How can you maintain customer affinity while rebranding?

Transcript

Robert Zirk: Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes magazine, was once quoted, "Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business."

And research shows a strong correlation between brand power and organizational health.

For example, a study from Edelman shows that more than 80% of consumers cite brand trust — the level of confidence they have that a brand will deliver on its promises — as a deciding factor in their purchasing decisions. And when consumers develop trust in a brand, they're more than twice as likely to remain loyal to it despite appeals from competition.

That said, over time, many businesses see the need to evolve their brand to align with changing offerings and customer expectations. That's when a rebranding strategy comes into play.

Rebrands can be bold or subtle. Big or small. A rebrand might involve a new logo or name for a product, an entire company or both. But beyond a refresh of design components, how might a customer experience evolve with a rebrand?

Our expert guests will break down what makes a rebrand successful, what mistakes to avoid and how CX leaders can shape a customer experience that's reflective of the new brand's promise. So today on Questions for now, we'll ask: How can you maintain customer affinity while rebranding?

Robert Zirk: Welcome to Questions for now, a podcast from TELUS Digital, where we ask today's big questions in digital customer experience. I'm Robert Zirk.

Robert Zirk: It's not a coincidence that shortly before this episode launched, we happened to rebrand ourselves.

In September 2024, TELUS International officially became TELUS Digital. Our new name reflects our commitment to providing a digital-first experience across every service we deliver to clients, ensuring a seamless integration of digital, AI-powered and human interactions that optimize customer journeys and employee experiences.

So given our new name, we wanted to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. While rebrands are often thought of as marketing initiatives, they call for consistency across an entire company, including the customer experience.

Billie Loewen is vice president of marketing services at WillowTree, a TELUS Digital Company, which partners with the world's most customer-centric brands to help them orchestrate winning experiences across the customer journey. She highlights that brands are more than just logos and names — they serve to articulate a promise to customers.

Billie Loewen: A brand should communicate why a customer would engage with that brand to begin with and what the value of that relationship is ultimately going to be. So then customer experience should follow that set of promises that a brand makes.

Nike promises the notion that everyone already is an athlete and what Nike is going to do for you is ensure that you have the best gear for whatever that movement looks like.

If you are Delta Airlines, the Delta brand might stand for people who want flights that run more frequently on time or have more of a luxurious appeal.

Robert Zirk: And, according to David Soberman, professor of marketing and the Canadian national chair in strategic marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the way in which you position a brand shapes customer expectations. David cited the four Ps of marketing — product, promotion, price and place — as factors for marketers to consider.

David Soberman: For example, Corona beer is marketed as a Mexican light lager beer. First of all, in terms of product, that's exactly what it should look like. And it looks very much like the beers that people would see when they're, in fact, traveling in Mexico or traveling in the Caribbean. The price is such that it's quite affordable, it's priced like a regular beer. And the place? You can basically buy it anywhere. But one of the places that you're most likely to find Corona is at events in the summer. And what about the promotion? Well, the promotion is trying to conjure up those associations of being in a hot place, relaxing and enjoying yourself. And if you think of it that way, a well-marketed product like that is successful because its positioning is translated through all four Ps.

Robert Zirk: Now, think about how that positioning affects the feel, expectations and associations.

David Soberman: The associations are: this is a Mexican beer. It's reminding me of when I was on holiday in Mexico. What are my expectations? It should be refreshing. I mean, it is hot out. I like that, but I also like to drink something which is very refreshing. What's my feeling? "Wow. This is great. Maybe I want to have another one." And so you can see that the customer experience is very much affected by the brand and how the brand is actually marketed.

Robert Zirk: But as time goes on, your brand may not accurately capture what you do anymore. Amid shifting offerings and expectations, Billie cited a few examples of how and why several major brands evolved over time, like how American Express began in the mid-1800s as a shipping and delivery company, which was its primary business for almost 70 years before pivoting to focus on its financial products.

Billie Loewen: American Express used to offer sort of horse-and-buggy delivery services. And today they're known as one of the best financial companies. Sometimes that brand articulation is just a change in how they're solving problems for their customers and how they communicate it.

