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What is a brand refresh & how to execute one successfully

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Every brand eventually reaches a crossroads where what worked yesterday doesn't capture who you are today. Your logo may feel stuck in the past, or your messaging doesn't align with your evolved mission. It could mean it’s time for a brand refresh when that happens.

A brand refresh is not a complete reinvention but a strategic evolution that keeps your core identity intact while bringing new relevance and energy to your market presence. Let's explore how to recognize when you need a refresh and execute it successfully.

What is a brand refresh?

A brand refresh is a strategic update to your brand identity without completely overhauling its identity or recognition factor. Unlike a complete rebrand, which rebuilds from the ground up, a refreshed brand strategy focuses on evolving and modernizing specific elements while maintaining the equity you've already built with your audience.

This process typically involves updating visual components like your logo, color palette, typography, and imagery, alongside potential refinements to your messaging, tone of voice, and positioning.

Effective brand refreshes maintain a connection to the original identity while introducing contemporary elements that better align with current market expectations and your company's strategic planning objectives. The goal of a brand refresh isn't to become unrecognizable but rather to breathe new life into how your company presents itself to the world.

Why is a brand refresh necessary?

A brand refresh injects new energy into your company's marketing presence, ensuring you remain relevant in a changing landscape. As consumer preferences, design trends, and industry standards evolve, your brand must adapt or risk appearing outdated and disconnected from your audience.

Your brand refresh strategy creates opportunities to differentiate in crowded markets where competitors may blend visually. A thoughtful update signals to customers that your organization remains innovative, attentive, and committed to excellence.

Beyond aesthetics, a strategic brand refresh often coincides with business inflection points, such as entering new markets, launching innovative product lines, or responding to shifting consumer behaviors. These updates communicate growth and adaptation, making it easier to attract new customers while reinforcing loyalty with existing ones.

5 signs it's time for a brand refresh

Before embarking on a refresh, you must recognize when your brand needs updating. Look for these warning signs that indicate your current identity may no longer effectively serve your goals or market position.

Your brand identity feels outdated

Visual trends evolve quickly in the digital world. If your logo, website, or marketing materials look like they belong to a previous decade, you risk creating the impression that you are behind the curve.

Audit your materials against current design standards in your industry. Are your competitors using cleaner layouts, more contemporary typography, or more sophisticated color palettes? If your visual identity triggers associations with the past rather than the present, a brand refresh might help realign perceptions of your company's capabilities.

Your brand no longer aligns with your values

As organizations grow and evolve, their mission and vision statements often do as well. When your external brand doesn't reflect your internal reality, it creates disconnects that confuse employees and customers about who you truly are.

For example, if your company has embraced sustainability initiatives but your branding still evokes industrial imagery, you're missing an opportunity to communicate your evolved priorities. A refresh allows you to visually and verbally express who you've become, not just who you were when you started.

Your audience has changed

Market demographics shift naturally over time. The customers who embraced your brand initially may have different preferences now, or you might be targeting entirely new segments. When this happens, your original branding may no longer resonate effectively.

Pay attention to engagement metrics across different audience segments. Are younger customers connecting with your brand? Has your target market expanded geographically or demographically? A refresh helps you adapt to these audience evolutions, ensuring your brand speaks to loyal and potential customers.

You’re blending in instead of standing out

In saturated markets, visual similarity becomes a liability. If your brand looks similar to competitors, customers struggle to differentiate your offerings. Consider conducting a visual audit and placing your materials alongside your primary competitors. If distinguishing your brand requires careful examination rather than immediate recognition, it's time to develop more distinctive visual elements that help you stand out.

Customer engagement has declined

Declining website traffic, reduced social media engagement, fewer repeat purchases, or decreasing brand sentiment scores may signal that your brand no longer captures attention or inspires loyalty as it once did. Gradual declines often indicate growing brand irrelevance that a refresh can address effectively. Track these metrics before and after your refresh to measure its impact on customer perception and behavior.

