Brand identity problems almost always get blamed on the logo, and almost always, the logo is not the real issue.
We get this conversation a lot at Rivett Multimedia. A client reaches out, sends over their current logo, and says something along the lines of “we think it’s time for a new look.” Nine times out of ten, the logo is fine. The problem is everything around it. The inconsistency. The lack of a system. The way the brand feels like three different companies depending on where you encounter it.
A logo is one piece of a much bigger system. It is the cover of the book, not the book itself. If your website looks like it was built five different ways by five different people, if your social media feels disconnected from your print materials, if your tone of voice shifts depending on who is writing the email, that is not a logo problem. That is a consistency problem, and a new logo will not fix it.
There is a reason the logo gets blamed first. It is visible, it is tangible, and changing it feels like progress. If a business has been struggling to stand out or feels like it is blending into the background compared to competitors, “let’s get a new logo” feels like a clear, actionable step. It is something you can point to and say, look, we did something.
But brand perception does not live in a single image. It lives in the accumulation of every interaction someone has with your business. The way your invoices look. The tone of your out of office reply. Whether your Instagram feels like it belongs to the same company as your website. All of these things build an impression over time, and a new logo sitting on top of an inconsistent foundation does not fix the foundation. It just gives the inconsistency a fresh coat of paint.
We have worked with brands that had genuinely great logos sitting on top of a mess. Inconsistent colours across platforms. Fonts that changed from the website to the business cards. Messaging that felt like three different companies wrote it. In those cases, the logo was not holding the brand back. The lack of a system was.
According to Lucidpress, consistent brand presentation across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23 percent. That stat is not about logos. It is about everything working together, every time.
When a client comes to Rivett Multimedia & Events wanting a rebrand, one of the first things we do is a kind of audit. Not a formal, intimidating process, just a look across everything. The website, social channels, any printed materials, email templates, even internal documents sometimes. We are looking for the gaps. Where does the brand feel disconnected from itself?
Often what we find is that the actual visual identity, the logo, the core colours, sometimes even the fonts, is more solid than the client thinks. What is missing is a system that ties it all together. Clear guidelines for how the logo should be used. A defined colour palette beyond “the blue from the website.” Typography rules that apply everywhere, not just on the homepage.
In those cases, the most valuable thing we can do is not redesign the logo. It is build out the system around it. Brand guidelines that document how everything should look and feel, so that whether someone on the team is creating a social post, an email, or a printed flyer, it all comes from the same playbook.
If you want to see how we approach brand systems, take a look at our services page for a breakdown of what brand identity work actually involves at Rivett Multimedia.
This is not to say a logo redesign is never warranted. Sometimes a brand has genuinely outgrown its mark. A business that has expanded into new markets, shifted its positioning, or simply has a logo that no longer represents who they have become, that is a real reason to consider a new design.
The difference is in the reasoning. “Our brand does not feel cohesive and we are not sure why” is a system problem. “Our logo represents a version of our company that does not exist anymore” is a logo problem. Both are valid, but they require very different solutions, and starting with the wrong one means spending time and budget on something that will not fix what is actually bothering you.
A useful way to think about it is this. If you redesigned your logo tomorrow and kept everything else exactly the same, would the brand identity problem you are experiencing go away? If the honest answer is no, the logo is not your starting point.
Before jumping into any rebrand conversation, it is worth sitting with a few questions. Does your brand look and feel the same whether someone finds you on Instagram, your website, or a printed flyer? Do your colours, fonts, and tone stay consistent no matter who on your team is creating the content? When someone interacts with your brand across different channels, does it feel like the same company, or does it feel like three different ones loosely connected by a shared name?
If the answers reveal inconsistency, that is where the real opportunity is. Not in a new logo, but in building the connective tissue that makes everything feel like it belongs together.
The Design Council in the UK has written extensively about the value of design systems and brand consistency in business performance. Their research consistently shows that companies investing in coherent brand systems outperform those that treat branding as a series of one-off decisions. The logo is just one decision in a much longer series.
What we tell clients at Rivett Multimedia is this. Let us figure out what your brand actually needs before we decide what to change. Sometimes that means a full rebrand, new logo included. Sometimes it means building out brand guidelines so everyone on your team is working from the same playbook, with the existing logo staying exactly as it is.
And sometimes, the logo really is fine. It just needed some company. A strong visual identity is not one element doing all the work. It is everything working together, consistently, every time someone encounters your brand. Get that right, and you might find the logo you were ready to replace was never the problem at all.
If you are trying to work out where your brand identity problems are actually coming from, get in touch with Rivett Multimedia & Events. We are good at finding the gap between where a brand is and where it should be.
