Change is Good (When It’s Good)
“A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.” Sun Tzu
I.
As you are probably aware, Best Western is a chain of moderately priced hotels and motels scattered across the globe. It operates over 4,100 locations worldwide (with more than 2,000 in North America). In 2011, the brand was restructured and split into three tiers: Best Western, Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier. It also changed its slogan from “the world’s largest hotel chain” to “the world’s largest hotel family.”
Most noticeably, they changed their signage in 2015 to reflect the new branding system. Their signs went from something like this:
To this:
And just for reference, the visual expression that most of today’s hotel consumers grew up with was somewhere in between the original and the latest:
To us, the new direction feels like a missed opportunity. Rather than maintain the visual personality they’d built up since they started — which was one of their strongest aspects as a brand — Best Western chose to abandon all the personality of the color, type, and logo elements with this update. Of course, we don’t know the “why” behind the change — perhaps sales were in a slump, perhaps they felt that their vintage Americana style was no longer aligned with their global footprint (with hundreds of locations in Australia and Asia), or maybe a new CEO wanted to make a big splash, trashing the “old” to make way for the “new.” Whatever the reasoning, Best Western made a major move.
And it sucks.
But to be fair, most widely-known brands are deathly afraid to change any part of their formula, so we at least commend Best Western’s chutzpah. Modifying a visual identity is a landmark decision, as companies treat perceived brand equity like real equity. Best Western introduced their signage a full four years after they introduced the new brand system, which suggests that the decision to completely replace their visual identity wasn’t made in haste (and was likely the product of many, many committees).
Everyone thinks about the short game (ya gotta pay the bills!), but we encourage our clients to think in terms of the long game as well–significant changes to a brand should not be cavalier. Paradoxically, we also believe that all brands have limited shelf lives and must change from time to time. So the real question is: what should change, and what should stay the same? Perhaps more importantly, when should a brand change? When does the risk of doing it badly outweigh or overshadow the need or opportunity to try a different approach?
II.
In our view, the best time for a company to change its branding is when the company’s values have changed. So many factors can influence a shift in values — some internal, and some beyond the company’s control. Overall performance, shifting societal norms, and basic relevance all have real impact on a brand’s position in the marketplace. Another vital component of a company’s value structure is its leadership; a visionary leader can have the power to inspire a real culture within a company, which in turn reflects the values across the board: who works there, how they work together, and why they show up every day.
A good brand is so much more than a logo. When a company culture undergoes drastic change — especially as a result of new leadership with distinct views on what needs to change (and what needs to stay the same) — it makes sense for the branding to reflect that. And good brands just make sense.
The other great opportunity to change your branding comes up when your products have changed dramatically. Maybe your calculated risk has successfully brought a product or service to a new sector or space. Maybe your company has made an acquisition and is now figuring out how to blend cultures. Maybe it happens when an affordable-yet-quality brand realizes it’s time to go upscale with their offerings.
Unfortunately, most companies choose to rebrand when things aren’t going well. Companies in this predicament typically try to quickly revamp their brand according to the market’s most recent feedback, instead of digging deeper into the core values that justified their brand’s existence in the first place.
The worst example of this is when a brand abruptly changes in response to a new competitor’s splashy, high-profile disruption. All companies must learn to navigate changes in the market, but no company should abandon its identity or core values merely to accommodate a competitor. Sure, new disruptors have earned their moment of fame, but only time will tell if they have what it takes to play the long game. If a new competitor clearly exposes an older brand’s inferiority, the older brand should abandon what isn’t working, while also keeping its core personality intact. Through adapting successfully over time, good brands demonstrate this deeper core intelligence.
In our opinion, Best Western’s signs were the best thing they had going; everything else about the experience already had us looking to stay somewhere else. There’s a feeling that holds true: “authentic-but-shitty” is still better than “good-but-fake.” There is something great about stumbling across an untouched hole-in-the-wall — it’s like a time capsule, and that is an experience in and of itself, beyond the branding.
III.
When a brand is ready to change, it’s crucial to identify why, and also what represents success. Remember, great brands are more than a logo or a great vintage sign. A brand is communicated in how a company answers the phone, in how a product smells or tastes, it’s what happens when things run into trouble, it’s how a company treats its employees and the environment, and a million other things. A brand is represented in the challenges a company faces that are uniquely difficult, that are expensive, that don’t scale, that differentiate it from the competition.
A great example of a company that thinks about its brand sustainably is Cafe Company, based in Tokyo. They operate over 100 cafes in Japan, partnering with 70 different brands. Their brand and interiors teams consider each location individually, paying close attention to how people live in a specific neighborhood, rather than replicating what worked in the last one. Cafe Company asks the same questions in every new situation: what’s the same in every neighborhood? That’s easy to answer. What should be different? That’s harder, and holds the key to why a new restaurant will succeed or fail, and how they define success based in their actions. If there isn’t anything interesting about a new business, why bother?
No matter what they end up doing in a specific scenario, Cafe Company adheres to the core value of offering great food and friendly service. These things never change. This consistency gives their customers a North Star; a baseline standard of quality that allows them to experiment in other areas. With a strong “rhythm section” in place to provide the core values, the brand has a foundation upon which to freestyle and improvise.
Best Western could have evolved in a better way. It feels like they lost the connection between the feel-good nostalgia of their legacy and the new direction they wanted to go. With the right vision, they could have seen themselves as a heritage brand ready to be appreciated in a way that honored their roots, and not as a brand with an identity crisis.
Regardless of the how or when your brand has to change, take the time to think about whether you’re moving it forward, or maybe need to change it back. No matter what, make sure your brand remains true to why it ever existed in the first place.
—
This is article is the sixth installment in our series called Every Decision is a Brand Decision.
Original illustration © 2018 OMFGCO
