September 3, 2026
Did you know 82% of investors want the companies they invest in to have a strong brand? And B2B decision makers consider branding a central element of a supplier's value proposition. How your brand is perceived has a big impact on business. People expect to have the same brand experience across all platforms and people with whom they interact. Consistent visual and verbal messaging builds trust and ensures external and internal communications align.
A refresh versus a rebrand
A brand refresh can be considered more evolutionary than revolutionary. It could include refreshing an outdated logo and color palette or standardizing drifting visual and verbal messaging. The purpose is often to keep your business positioned as competitive or reflect how your product or service offering has grown and improved over the years—connecting brand and audience better.
In contrast, a rebrand typically occurs when an organization makes a fundamental change to its offering, restructures, or merges with another business. Generally this looks like different typography, color palette, logo elements, and tone and manner.
Refresh and rebrand are somewhat pliable terms here. How far can you push a brand refresh before calling it a rebrand? How often have you seen a company announce a rebrand that was clearly just a subtle refresh? Depending on the market, size and legacy of the company, and stakeholders involved, the terms may be used fairly interchangeably.
The key takeaway: adding value to your brand need not mean a total overhaul of your brand identity. Often the best strategy is to keep the elements of your brand that have the most equity the same, and focus on bringing clarity and consistency to your communications.
Jaguar's 2024 rebrand left much of the British luxury car manufacturer's customer base feeling alienated, believing the new design and accompanying messaging to be a departure from the elegance and sophistication that had come to represent the name.
Why a refresh is important
Customers expect their favorite brands to continually reflect their desires, values, priorities and aspirations. But people change. Marketplaces change. Products and service offerings evolve. So brands need to adjust and evolve with them.
It’s critical to stay connected with customers and build confidence that your brand is a solid competitor, one that’s not falling behind.
A brand refresh demonstrates your company is forward-thinking and can actually improve the brand value and your bottom line.
JOA: Refreshing a legacy brand
For nearly a century, JOA has provided innovative hygiene and specialty converting platforms and technologies. As part of a brand refresh, JOA created a guideline for all consumer-facing communications to standardize the look and feel and further professionalize the brand at every touchpoint. Fonts, color palette and art direction styles were defined, ensuring a common visual tone and manner for print and digital collateral, presentation templates, a new website and more.
What the process looks like
It all needs to start with collaboration. JOA had input sessions with its key stakeholders, engineering, HR, marketing and sales teams to determine and identify key value propositions that would drive the rebrand. Starting with the logo and color palette, branding guidelines would be put into place for its print and digital presence, including a new website.
First, the logo was updated to a more simple and modern design.
The refreshed logo retains the essence of the brand for customer confidence, while eliminating complicated components to improve functionality, especially in online and mobile applications. The shield was retained, reflecting how JOA protects customers’ brand reputations and a single color was selected—a rich, timeless blue.
The result of the logo refresh was a simplified and iconic visual that scales easily in any medium. It honors the JOA heritage while confidently moving the brand forward, aligning with its commitment to innovation.
A significant part of branding is what you say and how you say it. The visual and verbal messaging for the website and collateral was refined, reflecting a fresh, innovative and helpful tone and manner. The collateral included sell sheets, brochures, and a Product and Service Guide flipbook.
The new website features the refreshed branding and messaging, capturing the innovative JOA spirit and commitment to solving complex converting challenges.
JOA Home page
Their ads and social posts also now reflect the new branding look and feel, creating a consistent experience and growing brand awareness.
Time for a brand refresh?
Whether it’s updating a legacy design or creating a standard look and feel, refreshing your brand goes a long way—establishing your organization as competitive and forward-thinking, while reflecting a customer-first focus. Let us know how we can help—we’d be more than happy to walk you through the process and see what a refresh could do for your company!
