Next time someone in your charity says you need a re-brand…

…please show them this.

(I know it’s just the logo, but I think it makes my point.)

As Jon Edge and Andy Milligan point out in Don’t Mess With The Logo, there are only three times (essentially) when you need to change your brand…

• “When what your brand stands for is no longer relevant to enough people in the market.

• When something catastrophic has damaged your credibility, e.g. Arthur Anderson whose fraudulent sign-off of Big Corporate America accounts saw the firm collapse.

• When you have been bought out by another company that wants to achieve economies of scale, e.g. Wanadoo which was rebranded Orange when France Telecom – Wanadoo’s owners – decided they wanted one brand name for Internet and mobile communications worldwide.

But beware of the “wrong change” syndrome, which typically happens when:

• research is misleading – e.g. Babycham removing its famous deer logo because they thought people considered it old-fashioned; but consumers possibly thought the whole positioning of the brand was old-fashioned and that the deer was charming. The deer was later reinstated;

• Somebody new comes in and wants to take things in a “different” direction (we’re not going to give you an example of that, but most people know what we mean!).”