A rebrand is often seen as the solution when a company is struggling. Yet, rebrands often become quagmires that fail to live up to senior management's and marketers' imagined expectations.
REBRAND CONSIDERATIONS
Rebranding can seem like a good idea. It allows an organisation to “jazz things up,” replace the tired logos and fading brand colours, create a catchier position statement, and show that things are going well. A rebrand is often seen as the solution when a company is struggling.
Yet, rebrands often become quagmires that fail to live up to senior management's and marketers' imagined expectations. In the worst-case scenario, a rebrand can alienate the customer base, as demonstrated by the recent stumble from the Bumble Dating app.
Bumble’s Stumble
Bumble’s shares have fallen steadily since July 2023, dropping roughly 45%. There has also been concern about its ability to attract new subscribers to the platform, particularly among younger users. In February 2024, it laid off approximately 30% of its workforce.
Against this background, a rebrand was presumably seen as the solution to falling revenue, a declining customer base and an opportunity to reboot.
Bumble deleted all of its old Instagram posts and launched the rebrand on April 30. It boldly declared that dating needed a “wake-up call” and showed pictures of women supposedly exhausted from the dating scene. The problem was with the messaging about celibacy that accompanied the photos. It appeared the company was mocking celibacy as a viable choice for some people over dating.
The fallout within the community was such that Bumble, to their credit, withdrew the ads and offered a full apology.
This situation is an uncomfortable but necessary reminder of what can go wrong with rebrands and the importance of thinking through and answering basic questions so that stumbles around rebranding can be side-stepped.
Basic questions to consider when rebranding
1. Do we need to change the entire brand?
For Bumble, it must have felt like an entire rebrand was necessary. Stocks were falling, staff had been laid off, and the customer base was shrinking. It was hoped a rebrand would revive the company’s flagging fortunes.
The problem is that rebranding when a company faces challenges on multiple fronts only confirms that the company is in trouble. This was the case when Lauren Salaun, a TikTok user with 200,000 followers, said the rebrand was a sign that Bumble was in trouble.
Rebranding is rarely the answer for companies that face the trio of problems Bumble was facing. Falling share prices and declining customer numbers indicate that more profound structural changes are needed within a company than a simple rebrand. However, when companies become paralysed by fear in response to threats to their survival, the first thing executives will think of doing is rebranding. The reason for this is simple. Rebranding creates a lot of activity, and executives then feel they are doing something to address the problems the business is facing. However, the underlying issues are neglected due to all the activity surrounding the rebrand.
When companies face multiple issues, a total rebrand is rarely the time.
2. The importance of re-visiting the basics
It is essential to revisit why the company exists and ask questions such as “Who does the company best serve?” and “What value do our solutions deliver?” Revisiting these questions can assist with determining the desired messaging and tone that may need to be included in any rebrand.
The longer a company has been operating, the easier it is to forget these things in the day-to-day pressure of running the business.
When rebranding, these basic questions need to be revisited and considered so that any messaging remains aligned with these fundamental values. Mike Sullivan from OneDigital stated that during their rebranding process, “the degree of introspection needed was much more important than finding a creative team to work with.” The reality is that most organisations do the reverse and spend more time trying to find a creative team.
Since its launch in 2014, Bumble has positioned itself as a women-friendly dating app in contrast to some other apps that have a greater emphasis on hooking up. For years, it has stood up for women and marginalised communities and their right to exercise personal choice. The messaging in the rebrand about celibacy seemed to completely reverse Bumble’s previous stance.
From an external perspective, it seems Bumble didn’t spend sufficient time in introspection revisiting the basics to ensure the rebrand messaging was consistent with the company's original value proposition.
3. Awareness of what is going on in society
Many companies forget that they operate within society when considering a rebrand. Any messaging the company creates doesn’t just go to clients or potential customers; it goes to the broader community. Hence, a rebrand that miscommunication is amplified as it gets shared and commented about on people’s social media platforms within the wider community.
Several societal factors do not appear to have been considered in the rebrand by Bumble. For example, the juxtaposition of celibacy and the term “nun” links to a historical view of celibacy as religious, whereas for many people today, celibacy is a choice that has nothing to do with religion but with lifestyle. For people who identify as asexual, celibacy is a viable choice. For women who have experienced trauma and harm within relationships, celibacy may be not only a viable choice but the safest choice.
