Rebranding has become one of the most overused maneuvers in business. Too often, it’s a glossy distraction: a new logo, a splashy campaign, and a promise that this time, everything is different.
I once worked with a very nice guy. He was kind, he cared about everyone, he worked hard, but there was something slightly off about him. He had been divorced for five years when I started working with him, and he was obsessed with showing his ex-wife that his life was better now that they were divorced. Now, that in and of itself is fine. Living well is the best revenge. However, Kevin (not his real name—and I have no idea why I’m hiding his identity; the chances of him reading this blog are about as good as the chances that anyone reads this blog). Be that as it may, Kevin’s reason for showing his life was great, but it was the wrong reason. He wanted his ex to see that he was doing great so that she would be jealous, realize all the things she was missing, and come back to him.
It didn’t work.
When it didn’t work, he tried harder, and one day, he came into work with a full head of hair. Now, let me explain. When he left work on Friday, he was himself: a bit dumpy, with clear male-pattern balding. There was nothing on top, and a ring of hair around the sides. Monday morning, Kevin was sporting a mane. It was obvious to those of us who knew him, but in reality, it was obvious to everyone that he was wearing a piece.
There’s nothing wrong with wearing a hairpiece—it can give you confidence and help you through your life. The problem here was that when his new hair didn’t immediately get the reaction he wanted, he kind of let it slide. He stopped washing it, used too much glue to keep it on, and eventually, it looked like a road-killed animal slapped on his head. With his new hair and hip new wardrobe, what he was really doing was a rebrand. Not a great one. Not well thought out. Just a desperate attempt to make his ex jealous and hopefully attract his next ex-wife. He was rebranding.
It didn’t work.
He remained single and eventually dropped the hairpiece. Again, a nice guy—but he jumped to a rebrand without really thinking it through. A rebrand is always risky, but when you don’t think it through, a rebrand can be pointless.
Rebranding has become one of the most overused maneuvers in business. Too often, it’s a glossy distraction: a new logo, a splashy campaign, and a promise that this time, everything is different. But behind the scenes, nothing fundamental has shifted. Customers notice. Employees notice. The market notices. And what was meant to inspire confidence instead feels like a con.
The problem isn’t rebranding itself—it’s the way companies use it. When a rebrand is treated as a shortcut to relevance, as a mask for deeper issues, or as a substitute for the hard work of transformation, it backfires. People sense the gap between what’s said and what’s lived, and the credibility cost can be enormous.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most rebrands fail not because the creative work was weak, but because the intent was shallow. Rebrands that endure are born from honesty, anchored in substance, and delivered alongside real change. Everything else is window dressing.
In this piece, we’ll examine why rebrands sometimes slide into con territory, how to keep yours from doing the same, and—if you’ve already stumbled—what it takes to recover.
Why Rebranding Can Feel Like a Con
Rebrands carry an unspoken promise: this is who we are now, and it’s better. Companies rarely say it outright, but every new logo, tagline, and campaign carries that expectation. Customers are asked to believe it. Employees are expected to live it. The market is supposed to reward it. And when that promise doesn’t line up with reality, people feel played.
That’s when a rebrand starts to feel like a con.
It often begins with the surface. Change the fonts, roll out a new color palette, launch a clever ad campaign—and call it transformation. But if nothing beneath the surface shifts, the whole effort feels hollow. People see the fresh paint, and they see the cracks underneath it. It’s like Kevin’s hairpiece: technically new, but obviously not real.
Sometimes the motivation is even more dangerous: spin. A company stumbles publicly—bad press, a messy scandal, a steady decline in relevance—and someone decides a rebrand will wipe the slate clean. But design isn’t a disinfectant. A new look doesn’t erase old wounds; if anything, it shines a brighter light on them. The gap between the shiny surface and the unhealed damage underneath only makes the deception more obvious.
Then there’s the mismatch between words and reality. A company declares itself bold, innovative, and customer-obsessed, but the culture inside is toxic and the customer service is a maze of frustration. That kind of disconnect doesn’t just fall flat; it feels like betrayal. When you claim a new identity that you don’t live, you’re asking people to invest trust you haven’t earned.
And perhaps the most common driver: boredom. Executives get tired of looking at their own brand. They convince themselves that customers must be tired too. So they order a facelift. The problem is, customers usually aren’t bored at all—they just want consistency. They want to know the company they trusted yesterday is still the company they can count on today. Change for the sake of change doesn’t excite them; it unsettles them.
What unites all of these missteps is intent. These rebrands are about performance, not growth. They’re designed to look like change, not to be change. And that’s the difference between a costume and a living system. Costumes fool people for a moment, but systems endure because they grow, adapt, and prove their resilience over time. When a brand behaves more like a costume than a living thing, everyone can sense it—customers, employees, even the market itself.
How to Avoid the “Con” Feeling
If a rebrand can so easily slip into the territory of costume, how do you make sure yours feels more like a living system—something authentic, resilient, and real? It starts with intent. A rebrand should never be about fooling people into seeing you differently; it should be about helping people recognize who you are becoming. That’s a subtle but vital shift.
