A brand relaunch is a complex strategic repositioning – not just a redesign. It often fails because of missing governance, weak implementation, or unclear change management. This guide shows how to steer clear of the major pitfalls.
A brand relaunch is far more than updating a logo or introducing a new color palette. It’s a strategic realignment of your brand – with impacts on perception, internal and external representation, and brand value. In practice, many relaunches fail due to operational, creative or governance based hurdles. The result: employees become overwhelmed, the relaunch drags on, and your brand ends up appearing inconsistent.
Studies show that in everyday brand communication mismatches frequently occur: for example, only 76 % of externally‐sent documents and presentations follow the brand guidelines – approximately one third of all communications therefore deviate from the brand strategy. That discrepancy underscores how great the challenge is and how important thoughtful preparation and consistent execution are for a successful relaunch.
In this article we will explain the primary sources of failure in a brand relaunch, and provide you with a guide to how you can avoid them.
In many relaunch projects we see recurring mistakes – grouped here into five central categories:
Many brands kick off a relaunch project with a purely visual perspective – logo, colors, fonts – without sufficient strategic grounding: brand architecture, audience insights, competitive advantages. A brand relaunch without a mature strategy runs the risk that while the outcome may look “nice,” it is neither relevant nor differentiating.
Once the strategy is defined, many teams launch into creative work too early – without a clear link to the brand identity. Trends or aesthetics dominate instead of brand value and brand perception. The result: design that appears modern yet lacks a clear identity.
A brand relaunch does not end with a new logo or a new website – it begins with the rollout across all touchpoints, documents and systems. In many organizations the focus is largely on the launch day of the new brand. The communication of the launch is meticulously planned. But what comes afterwards? What happens with existing content in the old design? Who takes responsibility for the migration? How do teams ensure that outdated templates are not still being used?
If systems, templates or tools are not prepared, a break in the brand image becomes unavoidable: outdated slides, parallel design worlds, wasted time and high manual correction efforts.
Governance means: responsibilities, processes, tools and controls. The study shows that 58 % of respondents regard following brand guidelines in presentations and documents as tedious and time consuming. Without clearly defined roles, rights and verifiable standards no relaunch can be executed consistently – especially within large organizations with decentralized teams or international locations.
A relaunch affects not only the external appearance, but the behaviour of employees. If change management is neglected, “shadow brands” emerge – employees resort to their own solutions, templates continue to be created ad hoc, guidelines are ignored. Instead of brand embedding, you end up with a pattern of inconsistency.
A successful brand relaunch integrates strategy, creativity and operational implementation. Here are five practical steps:
As a provider of solutions for brand and document creation and control, we support organizations in the operational rollout and technological enablement:
Our approach: As an enabler, not a control element, we support you in transferring the brand relaunch not only visually but sustainably into brand management.
A good example of operationally successful brand rollout is provided by Bayer.
The starting situation: The new brand had been launched, templates were ready – but in practice presentations were still often incorrectly or incompletely executed.
The solution: Bayer supplemented the PowerPoint master with an automatic start slide featuring five clear tips for correct use of the new templates – right at the point where employees begin their work.
Among others:
This simple measure showed major impact:
This was enabled among other things by empower®, which integrates such features directly in the master – but the approach is adaptable regardless of the tool: brand management succeeds when orientation takes place where the work is done, not in the intranet, but directly in the tool where employees begin (e.g., PowerPoint).
In our interview, Sven Theobald from Bayer discusses how the company broke down rigid structures and made brand management more agile.
A brand relaunch is a strategic opportunity – for new relevance, more efficient processes and consistent brand governance. Yet in practice the focus often remains on visible elements like the logo or website, while implementation in everyday workflow is neglected.
What matters is that strategy, design and operational reality work together – only then does a relaunch become a sustainable new beginning.
Focus on:
Because 93 % of those surveyed say that consistent design fosters trust – consistency is not a detail but a competitive advantage.
What does this mean for your next brand project? Find out how empower® can support your brand relaunch in Microsoft 365. Request a free consultation today!
Before you embark on a relaunch project, a well founded assessment is required. Typical triggers include:
At the same time a relaunch is not automatically the solution for every brand problem. Often a targeted brand refresh (for example: adjusting brand messages or touchpoints) is sufficient – a full relaunch can be over‐scaled and resource intensive.
Ask yourself:
If yes, a relaunch can move your brand forward. If not, consider a smaller refresh.