Evolving a brand without losing what people love about it
Many brands feel they need a change but aren’t sure whether to refresh their identity or start from scratch. That’s a good sign: it means the business is growing and wants to keep evolving. Before opening a new design file, it’s worth asking what people already recognize and value about the brand.
That question is the starting point of any good rebrand. After years of advertising, products and experiences with customers, people hold on to something in their minds: a color, a way of speaking, the feeling they get when they see the packaging. That is a very valuable asset, built with a lot of time and money, and starting from there makes it possible to move faster and take advantage of everything the brand has already earned.
The people who work on a brand see it every day, so it’s natural for them to want something different before the public does. What feels overly familiar to the team is, for customers, familiar in a way that builds trust. That’s why it helps to ask people directly through customer interviews and surveys, review what they say on social media, and look at search and brand recall data. The questions can be simple: what’s the first thing they think of when they hear the name, which element they would recognize even without the logo, what they would like to stay the same. With that, you can build two lists: what stays, and what can be renewed.
A case we know closely
When Kia Costa Rica came under new management, almost everything changed: the brand, the models, the offices and the services. There was a lot to tell, and they had to decide how to tell it. At Buzz, we supported that stage with the campaign Kia Es otra historia, built around an expression that every Costa Rican knows well. What was new was what Kia offered, and the message landed through something people already feel is their own. It’s the same idea from above applied to a campaign: something new is understood faster when it builds on something people already know. You can find more cases like this one in our work.
Some brands, after a redesign, decided to go back to their previous image because people missed it. Gap changed its logo in 2010 and returned to the original a week later because of its customers’ reaction, and HBO Max, which became simply Max in 2023, brought its name back in 2025. These are examples of how much value there can be in what a brand has already built, which is why it’s worth understanding it well before making a change.
Renewing a brand is a great opportunity, and there are many good moments to do it: when the business has grown, when new audiences arrive, when the logo needs to work on small screens, or when every channel should speak with the same voice. In all of these cases, it helps to know which elements to keep and which to adjust. The change shows in the logo, but it’s decided earlier: first you research what the public associates with the brand, then you identify what adds value, then you define where the business wants to go, and finally you design, knowing that people will still recognize the brand.
At Buzz, these answers come from several teams working together. Strategy defines where the brand is headed, the Data Science team works with search, recall and behavior data, and Brand turns what stayed into an identity people recognize. Then Social, Media and Experience take it to where the audience is.
If your brand is at that point of deciding between a refresh and starting over, the first step is to ask people what they value most about it. Contact us and we’ll gladly look at it together: let’s talk.