A Coming-of-Age Brand Story

I was recently at a creative leadership roundtable event where we discussed the challenges of a rebrand. Some lamented budgets and approvals. Others talked about research and a creative vision. But one person asked a question that resonated with me. 

“When is it better to rebrand your company versus just a brand refresh?” 

It was timely, as we had just started our own brand refresh journey at Splunk. And I was in the thick of answering that exact question with my own team and executives.

The short answer is that it’s not always appropriate to do a full rebrand. Just because you get a new CMO or VP of Brand doesn’t mean the first thing they should do is start a rebranding effort. 

That said, brands are constantly evolving. Just like people. We change. We grow. We adapt. But sometimes by just a little bit. And as brand stewards, we should be constantly tweaking and adjusting our brand expression. 

But that doesn’t mean you start over every time. Not at all. However, there are times when you need to make a calculated adjustment. Perhaps you experience new market conditions. Or your audience makeup changes. Or you have a new product offering. These are a few examples when a brand refresh is likely needed.

Splunk, Meet Your Refresh

That was the situation we were in at Splunk. We were coming up on our 20th anniversary. For two decades, we had built a brand around geek culture, focused mostly on the practitioner. We’re talking security ops, dev ops, and IT folks who speak SPL code like a first language. Our brand was beloved. We had a healthy community of people who would proudly wear our solid black t-shirts with pithy sayings such as “Take the SH out of IT” and “Looking for trouble.”

Our business was growing. Our core audience was loyal. But with that growth came new products and the ongoing need to speak to new audiences. We were having more and more discussions with CISOs, CIOs, and CTOs. These new audiences were interested in Splunk, but a bit reluctant to don the latest nerdy black t-shirt.

With growth comes change. We needed to adapt. But we wanted to grow our brand in a way that we didn’t lose any of the amazing value we had already built over two decades. We needed to mature while still keeping that Splunky spirit that resonated with our fellow geeks. 

Our journey at Splunk started with our brand platform, where we landed a new brand purpose, which led to an updated brand promise, brand attributes, and a brand story. All of this was part of our brand audit, which helped us see all the gaps as well as opportunities to adapt and grow. 

Once we had those foundational elements in place, only then did we start adjusting design elements. We certainly kept many pieces intact, such as the logo, main color gradient, and our font, as this was just a refresh. But all other design elements from photography to icons experienced a face lift.  

Overall, the general visual expression was much more simple and progressive, but still felt like it was part of the family to our previous design style. The big difference is that we had a reason WHY behind all the design choices. We didn’t just pick new design elements because we thought they were cool, we did it because every single element tied back to our brand story.  

We even included some new unique and ownable brand elements called light trails that help visually tell the story of security and observability. With the foundational brand elements and story, combined with our updated visual expression, now everything ties together to express the core story of being resilient. 

If you’d like to read a more detailed account of this entire brand refresh process, I invite you to read the full story here. It walks you through each step of the refresh journey, so you can better understand all the decisions we made to update the Splunk brand.

Back to the Roundtable

Now that we’ve been through the process of a brand refresh, I have so much to share at the next roundtable. 

For starters, we could discuss that you certainly don’t have to start over. You can take advantage of all the great value you already have in your brand, like Splunk’s timeless logo. Splunk's unique brand gradient of pink to orange. And our Splunky personality that our customers appreciate. 

You just need to find the moments where the brand needs to adapt. Our brand audit helped us discover where we needed to refresh brand elements so we could better grow as a company. 

And that’s the beauty of a living brand. It isn’t set in stone. You can refresh it and constantly adapt. Even if you get something wrong, don’t start over. Simply learn, update, and move forward.

So don’t be overly concerned about making changes to your current brand. You can update it without harming it. There is value in consistency over time with a brand, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t give it a little refresh every once in a while.