Last night I served bacon, eggs, and fruit for dinner. My children were shocked. “You can’t have breakfast for dinner!” I tried to explain that breakfast, lunch, and dinner were defined by the time of day you consume food, not the type of food you’re consuming. Of course, over time eggs and bacon have been classified as breakfast, sandwiches are for lunchtime, and spaghetti is preferred at dinner time. We’ve branded food based on habit. But here’s something interesting, my son always passes on scrambled eggs at breakfast time, but he gobbled them up at dinner. I didn’t reclassify them as a dinner food, simply “these are eggs and we’re eating them for dinner”. I unbranded the food.
Rebranding vs. Unbranding
Many tenured companies are working through rebranding exercises. They want to shake off the image of an out-of-touch company, or perhaps a tarnished reputation. They begin to explore new messaging, tone of voice, and logo changes. It’s important to point out that your brand is more than a logo and corporate color scheme. A brand is the idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with, and yet many companies don’t work to understand what their audience’s perception is of the existing brand.
But perhaps rebranding isn’t what’s needed.