Sometimes a brand will go through a rebrand and the logo will change. Sometimes it won't. I think of Abercrombie & Fitch being a really prominent example of a company that was a superseller of tween and teen clothing in the early 2000s that then went through a pretty major reduction in relevance with their target base because times changed and especially American youth became far more cognizant that spending a tremendous amount of money for a t-shirt that only fits certain sized bodies or seemed to only be made for people of a certain level of class or a certain physical look wasn't resonant anymore. Abercrombie & Fitch has done an incredible job of coming back and saying, "We're going to listen to our customers. We're going to consistently meet their needs. The logo is going to be the same. The brand name is the same, but what the Abercrombie brand stands for now is more like modern basics at a decent price point." And they've done a tremendous job of changing themselves over.

I think Burberry, in the same way, when Emma Watson became the spokesperson for Burberry in 2009. This was at the height of Harry Potter fanaticism. And Emma Watson suddenly being the name and face for Burberry really indicated to the market, "Hey, we want to appeal to younger and younger consumers." And that was super effective.

So I don't know that it always follows a linear or perfect path of definition, but hypothetically, what the brand should say is when you shop with us, when you become a part of our community, when you leverage this brand, when you bring it into your home, you are going to get a certain benefit from making this choice and here's what those benefits are.

Robert Zirk: David stresses that rebranding isn't a decision that's made lightly. It can be an expensive and risky initiative.

David Soberman: Rebranding might be called for, but you have to remember that with rebranding, typically your awareness goes down to very low levels because people don't know of the new brand. That's the first thing. And the second thing is, there's also the risk, is: are you going to create a positioning that is attractive and appealing with your rebranding?

Now, the thing about rebranding: it's usually a long term process. It's not like a company wakes up on Friday and tries to rebrand on Saturday. This is usually something which is done over the long haul. And this means that usually, a company, when they're going to rebrand a product or even rebrand themselves, it's usually done with a great deal of thought and research so that when the rebranding is done, it has a very high chance of success.

A lot depends on whether the rebrand is a complete replacement of the name or whether it has pieces of the old name in it. The big challenge for the marketer is to increase the appeal of the brand while still keeping the customers that now consume the brand. And reassurance is very important. And of course the dialogue needs to be with the people that you currently have as customers, so they know that they're not gonna be disappointed by whatever changes you've implemented. For a rebrand to be successful, you have to go far beyond your existing customers and speak to new potential customers. Otherwise, what was the point of the rebranding? If you rebrand and you only still have the same customers, then all you've done is spent money to do the same thing.

Robert Zirk: Still, when effectively executed, rebranding offers the opportunity to shift customer perception. And Billie noted that when a rebrand is successful, it increases the memorability and resonance it has with customers.

Billie Loewen: So the ability to, at the moment that you might need that service, remember the brand. And then, second, feel like that brand is going to serve you well. One of the best places that you see this is with insurance companies.

Insurance companies are known for having these incredibly memorable brand campaigns associated with their logo and their name. There's GEICO that has a gecko as their spokesperson and has for years and years. There's Progressive, who has Flo, the insurance lady that almost everyone can picture, at least in America, in sort of her white dress. And then Allstate has their Mayhem commercials, where they show a movie actor getting through all different kinds of chaos that could force you to need to use your insurance. I think that's a really interesting way to think about the ease of remembering what a brand stands for and what they do, and then resonance. All of those brands are quite quirky, but each of them stand for something slightly different.

Robert Zirk: We've established that rebrands can reshape customer perceptions for the better, but they don't always turn out as planned. I asked David: is there a point where a company should pivot away from a poorly received rebrand and revert to the old branding?

David Soberman: Indeed there is. And what I would say is that if you are in a situation where you're rebranding, and you're not getting any consumer reaction or the consumer reactions you're getting are negative, it may be an opportunity to stop. But what I would also say is typically when it comes to rebranding, these are business decisions which are pretty well researched. And that goes back to what I said earlier, they're done over the long haul. You've spent time understanding customers and thinking about the rebrand and you've developed a new positioning. And when you're in a situation where it's not working as well as you would have liked, you've got to figure out why it's not working and what's the cost of fixing it.

