We have a very clear example in Santos Studio, a tattoo and barber studio in Castelldefels, near Barcelona. It wasn't a rebrand there but a brand created from day one, with the name, the logo and the signage for the premises. What's interesting is what came next: more than 150 pieces of content with consistent art direction, because the branding didn't end when the logo was handed over.

It works for companies too. When a technology company enters a new phase, the videos and team photos age along with the logo. It's best to plan the renewal of everything in one shoot, with several pieces thought through in advance. It costs less than patching things up and makes the change noticeable all at once. We've seen that working with Qilimanjaro, where the pieces follow the company's milestones.

How we'd approach it with your brand

At Bostak Films, Albert Murillo's creative direction and the photo and video production sit under one roof. That means whoever thinks up the new brand is also the one who will shoot and publish it, so it doesn't stay in a document nobody knows how to apply. Albert got here by directing music videos for artists who were entering a new stage, so he knows what a change of image asks for.

We work with brands in Barcelona and the Baix Llobregat of many sizes, and there's a rebrand for each. Sometimes it's enough to tidy up and update; other times you have to start from zero. The first thing we'll tell you is which of the two is your case, and also if you don't need it. Starting there can save you a lot of money, and us a lot of grief.

If you're thinking of changing your brand, or you've got the feeling your image has become too small, see how we work on our creative agency in Barcelona page and book a free diagnosis. On a video call we look at your brand together as a new customer would see it and tell you frankly what we'd change and what we'd leave alone. You come away with the answer to the most important question of all: whether you really need it.

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