Key elements of a brand refresh

A brand refresh strategy addresses multiple components of your identity system. The product features of your brand (from visual identifiers to communication style) work together to create a cohesive market presence. While the scope varies based on your specific needs, most refreshes include updates to:

  • Logo and visual mark: Subtle modernization that maintains recognition while appearing more contemporary
  • Color palette: Refinement or expansion of your color system to feel fresh while supporting brand recognition
  • Typography: Updated font selections that improve readability across digital platforms
  • Photography and illustration style: Refreshed visual guidelines that reflect current aesthetic preferences
  • Voice and messaging: Evolved language that better communicates your current value proposition
  • Digital presence: Redesigned websites, apps, and social media templates that embody your refreshed identity

The most successful brand refresh initiatives maintain consistency across these elements, ensuring they work together.

Steps to execute a successful brand refresh

screenshot of jira scrum board

A brand refresh requires careful planning and coordination across multiple teams and touchpoints. Proper project management tools, like Jira can streamline this process. Jira offers features like Scrum boards to visualize workflows, backlog management to prioritize upcoming tasks, and timelines to plan work and track progress.

Define your brand strategy

Explain why you're refreshing your brand and what you hope to achieve. Document your mission, vision, values, and positioning, then identify gaps between these elements and your desired future state. This strategic foundation ensures visual changes serve meaningful business objectives.

Your strategy should articulate how the refresh will help you set goals for market perception, customer relationships, and business growth. Conduct research to understand current brand perceptions among key stakeholders.

Decide what to keep and what to update

Not everything needs to change during a refresh. Audit existing brand assets and determine which elements have equity. Identify components with strong recognition value or positive associations among your audience.

Make intentional choices to retain recognition while evolving thoughtfully. Many successful brand refreshes maintain the core concept of their logo while modernizing its execution. Others retain signature colors but update surrounding palette elements.

Collaborate with stakeholders

Involve representatives from marketing, sales, product development, customer service, and leadership to gather perspectives and build support for the changes ahead. This cross-functional approach ensures your refresh aligns with business initiatives and product release schedules.

Create opportunities for feedback throughout the process, especially from customer-facing teams who understand how your brand currently resonates in the market. Their insights can help you avoid changes that might confuse loyal customers or miss emerging opportunities.

Roll out your refreshed brand strategically

Develop an implementation plan that logically phases in your refreshed brand. Your product strategy should inform which touchpoints to prioritize, often beginning with high-visibility digital assets before moving to physical materials requiring more production lead time.

Create a detailed product launch checklist for each element of your refresh, including specific deliverables, responsible teams, and deadlines. Prepare communication materials explaining the rationale behind the refresh to internal and external audiences.

An example of a brand refresh

Imagine a B2B software company that began ten years ago with a dark blue and gray color scheme, heavily technical language, and complex visual diagrams. As it expanded from serving IT departments to supporting entire organizations, its original branding hindered its growth.

Their brand refresh strategy maintained their recognizable blue as a primary color but introduced a more diverse secondary palette to add warmth and accessibility. They simplified their logo mark while keeping its basic shape, improved typography for better digital readability, and evolved their messaging to focus on outcomes rather than technical specifications.

The company's product manager led cross-functional collaboration between marketing, design, and development teams to ensure the refreshed brand accurately reflected their evolved product capabilities and market position.

The results demonstrated why thoughtful brand refreshes often outperform more dramatic rebrands. The company reported higher engagement on its refreshed website and increased social content sharing. Salespeople also reported that new prospects no longer perceived them as "just for the IT department."

Use Jira to manage your brand refresh effectively

screenshot of sprint view in Jira

Managing a brand refresh requires coordinating multiple workstreams, stakeholders, and deliverables – precisely the type of complex project where Jira excels. Jira brings structure to every phase of your refresh process with customizable Scrum boards to visualize work in progress, timelines to track dependencies, and calendars to coordinate launch activities.

Jira's automation capabilities help reduce manual tasks, allowing your team to focus on creative work instead of administrative processes. Centralize your brand refresh planning in Jira today for team collaboration across departments and time zones.

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