Robert Zirk: The best way to avoid a failed rebrand is to speak to your customers and listen.

David Soberman: There's all manners of market research as well as what I would call secondary data and this means a lot of information is collected on consumer behavior, consumer habits and trends through various surveys, and then you can also look on the internet to find out what's going on.

Robert Zirk: And conducting your own market research doesn't have to be complicated. It can be as simple as creating a survey and reaching out to your customers or monitoring social media to gauge customer sentiment.

Once you're equipped with the information you need, Billie advises leaders to ensure there's alignment between what you hear from your customers and the strategy behind what you want your customers to be hearing.

Billie Loewen: Often in branding projects, the first thing you might do is talk to people internal to the company and say, "What do you want to stand for? What do you hope that makes you stand out among your customers, your supporters, or people who buy your product?" And oftentimes, you'll hear inside of a company this really aggrandized view of what the brand hopes it stands for. And then you go talk to consumers and you hear something totally different.

The important thing about a brand is almost always what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's perception more than it is intent. And so often if we're leading a project where we're helping a company either go through a full rebrand or create campaigns that reinforce a brand or a new product, we will spend a lot of time with consumers helping understand, "Hey, when you see this ad, when you see these images, when you see this logo, what does it hearken for you?" And then we'll go back and forth with folks internal to that organization to say, "Here is how your brand is being perceived. If we want to be perceived as a brand that appeals to younger generations, if we want to be a brand that appeals to more diverse populations, here are some of the ways that we might shift our imagery, our language, our tone to better match what they're looking for."

The product quality plays into that, too. If you're positioning yourself as a premium product and then your product is falling apart, or it's just not working as well as intended against competitors, then that might be the place that you need to improve.

And so I think there are conversations that have to go both ways. How do we want to be perceived? How are we perceived? And then is the difference in perception because the product itself is not the quality or not the type of fit or solving the kind of problems that consumer needs, or because the orientation of the brand is just sending the wrong message about that value proposition?

Robert Zirk: Billie cited personal care brand Dove as one of the best examples of a brand that shifted its identity based on what it was hearing from customers.

Billie Loewen: Dove used to sell their products by basically showing, like, half-dressed women lathered in soap and then, at a certain point, realized that there was a major market opportunity to be more inclusive and to celebrate more inclusive beauty standards. And then all of their campaigns, their commercials, the way they go to market across every channel, changed to be about celebrating real beauty and celebrating more diverse types of beauty.

Robert Zirk: Even when rebranding makes sense from an internal perspective, change can be difficult for existing customers to process. And there's always a risk that a rebrand might completely reset the loyalty and trust you've built with them up to that point.

Billie notes that rebrands can have trade-offs, but by clearly communicating changes, brands can mitigate any loss in customer affinity.

Billie Loewen: Brands need to remember that if they're losing certain consumers because they're intentionally making a play for a different section of the market, that's just part of the loss that you might go through for ultimately a bigger set of gains.

Remember to bring your consumers along with you through that rebrand, telling the story of any logo change that you might go through, for instance, and the reasons why and how it resonates with your consumers and being customer-centric through that process.

Billie Loewen: Second, giving consumers more time to respond to those changes or potentially honoring actions they've taken with you in the past. I think this is especially true for loyalty programs, that if you're changing your points tiering so that points don't have the same monetary value that they might've before a rebrand, how do you honor what a customer has done and the value and the perception of the rewards that they might have sitting with you to keep them steady through to that next iteration? As well as, of course, telling the story of "Hey, here's why we're making this change and here's what you can expect." What consumers really want is just transparency and honesty.

And then, of course, remembering how to make tech easy. If you are asking customers to go through hoops to use your product in the future because of the upgrades that you're doing to brand or to digital experience across the board, that's going to be really challenging if they're suddenly locked out of their account or they can't access various screens or order history that they used to. You'd be surprised at how often tech upgrades go hand-in-hand with brand upgrades, and how many challenges that can create just to those gateways, so I think being mindful of how to keep a customer experience really seamless through the transition.

Robert Zirk: A seamless experience from the beginning makes it more likely that when customers think of this new brand, their association will be a positive one.

