DESIGNA MAGAZINE DESIGNA ISSUE III 2019 2 | Page 50

APPLE BRAND EVOLUTIONS OVER THE YEARS
1976
1977
1998
With a simple snip to the ancillary word in the brand
name in 2002 (which most people didn’t use anymore), the
brand was ready for new growth and opportunities.
New Audience:
When a company wants to appeal to a new audience, a
rebranding might be necessary. Keep in mind, the
rebranding might not require an actual name or logo
change. �ink of McDonald’s referring to itself as
MickeyD’s in commercials to target a different
demographic from its traditional family audience.
Relevancy:
When a company realizes its brand is losing relevancy in
consumers’ minds, it might be time to rebrand. �e Yellow
Pages rebranding is a perfect example. With the use of
printed Yellow Pages directories declining, Yellow Pages
rebranded to YP and began to focus more attention on the
digital space making it signi�cantly more relevant.
Reactive Rebranding
Other times, companies rebrand in reaction to an event
that is so signi�cant that the existing brand must be
changed. For example, reactive rebranding might happen
in situations like the ones listed below:
2002
2007
2018
cause a company to rebrand. Trademarks are often at the
root of these rebranding examples. �at’s why it’s so
important to conduct an exhaustive trademark search and
obtain the trademark rights to your brand name before you
launch it.
Competitive In�uences:
Sometimes a company’s competitors’ activities can be the
catalyst to a rebranding. When a competitor renders your
brand useless or dated, a rebranding could help you regain a
foothold in your market and give you the facelift you need
to effectively strike back.
Negative Publicity:
Remember a company called Andersen Consulting? It was
part of a larger company along with the accounting �rm
Arthur Andersen that was tied to the collapse of Enron.
Andersen Consulting was granted independence from its
parent company in 2000, and on New Year’s Day 2001, the
consulting company was reborn as Accenture, representing
a great example of effective rebranding in response to
negative publicity.
Merger or Acquisition:
When companies merge or acquire other companies (and
even when they break apart), rebrandings are often
required. �at’s how we’ve gotten brand names like
Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Bank of New York Mellon.
When AT&T broke up into three separate companies in
the late 1990s, Lucent Technologies was born. �ese types
of rebrandings are very common and often go through
multiple iterations.
Legal Issues:
�ere are a number of different legal issues that could
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Andersen Consulting
Accenture Logos
Whether it’s your own strategic goals or macro-
environmental factors that necessitate a
rebranding, realizing that it might be time to
rebrand is just the preliminary step in the
rebranding process.