In January 2021, Kia changed everything. New logo, new slogan, and they dropped the word "Motors" from the company name, all as part of a real shift toward electric vehicles.
It was mocked immediately. People read the new mark as "KN" rather than "KIA". For a while, tens of thousands of people a month were searching online for a car company that did not exist.
In November 2024, Jaguar changed everything too. They deleted their entire social media history, took a new mark, and released a film with models in bright colour, the words "Copy Nothing", and not a single car in it.
It was mocked far harder. Elon Musk asked publicly whether they still sold cars.
Same move. Opposite results. Kia went on to record global sales year after year and rising brand value. Jaguar's European sales in April 2025 were a fraction of the same month a year before.
So what was the difference?
It was not the logo
This is the lesson, and almost every discussion of these two gets it wrong.
The Kia logo did not sell those cars. The cars did. The Telluride, the EV6, the EV9. The rebrand announced a change that the product then proved. Somebody mocked the logo, then drove the car, and the mockery stopped mattering.
Jaguar had also wound down its petrol production before its electric cars were ready. So people saw the campaign, went looking for a Jaguar, and found empty showrooms. The promise arrived, and nothing arrived behind it.
They promised a new brand before they had the product to prove it.
What this means at your size
You are not Jaguar. But the mechanism is identical and it is everywhere.
A restaurant repaints, prints new menus and posts a new logo, while the food and the service stay exactly as they were. A studio announces a new direction with no new work to show. A shop rebrands as premium without changing anything a customer can feel.
In every case the branding is writing a cheque the business has not funded.
The rule
Change the brand when the business has changed. Not before it, and never instead of it.
If the business genuinely has changed, do the rebrand properly and do not be frightened by the first reaction. Kia absorbed a year of people calling it KN and came out ahead, because the cars backed the claim.
If the business has not changed, a new logo will not help you, and it may hurt you. You will have told everyone to expect something different and then handed them the same thing.