(Originally published on meta Stack Exchange by Jon Ericson.)

A cautionary tale in 5 logos:

HBO Max logos from 2022 to 2025.

I’m currently in the middle of a rebranding exercise at the OpenSSL Foundation. Our “business model” is encouraging other organizations to sponsor work on the OpenSSL Library. There is a separate OpenSSL Corporation which sells support contracts. People naturally wonder why they should donate when there’s already a way for the project to generate revenue. We also have a Mission, Projects, Conference, community site and an umbrella website that all share the same OpenSSL name. It’s not easy to explain or even understand. So I certainly feel the frustration with brand debt.

I was also at Stack Overflow when the focus shifted from an expanding network of Q&A sites to Programmer Jerusalem. It didn’t happen right away, but since investors had bought the story that Stack Overflow was a tech company, anything not aimed at developers was deemphasized. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

And then there is the rebranding of a community I managed for several years. After a ton of work, including a preview of the concept for community leaders, the new brand went over as well as could be expected. Better even. It felt like the start of a turnaround story worthy of a business school case study. And after a few weeks, everyone got used to the new logo and went back to normal.

The fundamental thing I’ve learned is that brands are easy to change, but the underlying culture of an organization is not. That means we are tempted to see the brand as low-hanging fruit. On its own, rebranding just isn’t sufficient. Without finding and fixing root causes, a new brand merely gives an organization a jolt of enthusiasm. All too often, things go back to the way they were before except with a new coat of paint.

Effective brand exercises align the audience with some fundamental attribute that isn’t commonly understood. For instance, the OpenSSL Foundation separated from the Corporation last year and we need to make the distinction between the two organizations more clear. A new brand treatment can help. Even so, as we look at our current way of operating, we are seeing that there are some deeper changes required as well. While I don’t know what the result will look like, I do think self-reflection will be valuable and, perhaps, the more important outcome.

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