If you're considering a B2B rebrand, the most useful thing you can do before touching any creative is study companies that have already been through it. These five examples each solved a different business problem, and together they cover most of the situations that trigger a rebrand in the first place.
When it comes to a B2B branding strategy, authenticity = trust, and trust means sales, loyalty, and repeat clientele. People don’t like feeling manipulated or misled. Brands that capitalize on popular trends that aren’t true to their core values do just that. Issues like greenwashing or virtue signalling can torpedo your audience’s trust.
B2B businesses foster trust and credibility by showcasing genuine values, principles, and identity.
What’s the best way to do that? Starting with a strong, honest narrative. Then, tell your brand’s truth with storytelling.
Storytelling allows you to communicate your business’s journey, mission, and vision in a compelling and relatable way. A well-crafted narrative can humanize a brand, making it more approachable and emotionally resonant.
When potential clients or partners connect with your brand's story, they remember it. Narrative and storytelling also help convey your brand's unique value proposition. And it can help differentiate it from competitors in a crowded marketplace.
So, next time you find a reason to rebrand, make authenticity the bedrock of your changes. Wondering, exactly, how do I rebrand my B2B business? Follow these steps to a successful rebrand.
Successful rebrands involve significant changes to a brand’s identity, image, or strategy. The work results in a refreshed, redefined, or revitalized brand, influencing how it’s perceived by a target audience or in the market as a whole.
What is an example of a successful rebrand, you ask? Here are 5 B2B rebranding examples, including key strategies and outcomes:
Adobe has had two notable successful rebranding examples in the past. One involves a payment model change. The other involves an organized product family hierarchy system.
In 2013, Adobe stopped selling software suite licenses. The company switched to a SaaS subscription model. The shift was radical in the marketplace at that time. It was at the forefront of the market phenomenon dubbed the Subscription Economy.
The accompanying rebrand renamed the Creative Suite to the Creative Cloud. Through the rebrand, Adobe sought to win customers over. One tactic was to offer:
Adobe has over 50 products and software packages. The massive menu can get confusing for its audience. Adobe’s most recent rebrand solves this issue through revamped product logos. The results are a clear hierarchy system for product families.
The rebrand uses color and 2- and 3-letter mnemonics for an easy-to-follow organizational system. Plus, they’ve changed their logo for the first time since 1993. Now, it’s an all-red logo, making it as functional as possible at all sizes and across all surfaces.
The name of this rebrand game is clarity through organization.
Arguably, Dropbox is both B2C and B2B. In 2007, they revolutionized content sharing with an easy-to-use cloud-based platform. Over a decade later, the platform has evolved beyond a file storage center. The original brand simply didn’t encompass Dropbox’s capabilities.
Dropbox’s colorful new look, fun illustrations, and funky font give designers a ton to work with. The rebrand allows them to express the many functionalities of Dropbox as well as modernize the look and feel for today’s audience.
Major Tom led the Connectbase rebrand from strategy through execution — which means this is the one example on this list we can speak to from the inside.
Connectbase, a cloud-based company operating in the connectivity industry, needed more than a visual refresh. Their existing brand didn't reflect the sophistication of their product or the scale of their client relationships. The challenge was to signal growth and credibility without losing the brand equity they had already built.
The process started with collaborative workshops and stakeholder interviews — not design. The goal was to understand the business from the inside before changing anything on the outside. From there, the work covered naming, positioning, visual identity, and messaging, with deliberate through-lines from the previous brand to preserve continuity for existing clients and partners.
The result: a new name, a new tagline (Connectbase, Where the World Connects), and a brand system that gave the company the credibility to compete at a higher level and communicate their value clearly to enterprise buyers.
In 2014, Slack was born and quickly became a popular collaboration tool. Slack started out with a confusing, busy logo and color palette. In 2019, the company rebranded with a more thoughtful visual identity. The brand chose speech bubbles to represent communication and pulled back from their original 11 (yes, 11!) colors to four.
Slack’s new logo and color palette are still recognizable by its audience, allowing for familiarity instead of alienation. The rebrand is effective in solving visual issues while still representing the original brand.
Much like Adobe, Salesforce rebranded its product suite to better serve its customers. They changed the names of certain products in the Marketing Cloud to follow a common naming convention. For example, Salesforce CDP is now Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform. Interaction Studio is now Marketing Cloud Personalisation.