Billie Loewen: The reality is most consumers don't like change unless it's significantly helping improve a product in a way that they've said, "Hey, we want product improvements." If it's a change they're not expecting, helping them understand what's not changing is often just as critical as helping them understand why there was a change to begin with.

Robert Zirk: And that messaging can resonate even stronger when you directly connect the changes to customer feedback.

Billie Loewen: Anytime you can say, "Hey, the reason why we're making these changes or we're shifting or we're going after a different consumer or improving our product or we're making a change is because we heard you and we were listening." That's often so important. I think this is where brands tend to get rebranding wrong is they're just making decisions without any customer POV.

Robert Zirk: The trust that customers place in your brand can be directly linked to the authenticity of your brand, and Billie recommends leaders increase their focus on the digital experience and the opportunities it provides to communicate in a way that strikes a chord with customers and builds brand trust.

Billie Loewen: Younger consumers, as they get increasingly savvy, they pay attention to these micro digital moments. During a campaign takeover, has the icon for the app changed and does it match to the iconography that you might see throughout that campaign in the app? Does it match the language that you see?

Robert Zirk: For example. language learning app Duolingo switched its icons to ones where it's mascot, a green owl, appears to be ill or melting to catch the attention of its users and motivate them to return to the app.

Billie notes that an increasing number of brands are adjusting the way they communicate by leveraging these different kinds of micro-moments.

Billie Loewen: We see this with brands that have become just a little bit more snarky, like, they allow their brand to be resonant because it's funny or because it's silly. Like, Wendy's is a great example of this, how Wendy's will sort of of troll other brands and people remember that.

Or Reformation, as a clothing brand. I don't know who they're paying to write their emails, but that person deserves a raise. They are hilarious. They do wild, off the wall stuff with their brand. You don't have to be wild and off the wall. You could be just friendly, committed to being friendly, at every single touchpoint. You could be committed to using the right dialect of language for the right population so that it's resonant. But that commitment should go really deep.

I think of email subject lines as this micro-moment where more and more often, if you are a financial services brand and your subject lines are something that sounds a little scary, scary subject lines used to be a way to get people to open email. With younger consumers who are very savvy, that is now considered a negative brand perception moment where they're reading a scary subject line from a financial services brand that they're trying to build trust with, and they're removing that trust much more quickly than a previous generation might have.

Oftentimes when brands settle on their tone, first of all, I think there is a little bit more room to be playful because it's going to come across as authentic if it's right to the brand. But make sure that is clear across every single micro-moment. Is your brand clear in your subject lines of your email? Is it clear in your 404 error pages and how you say someone's in the wrong place? Look at all those tiny moments and where they may not have previously had as much impact on the bottom line for brands, more frequently, those are the moments that matter.

Robert Zirk: It's especially important to ensure that if you're in a business where onboarding as part of the customer acquisition process, that you clearly communicate the benefits your product or service can provide to new customers. Billie sees the onboarding process as an area where many brands have room for improvement.

Billie Loewen: Onboarding is tremendously important and it's often not built out enough to really educate new customers to the benefits that they receive. But to your point, that sense of onboarding can never really end. Brands increasingly need to be more diligent about reminding customers when they received a benefit. If somebody makes a purchase with your brand, tell them right away that they've gotten the rewards points for the behavior that they took with you. I'm assuming because the back end of how to fulfill that in a digital ecosystem is really challenging, you often wait a week to 10 days to see those points show up in the app.

Robert Zirk: Billie highlighted Marriott as a brand that has made strides to speed up the process of awarding points and communicating changes to customers.

Billie Loewen: Marriott has gotten much better when they give you points and they're showing up to say and send a push notification that just says, "You have new points." That's such a brilliant move to just remind customers, "You're getting the benefit, we're seeing your behavior."

Robert Zirk: It's especially important to maintain a consistent dialogue with your customers as your brand establishes a new value proposition. Billie highlighted Nike and Apple as brands that have managed to do a great job of redefining their brand identities while maintaining the same name and logo.

