To rebrand, or not to rebrand?

2025 is the year of the rebrand.

Or, every year is the year of the rebrand if you look hard enough. Businesses rebrand all the time, for a plethora of reasons. Majella Studio (formerly More Than Your Brand) is in the middle of one right now, and as we put the final tweaks to the new website and prepare to get the last piece of the rebrand puzzle ready to go out into the world, I thought it might be a good time to talk about why I did it.

Firstly, introductions. I'm Veronica, the founder and creative director of Majella Studio. We're a web design and development studio creating frictionless websites for your team and your customers.

Our websites are designed to grow with you and help you run your business, we want to make your team happy as much as we want to make your customers happy.

More than a name

Before we were Majella Studio, we were More Than Your Brand. Also a website design and development studio. So why the rebrand you ask? More Than Your Brand didn't start out as a website design studio, it started out as a marketing consulting firm for small businesses that evolved into a website design studio.

Like so many other small business founders, I started a business to fill a gap I saw in the market, but as the business grew and attracted customers it also evolved to meet the market where it was at, and ended up filling a slightly different gap.

And I loved More Than Your Brand, it was a business I started in my 20s on a bit of a whim, that became my full time job and helped me grow my career. But as a friend of mine often says, sometimes you have to kill your darlings, it's the nature of the creative beast.

From a purely practical standpoint, here is my pro/con list that helped me decide to rebrand ...

Pros:

• A new brand and name would give me the chance to move away from the 'More Than' concept, that had grown far too common in the vernacular since I had launched (... thanks NAB)

• It would also allow me to choose a name that was not explicitly linked to the industry and that the business couldn't outgrow

• It would also give me the chance to find a shorter brand name, meaning a shorter website URL (if it sounds like a silly reason, it isn't)

Cons:

• More Than Your Brand had an established client base that would need to be notified of the change, but any rebrand runs the risk of loosing or alienating some customers

• A rebrand is expensive (but so are most things when you do them properly)

The next chapter

Rebrands aren’t just about new names or fresh logos, they’re about alignment. For me, Majella Studio isn’t a rejection of what came before, it’s an evolution. A chance to take everything I’ve learned over the past seven years and step into a brand that feels like it can grow with me, and with my clients.

Writing this post reminded me that rebrands are equal parts exciting and terrifying. They force you to ask big questions about where your business has been and where it’s going. For me, the answers pointed clearly to Majella Studio.

So, to rebrand or not to rebrand? The answer will be different for every business. But if your brand feels too small for the business you’ve become, it might be time to start thinking about it.

{Veronica}