According to a Salesforce statement, the reasons were threefold:
Every rebrand on this list followed the same underlying logic: strategy first, identity second. The companies that got it right treated the creative work as the output of a clear strategic process, not the starting point. Three things show up consistently across all of them:
A sound B2B rebranding strategy puts sequencing first. Identity is the output of a clear strategic process, not the starting point. Three approaches show up consistently in rebrands that hold up over time:
The strongest rebrands bring SEO, creative design, and digital strategy into the process together rather than in sequence. This ensures the work goes beyond cosmetic changes and positively impacts all aspects of the business.
B2B buyers make decisions based on logic as much as emotion. Back up every creative choice with analytics and research so the rebrand reflects what the market actually needs, not internal preference.
The people inside your company know the business better than anyone. Structured workshops surface that knowledge, align the rebrand with real business goals, and tend to uncover angles no external team would find on their own.
Sustainability and future-proof branding. Focus on creating brands that are sustainable and adaptable. They should also be able to adjust to future market changes and technological advancements. Steer clear of momentary trends and tastes.
The cost of a B2B rebrand varies widely depending on scope, market, and the agency involved. A focused rebrand covering positioning, naming, identity, and core assets can start in the mid five figures with a specialist agency. Larger rebrands spanning multiple markets, product lines, or digital infrastructure run significantly higher.
The more useful question is often what your current brand is costing you. Lost deals, longer sales cycles, and pricing pressure are all measurable impacts of a brand that is no longer working. Unsure what the investment and ROI of rebranding actually look like? Here are the potential varying costs of brand services if you are considering an agency.
Getting leadership or stakeholder buy-in for a rebrand requires a clear business rationale, not just a creative vision. A few approaches that tend to work:
B2B rebranding done well is not a cosmetic exercise. It is a strategic decision that changes how buyers understand and evaluate you. Every example above was rooted in a real business problem, not a preference for something new.
If you are considering a rebrand, the place to start is diagnosis, not design. Major Tom's brand strategy team has led rebrands for B2B companies across North America. Check out our brand strategy page or get in touch to talk through what the right process looks like for your situation.
The most common triggers are a shift in business strategy or target market, a merger or acquisition, a product suite that has grown beyond the original brand's scope, and consistent feedback that prospects don't understand what the company does. In each case the underlying issue is the same: the brand no longer reflects the business, and that gap is creating friction in the sales process.
The clearest signal is that your brand is working against you rather than for you. Prospects don't understand what you do, your visual identity doesn't reflect your capabilities, or you've moved upmarket and the brand hasn't followed. If the issue is cosmetic, a refresh is usually enough. If the issue is strategic, a rebrand is the right call. For a deeper look at how to tell the difference, see our guide on [when to rebrand and when to refresh].
A rebrand changes the strategic foundation: positioning, values, messaging, and often visual identity. A refresh modernizes an existing identity without changing its core. If you're weighing up which one your business needs, we cover the distinction in more detail here: [link to rebranding reasons or checklist post].
The key to rebranding without losing brand equity is protecting whatever carries the most recognition and trust with your existing clients — whether that is a colour, a name element, a tone of voice, or a specific promise. Carry those elements through deliberately into the new identity. The Connectbase rebrand did exactly this: new name, new visual system, but clear through-lines from the previous brand so existing relationships felt continuity rather than disruption.
Starting with design before strategy is the most common one. If you don't know what business problem the rebrand is solving, no logo will fix it. Other frequent mistakes: underinvesting in internal rollout so employees can't articulate the new positioning, rushing the process to hit an arbitrary deadline, and treating brand architecture as an afterthought when multiple products or sub-brands are involved.
A thorough rebrand typically takes four to eight months from strategy through launch. Cost varies as a focused rebrand with a specialist agency can start in the mid five figures, while larger multi-market rebrands run significantly higher. The more useful question is what your current brand is costing you in lost deals, longer sales cycles, and pricing pressure. Here's the differing costs of Brand Strategy Services explained.
The key indicators are changes in brand perception, sales cycle length, win rates, organic search visibility, and direct traffic. Set a baseline before launch so you have something to measure against, then track these at regular intervals post-launch. Revenue growth and average deal size are the ultimate measure, though these take longer to surface.
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