Billie Loewen: Nike has done a tremendous job including more and more sports in their campaigns and including women in their campaigns, including women in hijabs in their campaigns, and taking this concept that has been universal, which is "Just do it. Everyone's an athlete, get out, go play, go practice." And continuously keeping that brand relevant and resonant to so many people and then expanding beyond shoes.

I think Mac and Apple products used to be sleek and then they became very performative and horizontally and vertically integrated so that they were just easier to use. Now they stand for security. I think that's a really interesting change for the Apple brand to talk about how Apple keeps privacy at the core of what it does and keeps you safe. That has been a huge transition for them and one that's super successful.

Robert Zirk: And David offered an example that demonstrated how Air Canada rebranded to reposition what it stood for in the minds of customers.

David Soberman: In the early 1960s, it used to be called Trans-Canada Air Lines. Up until that time, the main activity of the airline was taking people across Canada. But at that point in time, there was a transformation in the airline industry, which is that many countries wanted to have a national carrier.

Robert Zirk: Which often becomes the airline that's most widely seen and known internationally from that country.

David Soberman: And I think this was very effective because Air Canada became known as Canada's national airline, and to this day, it's been quite successful with that positioning.

Robert Zirk: But as we've alluded to earlier, not all rebrands go according to plan. And David highlighted one of the most famous examples from the 1980s: the rebranding of Coca-Cola's flagship beverage.

David Soberman: Coke thought they were losing sales to Pepsi. And so they rebranded themselves as New Coke. It wasn't a total rebrand because Coke, even then, was still the largest soft drink brand in the world, but they rebranded their flagship product as New Coke and they launched it with a lot of fanfare, but it was relatively unsuccessful and, eventually, they had to bring back the original formula. It was called Coke Classic. And then after a few more years, Coke Classic became regular Coke and you couldn't actually buy New Coke anymore.

And the reason behind that actually has something to do with a misinterpretation of market research. So, at that particular point in time, the share of the Coke brand, the Coke regular brand was actually declining compared to Pepsi and Coke basically read that as a problem with their product and that's why they wanted to rebrand. But in fact, what had happened is simultaneous to that trend, Diet Coke had come into the market, as had Diet Pepsi, but because Coke was actually a lighter and somewhat less sweet product, the decline in the Coke flagship product was driven by growth in Diet Coke. So it's a fascinating story. It underlines the importance of trust and the importance of brand in affecting the customer experience. So a product like Coke, which has been around for years, it's something that people really trust and part of their enjoyment of a Coke has to do with the brand and the associations that it creates. These are very positive associations about refreshment, about having fun, et cetera.

And when you actually have had a slogan and the slogan for Coke for many years was "the real thing" and suddenly now you replace "the real thing" with anything, you're going to get a huge reaction and that's emotional. If I've been drinking "the real thing" for the last 20 years, why are you replacing it? You're taking something away from me that is my "real thing." And so the emotional attachment that people have to the brand very much affects their experience. And so when you do a rebrand and you remove something, which is very important to them in terms of the experience they're having, you're going to get a really big customer reaction, which is exactly what happened.

Robert Zirk: And although that rebrand had unintended consequences, Coca-Cola learned from it and rebuilt customer trust. Today, both Coke and Pepsi are extremely successful consumer brands.

When it comes to evaluating whether a rebrand is truly successful in maintaining customer affinity, Billie cited two key metrics: the ability for customers to remember the brand messaging and the measurement of whether customers are becoming loyal to the new brand.

Billie Loewen: If you are putting out new campaigns to the world and then you ask your consumers, "You just saw this ad or you just heard this commercial? Do you remember it?" and no one remembers it, the ability to remember the message that you just saw, I think, is one really important component.

Second is: are you driving true loyalty? So true loyalty is a measure of the frequency, the duration, and the amount of spend that somebody is having with your brand. If you are truly resonating with your customer base over time, you're going to see frequency, duration and basket size or total lifetime spend increase. And then, really, it becomes about what's the speed with which you're able to drive that increase? Can you cut down duration between interactions, between behaviors, between purchases? So that, I think, is perhaps the most important measure is: what's the lifetime value of your customers? And then, of course, who's moving through your tiers? How well do they understand the benefits that they're receiving by shopping with your brand?

