Today on Lochhead on Marketing, we talk about the good way and the bad way to rebrand. And wat better to use as an example than the recent Gemini AI rebrand by Google.

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The Good Reason to “Rebrand”

Before we proceed with the main topic at hand, let’s first have a good example of when to “rebrand”.

There’s a company called Chirp that sells foam rollers, which is used by athletes for training their muscles and easing soreness. But after some time, a new category was invented that was adjacent to their market, the percussion massager / gun.

Rather than just create their own version of percussion gun, Chirp went ahead and combined their foam rollers into this new category, essentially making a new category, the rolling percussive massager, for themselves.

The Bad Reason to “Rebrand”: Google’s Gemini

So why did we tell you that story? Because Google is doing the exact opposite of that, always going for the “Compete in the market” model rather than making their own market. And it could be seen with their latest endeavor in AI, Bard now rebranded as Gemini.

So, why did Google make this move? While we can't say for certain, we can infer their motives. Essentially, they directly challenged ChatGPT and came up short. Now, they're revamping Bard to give it a "fresh start." While that might be their goal, most marketing experts would tell you that it simply looks like Google is backing away from the competition and trying to repurpose their AI to make the best of the situation.

That in itself is a problem, but there’s also the fact that Google doesn’t really do anything different than the reigning Category King of the market. This has been true with their forays in podcasts, social media, and their other services that are now defunct. They're competing, instead of creating, which is what most companies do, and they're fucked.

When to do a “Rebrand”

With that said, the best time to do a rebrand is if either you’re introducing a brand-new category as your main product, or revolutionizing one of your current ones by making a new category.

Rather than chasing after the tail of the Category Leader and competing for the remaining small chunk of the market, why not try doing something different? Because otherwise, you’ll just get your ass handed to you, just like what happened with Google Plus, Google Podcasts, and now, the unfortunate Google Gemini.

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Christopher Lochhead

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