When all else fails: Less is more? The art of the debrand.
The golden arches, a Kentucky colonel, a dramatic swoosh, a venerable coffee brand, and a well-known search engine with a colorful typeface. If you’re picturing, McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, Nike, and Google, then brand builders at the respective companies and their ad agencies have done their job well.
Now, what happens when time passes, things change, mediums change and needs change? A brand may be faced with a crucial choice of rebranding or refreshing their brand to meet consumers where they are in an effort to best represent the brand in question.
And, what if the answer is…. less?
The golden arches, the Kentucky colonel, the dramatic swoosh, the coffee brand, and the well-known search engine all have something in common besides being well-known brands - they are all well known brands who have “de-branded” - instead of coming up with new potentially off-putting logos, many of these brands have figured out how to honor their legacies while also keeping an eye towards the future.
With just enough callbacks to the brand legacies, a simple loss of a drop shadow here, an improved more modern font there (or, a decidedly retro one in the case of Burger King) and one can see how these de-brands begin to break new ground by keeping things relatively status quo while also looking outwardly different.
In the case of Dunkin, most prominently known as Dunkin Donuts, their debrand called for not just adjustments to the Dunkin logo but a drop of the word “Donuts” entirely in order to provide space to highight the rest of Dunkin’s offerings.
Courtesy Distinctive Bat
