I studied 13 successful company rebrands. It turns out, you CAN put lipstick on a pig — if you do it for the right reasons
“Rebranding is frickin’ stupid.”
-Kipp Bodnar, CMO of Hubspot
Kipp Bodnar, CMO of Hubspot is debating Kieran Flanagan, CMO of Zapier, on their podcast Marketing Against The Grain, right around when Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X.
“I believe a rebrand is the public manifestation of internal confusion,” says Bodnar. “Never do it.”
Flanagan is more open to it. He sees the logic of a rebrand if a company has outgrown its brand. He gives the hypothetical example: if a company called “ Calculator.com “ evolves into selling more than just calculators, a rebrand makes sense.
Both men name many terrible rebrands, including:
myTaxi to FREENOW. It went so poorly, they had to publish a Medium article dispelling the myths behind the new name.RadioShack to “The Shack.” The electronics retail store has unfortunately devolved into private equity’s plaything that “shacks” up on the next one’s balance sheet.American Express Financial to Ameriprise. Today, Ameriprise is ranked 245th on the Fortune 500 and is on the list of largest banks in the United States, so as far as corporate spin-offs go, this one actually worked out (once you get past the name). Similar case study: IBM’s spin off of Kyndryl)
But they can’t state one example of a good rebrand. They say “a non-trivial amount of time went into the research for this show,” but they were at a loss. They appeal to the crowd for help. “Could someone please in the comments tell us about a good rebrand?”
Finally, they come up with two examples, but refuse to call them rebrands: