A Rebrand Gone Wrong: What I Learned Along the Way

A year ago, when I launched my first rebrand, I was understandably nervous about making the wrong choice, but I knew that doing it scared was better than not doing it at all. Was I making the right decision? Did I narrow my audience down too far? Can I step into a new niche boldy enough to make a splash or get noticed?

I considered the advice I got when I was starting my own business, that you can’t be afraid of failure as an entrepreneur. The great C. S. Lewis said, “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward to success.” (Ouch, that “repeated failures” part hurts a little to think about!) And another take on this concept is Michael Jordan’s famous quote, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

It turns out that’s it’s good I wasn’t afraid of failure, because I’ve learned over the past year that I did, in fact, make mistakes with that rebrand. But, I’m so glad I did. I got to experience the rebranding process, which I walk all of my clients through, and encountered first-hand all of the struggles and nuances they face when facing growth or transformation in their businesses. Getting to stand in your customers’ shoes? That’s where the real education happens.

I walked out of the rebranding process with a much richer understanding of how to serve my branding clients better, and a long list of observations on exactly what went wrong with my rebrand. (It turns out even brand strategists need to work with a brand strategist on their own brand! More on that later in this post.) Read on to step behind the scenes of my rebrand to Rechristen Creative, and see how I walked myself through my own brand strategy process to identify what worked and what needed to go. Maybe you’ll be able to see a little bit of yourself in my journey!

But First, A Little Back-Story

In the fall of 2023, I felt God calling me to lean more heavily into serving Catholic clients. I served all types of businesses through Lindsey Binion Creative, but I wanted a way to express to Catholic clients (whom most of my clients were referred through) that I am here for them, I speak their language and can understand and meet their branding needs in a unique way. And so, Rechristen Creative was born.

I took this to prayer, wanting to be sure I did justice to this idea God had placed on my heart. During one memorable prayer session, I asked God what to call my business. I knew I wanted it to allude to the Sacrament of Baptism and taking on a new name. Just like with Abram, Sarai and Simon, receiving a new name meant receiving a new identity and mission, and I wanted my rebranding services to mirror that concept. Surprisingly, within minutes the word Rechristen popped into my head, and I immediately knew that was the winner.

A week later I sat in the chapel in Adoration with my sketchpad and pencil, and I came out with sketches of a candle flame and a drop of water, both symbols of Baptism, merged into one logo mark. It represented rebirth, but also energy, progress, new life, balance. After many hours on the computer, my sketch came to life and I built my brand around it. (This will be important later, I promise.) I launched Rechristen Creative in January 2024, hopeful and optimistic about the new direction, while planning to keep Lindsey Binion Creative alive alongside it to serve my existing non-Catholic clients and any others who came about.

Back to the Present

A year later, I find myself in the same place, coming off another season of discernment about my business and what God wants it to be. I realized in Q3 of last year that though the first few months had gone well under Rechristen Creative, it lost steam and business had become stagnant. Meanwhile, I discovered I was stretching myself too thin trying to keep two brands afloat at the same time. All of my focus went to launching and promoting Rechristen Creative, and Lindsey Binion Creative fell to the wayside. I knew I needed to streamline, because that inefficiency was suppressing my ability to serve my clients well in either business. I began to wonder if I needed to, again, rebrand.

So, I reflected on what had changed, and what still needed to. The rebranding process is all about keeping what works and replacing what doesn’t, so I took myself through the same framework of questions I take my clients through in the strategy phase of a rebrand.

1. Does your current brand align with your mission?

Rechristen Creative did help me find and serve some amazing Catholic business owners, and I got to create several brands that really inspired me and left me feeling fulfilled. But, I also know that part of God’s plan for me is to continue to serve businesses outside of the Catholic arena, so that I can meet other business owners where they are and let them experience Catholicism lived by example in an authentic way. I know that my clients don’t have to only serve Catholics to be Catholics in business, and the same is true for me. I don’t have the bandwidth to operate both a Catholic and non-faith-based business at the same time, so I needed one umbrella under which to serve all of my clients, Catholic or not.

2. Does your current brand authentically represent who you are?

While operating under an agency brand like Rechristen Creative does leave room for potential future growth and expansion of my team, I kept hearing from my clients that the reason they loved working with me was ME. They loved the positive energy and encouragement I bring to our sessions and how I gently but confidently lead them from chaos to clarity. They love my creative mind, how deeply I listen and how much that shows in the designs I produce. None of my clients said they liked working with me because my name sounded official, or they wanted to work with a big team. They liked ME, and I wanted my brand to shift to represent that. I currently have no aspirations of managing a larger team myself (I manage a household of four boys, that’s enough people-managing for right now!), so I don’t need an agency name that leaves room for that type of growth. If that ever changes, I’ll know it’s time to rebrand again, but for right now a personal brand feels like a better fit. I need a brand that lets people know what they’re getting from me from their first encounter, and I didn’t feel like Rechristen Creative was achieving that. 

3. Does your current brand resonate with your target audience?

This is an important question, because most business owners don’t realize that their brand isn’t really about them, it’s about how they serve and are perceived by their customers. Yes, being authentic to who you are as a company is important, but if your target audience isn’t noticing you or feeling compelled to engage with you, then your brand still isn’t hitting the mark. It’s about connecting the dots for your audience between who you are and why that matters to them.

While I originally thought Rechristen Creative would make it clear to the world that I specialized in rebranding Christian companies, I found that it ended up leaving people confused. Coming from a coastal community where ships are christened all the time, I underestimated how unfamiliar the word “rechristen” would feel to people from other places. They would ask, “Is it ReChristian Creative?” “How do you spell that?” “Say it again, please? I’m not sure I caught it.” And as you can probably guess, having a name that’s difficult to say or spell makes it difficult to remember, and thereby difficult to refer.

Beyond the struggles with the name itself, I was met with confusion over the purpose of my brand. Many thought it was a nonprofit, or that it only served non-profits, or that I could be of no help to them if they were not a Catholic school or church. My most ideal customers were not seeing themselves in my brand. They often caught on after a little bit of explanation and then seemed to resonate with the idea, but I wasn’t always be there to explain my brand at every touchpoint, and I was making my messaging do too much of the heavy lifting with explaining. I needed a brand that was clear from the start, so people could feel engaged from the beginning.

4. Does your current brand stand out from competitors?

While I did create a brand that visually stood out from other specifically Catholic marketing agencies, I don’t think my special sauce was clearly evident. The best thing about working with me wasn’t that I was Catholic, because there were others who were Catholic and serving Catholics well. The best part was my process and my personality, and that wasn’t showing through in my branding and messaging. Though I could have fixed that part without a total rebrand, by revising my website and focusing on those key points in my outbound social posts and such, it would be just as easy to start fresh with new messaging under a new brand.

5. Does your current brand show up consistently across all touchpoints?

Now, this one I did actually do well. Meticulously, in fact. As a brand strategist and designer, this one was the part that excited me the most, so I spent a disproportionate amount of time making sure that my brand looked the part, was visually consistent, used the same messaging points across all of my posts and website, etc.

I know, I know, I was being the proverbial cobbler with no shoes for his kids. I knew the rest of it mattered too, but since I was so close to the project I zoomed in on what felt most important to me personally and neglected the rest. This is a mistake I actually see a lot of my clients make, and it’s the exact reason I recommend they work with a brand strategist to help them make decisions about their overall brand and direction. It helps to bring in someone else, who is not so close to your business and can use their expertise to look at it all objectively with you. It turns out that applies to brand strategists working on their own brands, too!

The Result Were In: Time for a Rebrand

After undergoing that process fo examination, it was very clear that my brand was no longer serving me, my business, or my customers. It was time for a change. And letting go of a brand I had loved? Well, that’s not easy! It brought with it some big emotions, but I surrendered those attachments and committed to moving forward with a new (and exciting) direction.

I’m so glad I got to experience this process first-hand. It brought up several lessons (some old, some new) that I can share with you, and my future clients.

What I learned about rebranding from studying a rebrand gone wrong:

1. Strategy Matters. A brand founded on whims, feelings, and chasing trends will almost certainly fall short. There are too many factors to weigh in, too many stakeholders to consider, and too many variables to try to design a brand without a research-based strategy to use as a framework.
   
   
2. A New Perspective Helps. When you’re working in your business every day, you can often be too close to it to be able to strategize clearly. When it’s our own business, we can have emotional attachments, over-familiarity with our processes, and blind spots that all get in the way of seeing clearly. We can’t see the forrest for the trees! Hiring an outside expert to examine your brand with fresh eyes will help you identify what’s working and what’s not a lot more clearly. I didn’t start to make real progress on my rebrand until I brought in a trusted agency friend to help me see past my own perspective.
   
   
3. You Are Not Your Target Audience. However closely you may align with your target audience, there WILL be differences in how you perceive your business and how they do. To really identify what matters to them, you have to ask them! General research helps, yes, but don’t be afraid to ask your clients or target audience members for their actual perspective. Interviewing both a past client and a member of my target audience who was not yet a customer gave me invaluable insight into what they actually needed from my business and whether or not I was meeting those needs. Read your client testimonials to find out what they love about your brand, how they talk about their problems, what solutions they found most valuable. Don’t assume they think how you think.
   
   
4. Not Every Rebrand Means Starting From Scratch. Remember, with a rebrand the goal is to, whenever possible, keep what works and replace what doesn’t, so that all assets are on-brand, on purpose moving forward. Visually, you might not notice much of a difference in my new brand beside the name in the logo and the content I’ll share; I’ve kept the flame-and-water logomark because it still speaks so strongly to the power of rebirth, the balance between passion that burns brightly and the gentle flow of progress that guides and shapes it. I’ve kept my teal and orange color scheme, but brightened it up a bit with more vibrant visuals and a cleaner design with more white space. Since my target audience and my mission didn’t shift much, a lot of the previous branding components remained, so as to maintain any brand equity I had created int hose elements. Sometimes, wiping the slate clean and starting over is necessary, but sometimes it isn’t. It all depends on what the research and strategy phase uncover.
   

New Year, New Me

So what’s next, for me? Where did I land after deciding to rebrand? Well, as I lay Rechristen Creative aside, I’ll be returning to Lindsey Binion Creative, but I’m dropping the word “Creative.” I don’t think it adds much clarity, and removing it leaves open more options for the future: consulting, building a personal brand, and whatever else God has in store for me!

Operating under “Lindsey Binion: New Life for Good Brands” lets me show up authentically and stand in the talents God has given me, while holding them with an open hand so He can guide me where He needs me to go. Now, I’m focusing my efforts on serving owners of mission-driven, service-based businesses who view their company as a calling, not just a means to make a profit. They’re here to make the world a better place, and I’m here to help them do it. Whether they’re faith-based, non-profit, or just driven by a desire to help people, I want to empower them to do more of the good they do in the world. If you know someone like that, or you think that sounds a lot like you, then my friend, we need to talk! You can find me at lindseybinion.com and reach me at lindsey@lindseybinion.com. I can’t wait to see what this new year and new brand holds. Here’s to failing forward to success!