The difference is like gardening versus decorating. Decorating is fast—you buy new furniture, repaint the walls, rearrange the art. Gardening takes patience. You cultivate the soil, plant, prune, and tend. The results are alive. They grow, they adapt, and they feed something beyond themselves. Strong rebrands are more like gardens than living rooms.
That means you begin not with design, but with truth. What’s working in your business? What’s broken? What do customers value most? What do employees actually experience day to day? A rebrand worth doing starts with an honest audit of the living system you already have. It’s not about papering over the cracks; it’s about tending the roots.
Once you’ve done that, you have to make sure the change goes deeper than visuals. If the new identity doesn’t reshape the customer experience, the employee culture, or the way decisions get made, it will read as empty. People want to feel the change, not just see it. That might mean new policies, improved service, clearer communication, or stronger values put into practice. In a living system, the external growth is always connected to internal health.
Another safeguard is participation. When you build a rebrand in a closed room with only executives and designers, you risk missing the pulse of the system itself. Employees, customers, and even partners can help shape the direction—not by dictating the creative work, but by grounding it in lived reality. When people see themselves in the new brand, they don’t feel conned; they feel included.
Finally, tell the story honestly. Explain why the change is happening, what it means, and how it connects to where you’ve been. Avoid the temptation to present the new identity as a complete break from the past—brands aren’t costumes you swap in and out. They are organisms, and organisms evolve. When you tell the story as evolution rather than reinvention, people are more likely to believe it.
At the heart of it, avoiding the con feeling is about remembering that your brand is alive. You don’t cover it up when it gets messy; you nurture it, prune it, and help it grow stronger. If you can hold to that, your rebrand will feel like progress instead of performance.
Recovery After a “Con”-Feeling Rebrand
What happens if you’ve already gone down the wrong path? The new logo is out in the world, the campaign is live, and the reaction is… brutal. Customers shrug. Employees roll their eyes. The market treats it like a joke. The costume slipped, and now everyone sees the gap between the image and the truth.
The instinct in that moment is often to double down. Push the campaign harder, explain the story louder, insist that people “just don’t get it.” But forcing people to accept a costume doesn’t make it more convincing—it just highlights the disguise. The only real way forward is to shift from performance back to growth.
That begins with owning it. Pretending nothing went wrong only deepens the cynicism. Acknowledging missteps—openly, even humbly—shows that you value trust over pride. People forgive mistakes more quickly than they forgive manipulation.
Next, reconnect with the core of the brand. Strip away the new paint and revisit what made the company meaningful in the first place. What were the values, the promises, the experiences that people actually believed in? This isn’t about nostalgia—it’s about identifying the healthy roots still alive in the system and committing to nurture them.
From there, shift the energy toward action. A rebrand only starts to recover when it’s paired with tangible improvements. That might mean fixing customer pain points, improving employee conditions, or delivering a better product. When people see change they can touch, the brand narrative begins to realign with lived reality. The costume fades, and the organism starts to show signs of life again.
This is also the moment to re-educate the market—but carefully. Instead of another flashy campaign, focus on proof. Case studies, testimonials, product improvements, and community engagement—evidence that the brand is living up to its claims. Storytelling still matters, but at this stage it works best as a mirror reflecting genuine progress, not a megaphone blasting empty promises.
And finally, give it time. Trust is organic. It doesn’t regrow overnight. Just as no gardener can force a tree to bear fruit instantly, no company can rush its way back into credibility. What repairs the damage is consistency—season after season of delivering on promises until people stop thinking about the failed rebrand and start trusting the brand again.
The truth is, a failed rebrand isn’t the end of the world. It’s a pruning. Done right, it can even spark healthier growth, because it forces a company to return to the fundamentals of what makes a brand real. If you treat your brand as a living system rather than a costume, recovery is not just possible—it’s inevitable.
Summing Up
Kevin eventually dropped the hairpiece. It never made his ex jealous, never made him more attractive, never gave him the life he thought he wanted. In the end, it was just a costume—and costumes can only fool people for so long.
Brands face the same choice. You can dress up in a costume, hoping no one notices the difference between appearance and reality. Or you can commit to growing something real—something rooted in truth, capable of weathering seasons, and strong enough to bear fruit over time. The first path feels like a shortcut, but it usually leads to embarrassment. The second takes patience, but it creates trust that endures.
At ThoughtLab, we believe brands aren’t facades to decorate; they’re living systems to cultivate. That’s why a rebrand isn’t just a design exercise—it’s an act of stewardship. It’s about pruning what no longer serves, tending what’s healthy, and planting what’s next. Done well, it doesn’t just look like change—it is change. And people can feel the difference.
So if your rebrand feels like a con, take heart. The soil is still there, waiting to be cultivated. Drop the costume, get your hands dirty, and grow the brand your customers, employees, and market will recognize as real.
