logo - What kind of goals would come out of a rebrand?

When I'm designing a website or a print publication, I find it is quite straightforward in asking a client what their objective is. It could be anything along the lines of:

1. Increase awareness of company


2. Encourage more members



3. Allow existing members / customers to interact


4. Encourage more business enquiries

...amongst many others.

However when I'm working on a logo design / rebrand, I always find this is a real grey area. I've read that it is important to establish what the client's goal is with the rebrand, but I'm reluctant to ask them in the event that they find it a confusing question, because I'm not even sure myself what they could say.

Is the only real possible answer something along the lines of the following?

To position our brand in the marketplace as a leading supplier of [* service name *], to reflect our professional and reliable service... etc

Answer

Is the only reason to rebrand: To position our brand in the marketplace as a leading supplier of [* service name *], to reflect our professional and reliable service... etc

Absolutely not. I'd go as far as saying this never the reason for a rebrand. If this is the only reason you're getting than you're not delving deep enough.

Just a few reasons for a rebrand of the literally countless:

• 
  

  Our company name was original at the time but now there's too many shops using a similar name. A woman I met with "The Boutique" as her store name for over 30 years was rebranding because now everyone was calling their store a boutique of some kind. She needed a new way to differentiate herself.

  
  


• 
  
  

  Our company has re-positioned itself to better represent X. We need a new identity to match our more focused market segment. A prime example of this would be Macintosh's transition to Mac and really just Apple. This came in 1998 with an entirely new computer, the iMac which targeted a specific market segmentation. Macintosh became Mac; simplicity for its users became their calling card, and individualism (however farfetched) became their identity (this is what the "i" stands for).

  
  


• 
  

  Our company has merged with another company. We want to rebrand so people can identify the new company while also representing the originals. United Airlines and Continental merged and it was decided to use the United Airlines name with the continental colors.

  
  

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So to try and bring this to something more specifically useful to you. The questions you might want to ask your clients are:

1. When you came up with your company what led you to this name and branding?



2. What change has come about that makes you think a rebrand is in order?

Then depending on their responses you can make better suggestions and more focused questions. For example if they say, "We just needed a name at the time but now we're becoming well known and want to grow." Then you may not want to propose a radically different concept but just refine their existing brand.

However, if they say, originally we thought we'd be doing a lot of sales to the hospital market but after launching this new product our software has really taken off in the industrial manufacturing market. Then you may want to go with a more radical change -- though you may want to suggest the change be done to the product's identity rather than the entire company's.