Bumble’s ad also failed to address men’s responsibility when dating, particularly men’s responsibility to respect boundaries and that ‘no’ means ‘no’.
When a company rebrands, it must ensure its messaging considers what is occurring in the broader community rather than focusing too narrowly on the rebrand.
Mike Sullivan from OneDigital stated that during their rebranding process, “the degree of introspection needed was much more important than finding a creative team to work with.”
Apologies and pushing boundaries
While the response Bumble received to their rebranding and messaging may not have been what they wanted, they did quickly apologise and pull the ads. Bumble is not the only company that has recently apologised for an ad that wasn’t received well.
Apple’s latest ad for the iPad Pro shows a hydraulic press crushing various creative instruments to showcase the iPad’s power and thinness. While some thought it was a clever ad showcasing the iPad Pro's strengths and features, many saw it as a negative message about the power of technology crushing traditional forms of creativity. Techcrunch went so far as to call the ad disgusting.
The result was that Apple also apologised.
This raises a broader issue for many brands: balancing customer sensibilities while pushing boundaries and being adventurous.
Bland brands generally do not have longevity within the marketplace because they do not stand out from the competition. Brands that push boundaries and show a willingness to take risks will inevitably have to apologise sooner or later for an ad that misses the mark.
Brands do need to take risks. The question is how to take risks safely.
Pushing boundaries as safely as possible
It is essential to consider a few questions when considering rebranding, particularly a rebrand that is pushing boundaries.
What are the ‘hot buttons’ for the client group, and are these the same as the ‘hot buttons’ for the wider community?
If Bumble had been listening to women, they would have picked up on trends such as the “Me Too” movement and the 4B movement, which dates to South Korea in 2018, with women turning away from modern beauty standards and expectations about their lifestyles and appearance. They also have picked up the rising concern about coercive control in relationships and violence within domestic settings.
Against the backdrop of these trends, any messaging that seemed to imply women should be “out there” dating had the potential to backfire because it was tone-deaf to the community's hot buttons.
Humour and light-hearted approaches do not work when dealing with ‘hot buttons’
Humour, at the best of times, can be notoriously difficult to convey in ad messaging. This is for several reasons:
· Humour is often culturally specific. Australian humour is often lost on people from Southeast Asian cultural backgrounds because the vocabulary and context are different. The same applies in reverse. Many Australians do not get the humour of people from Southeast Asian backgrounds.
· Humour differs between people. What one person finds hilarious, another doesn’t see the funny aspect.
· Humour is often based on timing and inflection. This is very difficult in a brand campaign where messaging is usually compressed into seconds.
For these reasons, humour is often most effective when it is used as an extension of what the cultural group already finds funny rather than trying to use it for a ‘hot-button’ topic.
Incremental approach
If a brand does decide to launch a campaign that pushes boundaries, can they do it incrementally?
We all like to have the “wow factor,” the grand launch that surprises everyone. However, sometimes, the surprise is too much. When we push boundaries, we may need to stretch them gradually rather than pushing through.
Although an incremental approach may be slower and have less of a wow factor, it allows brands to bring customers along on the journey. It also enables brands to check customer reactions and make necessary changes without pulling the whole campaign.
For example, perhaps Bumble didn’t need to remove all its old posts from Instagram. It could have left those posts while rolling out the new campaign and then decided to remove old posts.
What is the fall-back plan?
When brands are launching a campaign that pushes boundaries, they need a solid fallback plan if, as in the case of Bumble, things go wrong.
Does the brand have a secondary campaign that can quickly replace the one it has pulled?
Bumble's fallback plan has been to apologise and pull the ads. Full credit to Bumble for doing this, but for the moment, there seems to be a hiatus in their advertising while they regroup. Having a secondary campaign ready enables a brand to recover quickly.
The lesson from Bumble and Apple is that all brands can have campaigns and ads that misfire. Their experience should make all brands and companies more careful when considering rebranding.
However, exercising care should not prevent brands from pushing boundaries. We still need to see creative work that pushes our boundaries and makes us see things differently. For brands, it is having the courage to take this risk and being cautious enough to listen to customers and the community and ensure a fallback plan is in place before the boundaries are pushed.
