Advertising Week: What Works, What Doesn’t Work, When a Brand Decides to Rebrand

A rebrand is one of the highest-stakes decisions a company can make. Get it right and you unlock new markets, signal transformation, and re-energize a brand that has outgrown its identity. Get it wrong and you erase decades of equity overnight. The difference almost always comes down to one thing: knowing what you’re changing and what you need to protect.
In this Advertising Week piece, Lexicon founder David Placek breaks down the three paths a rebrand can take, with real examples of what worked, what failed, and why.

• Why Dunkin’ dropping “Donuts” worked, and why Tropicana’s packaging redesign cost the company over $50 million in two months.
• What Twitter to X, Weight Watchers to WW, and Facebook to Meta reveal about the limits of rebranding away from reality.
• Why Alphabet is still one of the cleanest example of a full rebrand done right.

The test is simple: if you can answer specifically what the old brand is preventing you from becoming, a rebrand may be the right move. If the answer is vague, you don’t need a rebrand. You need better marketing.

Read the full article in Advertising Week.