If 2025 had a marketing zodiac sign, it would be the year of the rebrand
In 2025, many brands like Apple TV and Microsoft made subtle changes that improved their image!
But then there are brands like the Philadelphia Museum of Art that learned the hard way that if you don’t engage your community, you might end up worse than you were before!
This is part 1 of a 5 part series I’m doing this week!
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jorda (00:08)
Hey, I’m Sean in St. Louis and this is the Marketing Gateway. We’re out of the office for a couple of weeks and so we’ll close out 2025 with some short episodes about the lessons we’ve learned from marketing this year and also the things we need to consider about 2026. So let’s talk about one of the big topics this year, which is rebranding. There were a lot of changes to familiar brand names in 2025, but many of them were blink and you’ll miss it sort of events.
Walmart, Google, and Amazon all made some subtle changes to their logos, and Apple TV dropped the plus from its name. Automaker Bentley simplified its wings logo, and Microsoft changed the icons of 10 of its office suite products to have a more unified set of curves and gradients. PepsiCo adjusted the potato chip brand Lays to include some sunlight-evoking Lays-rays on the packaging. And they also took a stronger stand.
to let consumers know that Lay’s potato chips come from farm-grown potatoes, something that was apparently not common knowledge among younger consumers. There was also a big rebrand this year for the online platform Grammarly, which first acquired the email client Superhuman in July and then announced its plans this fall to rebrand its own platform with that name, shifting the name Grammarly into the product category instead. And the goal seems to be for the newly christened Superhuman
to have a suite of AI powered products under the name Superhuman Go. And it’s not hard to see the value of having a brand name that promises people that they can do more using specialized AI tools. Lazy Boy also underwent a brand refresh this year, replacing the logo it’s been using for 20 years with a new, more stylized logo intended to communicate comfort, warmth, and a stress-free place. In an article for Fast Company,
The brand manager explains that consumer research found the old logo was too sterile and didn’t communicate any of those things. The new logo even works in some nostalgic elements by basing its design on Lazy Boy’s original 1927 logo, which was in use until it was replaced in 1990. So those are some rebrands that went really well. What about some ones that didn’t? Well,
One of the worst regarded rebrands of the year involved the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Now, you wouldn’t think something as institutional as a public art museum could possibly whiff on a rebrand, but they did, first by changing their name to the Philadelphia Art Museum, then letting their director and CEO explain that this would enable the community to start refuting to the museum as FAM, P-H-A-M. Even worse, the patrons hated the new logo.
which people compared to soccer team logos or athleisure brands or a dystopian Cold War style propaganda piece. So what went wrong? Well, clearly the museum didn’t ask the community for much input and the leadership has apparently been at odds with staff unions over the last two years. There’s also the issue of authenticity. Instead of working with local design firms that understood the art museums place in the community, the leadership went with a New York city design agency called Gretel.
Not listening to your external stakeholders and broader community can be a big problem when you’re rebranding. And it’s not surprising that forcing a new brand identity on people tends to make them complain online. If anybody learned that lesson this year, it’s Cracker Barrel, who probably had the worst rebrand of the year. One so bad that they had to backpedal. I won’t get into the details, but suffice it to say that Cracker Barrel has been trying to find ways to appeal to younger diners and decided to work with a design consultancy firm called Profit.
to simplify its logo by removing the elderly, old-timer character named Uncle Hershel from the design. This ill-informed decision, led by their new turnaround artist CEO Julie Massino, was a complete disaster. Because if there’s one thing the Cracker Barrel land is known for, it’s for being a nostalgic serving of comfort food along America’s roadways. Everybody felt a need to weigh in on this, even President Donald Trump.
And Cracker Barrel ultimately had to restore the logo, fire their design agency, and make management changes to appease stockholders upset by the uproar. The company has also paid a price in the third and fourth quarter in terms of driving customers away. Part of that might have to do as well with the changes that they’ve made to their food and their menus. I’m not even sure that they learned their lesson though. The most recent billboard that I’ve seen outside my local Cracker Barrel is trying to play up nostalgia for those little
triangle peg games they put on the tables. If the brand was trying to appeal to a younger crowd before, that campaign seems to miss the mark by about 20 to 30 years. It seems to me like firing their research agency and getting some fresh consumer insights might be the sensible next step. And hey guys, I’m in the business. So what can we learn from 2025’s rebranding efforts? Well, small changes generally don’t attract that much attention.
and changes that are grounded in good research and long-term strategic thinking can do really well provided they don’t upset the apple cart. But when you make drastic changes, you’d better make sure you’re listening to the voice of your customers, your stakeholders, and the broader community, or else you may have a disaster on your hands. Well, I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been the Marketing Gateway. See you next time.
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