Again, this one is very loyalty program-based, but I think about Amex. If you are an Amex Platinum cardholder, for example, that's a pretty expensive card. You're paying a lot upfront for the benefits of that card. And so how quickly might you onboard your customers to understand the benefits of what they're receiving so that they are willing to both capitalize on all of those benefits, receive them, which drives that brand trust, and then either keep the card over time, drive more usage in it, become a referring card member where they bring their friends into the network? I think that's another one is how can you measure the speed at which that relationship depth is growing? And then that becomes a proxy for how well it's resonating with them as a consumer.

Robert Zirk: And David mentioned tracking studies as one of the most important ways to measure the results, starting with a pulse check that's taken prior to the rebrand.

David Soberman: You have to have measures of, first of all, how your current brand is perceived compared to existing brands. There's all kinds of measures that can be used for that. You can implicitly measure the value of a brand, which involves how much would you be willing to pay for this product if it was unbranded? How much would you be willing to pay if it was branded? So there's ways of capturing that. Of course, beyond willingness to pay, you could also assess purchase likelihood. When people are given a choice of brands, which one would they choose? And they're only allowed to choose one, so then you have measures of purchase likelihood. Typically, what you're most interested in is the measures of your brand relative to the competition. And the reason I mentioned tracking studies is because if you've done rebranding, you want to see that whatever it is that you're offering customers has actually improved versus what you did prior.

Robert Zirk: I asked Billie about how WillowTree, a TELUS Digital Company, has helped brands navigate their own rebranding efforts and she explained that one way they help is with developing campaigns and determining ways brands can differentiate themselves.

Billie Loewen: We evaluate what's happening across the market for different industries and then say, "Here's how you might do something different in a digital space to stand out." I don't know how many times I've shown a slide to a brand where I take their own homepage and I turn it black and white and I put it next to their competitor's homepage and I also turn it black and white and I say, "Can you tell who is who? How would you know?" And it's interesting how even in the room sometimes, the teams I'm working with don't know which website is their website without something as simple as like a color hint to it.

We do a lot with loyalty programs, so how do you brand a loyalty program and the tiers of it? Ideally, if a loyalty program is doing its job, and you've hit a different tier of membership or loyalty with a brand, you are going to feel included in a cohort where you can personalize based off that brand name. For Delta Airlines, this is things like, which group do you board with? Are you first class? Are you comfort plus? Are you sitting in economy? Those are really interesting brand moments and naming conventions as well as how you do badges and gamification and iconography that are both true to the value that you're providing, but also let you speak to your customers in a unique way as they hit those different tiers. And there's a pricing component to that. How much do you have to give away early in a relationship with a consumer to help them have another interaction so you can actually build that sense of trust with them? What's the right amount? What's the wrong amount?

So we help to balance some of those components, even understanding how customers are using especially digital components or digital dashboards or all sorts of digital features and better understand what's the thing that makes our customers want to monetize and spend money with us versus what do they expect that we give them for free?

Robert Zirk: To wrap up, it's clear that your brand can play an important role in communicating elements that shape the customer experience, everything from the feeling the brand wishes to evoke to the promise it strives to fulfill. In that sense, the decision to rebrand and to what extent can come down to a cost-benefit analysis between the equity of the current brand, the amount it will cost to undergo a rebrand and the expectation of what the net result will be.

When a rebrand moves forward, whether it's a major rebranding effort or a subtle shift in messaging, transparency and clear communication throughout the process are crucial to maintain the trust and loyalty of existing customers.

The brands that best understand the importance of listening to customers and adapting accordingly, all while tailoring the customer experience to fulfill the promises the brand makes, are best positioned to stay relevant as technology and expectations change.

Thank you so much to Billie Loewen and David Soberman for joining me and sharing their insights today. And thank you for listening to Questions for now, a TELUS Digital podcast.

To learn more about our rebrand to TELUS Digital, go to telusdigital.com. And for more expert insights that answer today's big questions in digital customer experience, be sure to follow Questions for now on your podcast player of choice to get the latest episodes as soon as they're released. I'm Robert Zirk, and until next time, that's all... for now.