It’s a “Retrobrand,” Not a “Rebrand”
Everything is “retro” these days. Donald Trump is back in the White House, skinny jeans are back in style, and Bud Light is hiring “fratty” comedians to win back its customer base.
Heck, even Meta is going back to its social media roots.
Recently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company announced the return of “OG Facebook” features like options to see content from only your “friends” along with promises to bring back more functionalities that users historically enjoyed about the platform. This pivot back to what made the original Facebook so successful in its early years comes in the midst of a massive investment to develop AI tools that enhance the user and advertiser experience.
Meta isn’t the first to leverage new technology in re-capturing what made it a household name. Iconic brands like Apple, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and Domino’s have also found that when the focus is a return to the core value customers expect, the most powerful rebrand can actually be a “retrobrand.” It’s a dance of taking a step backwards on the surface while taking progressive action – even if it’s behind the scenes – to take two steps forward.
Meta parties like it’s 2004
When Facebook first launched in 2004, it was an engagement and connection platform for college students, but the versatility of function and global appeal of online community helped it become one of the largest companies in the world. Seventeen years later, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 brand and product shift to Meta made sense for a world where suddenly digital connectivity was less an indulgence and more a necessity.
However, the initiative to build an immersive virtual world never materialized in the way Zuckerberg envisioned. In 2023, he quietly shuttered the Metaverse in favor of harnessing AI to improve the advertiser experience and create user-oriented features like new photo editors and voice response. While other tech companies in the global AI arms race have struggled to find a market for their massive investments, Meta’s platforms and user base were ready-made outlets for these development efforts. By late 2024, the company announced record-breaking profits as advertisers capitalized on the new AI-driven tools and users increased their engagement due to AI’s algorithm improvements.
That’s why Wall Street loved Meta’s mid-January announcement of impending layoffs alongside Zuckerberg’s warning that teams should expect an “intense year” pursuing the new goals. Despite some bad press and complaints on social media, investors could see where this was going – Meta was all-in on its AI-fueled retrobrand – and bounced the stock price nearly 20% to all-time highs.
These recent moves and the reaction bring Zuckerburg’s decision to roll back Meta’s third-party fact checking program into focus. While certainly an olive branch to the Trump Administration, it also aligns with promises to reinstitute “OG Facebook” and the original branding as a platform for communication and connection.
Apple always thought differently
Half a decade before Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard, Steve Jobs was illustrating what a retrobrand could be as he returned to Apple in 1997. The company he had co-founded in the 1970s with a funky, counter-culture identity was floundering, even though then-CEO Gil Amelio had saved Apple from collapse by securing financing, slashing expenses, and painstakingly reorganizing internal structures.
But Amelio wasn’t able to turn his operational expertise into a visionary growth strategy that would take Apple to the next level. Re-enter Jobs, his turtlenecks, and the “think different” mantra that would become Apple’s marketing slogan for the next five years.
Jobs believed that strategic product differentiation had been Apple’s major brand identity advantage in the market since its founding. The company’s first product, the Apple I, was simultaneously novel and customer-oriented because it came preassembled and was more affordable than home computer kits at the time.
That was the starting point for the Jobs-led retrobrand. On the surface, he was scaling back offerings to eliminate 70% of new product lines – a strategic move to no longer just be an alternative to Microsoft. But behind the scenes, “think different” was a missional foundation for developing the technology that would make Apple one of the biggest companies in the world. Jobs was turning the NeXTstep operating system that Amelio had purchased into OS X, which eventually would become the basis of iOS, the iPhone’s operating system.
Jobs once said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” In other words, you have to think differently to conceptualize a smartphone interface and how its apps will integrate across systems before your customers even understand what an app is. For Apple, this way of thinking led to a product line that achieved near-global adoption while still maintaining that dressed-down, plucky upstart brand image… on its way to becoming a $3 trillion company.
Starbucks CEOs share retrobrand goals
Like Jobs, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a personality synonymous with his company’s brand. While his leadership created a global coffee empire, he cautioned that expansion also risked “watering down” that brand value of being a premium coffee experience – a challenge current CEO Brian Niccol is attempting to meet.
When Niccol took the helm in late 2024, sales at Starbucks had been falling for three straight quarters. Customers who were already squeezed by inflation reported long waits, rushed and impersonal service, and a dysfunctional mobile app that led to an overall empty and “transactional” experience instead of a welcome respite.
Recognizing that customers want the Starbucks of the 1990s, Niccol has launched a campaign to refocus on the brand’s “enduring identity” of a “welcoming coffeehouse where people gather.” He’s reintroducing handwritten notes on cups and having baristas hand simple drip coffee orders over the counter rather than making customers wait in the queue behind a dozen more time-consuming frappuccinos.
Older and newer generations of customers are sure to appreciate these back-to-basics touches, but the foundation of Starbucks’s retrobranding strategy is definitely 21st-century. Back in May, Schultz called for updates to Starbucks’s mobile ordering app to give customers an “uplifting experience” rather than chaos at the pick-up counters. Sharing the old boss’s vision, Niccol has made order sequence optimization a priority: he’s modifying the app so that “dine-in” customers can sit down and enjoy their coffee sooner while giving their to-go counterparts more time to arrive to a drink that’s still hot.
Of course, neither tech improvements nor the return of free refills in ceramic mugs will be an instant cure for Starbucks’s recent woes as higher supply prices continue to squeeze the margins. But this past January’s better-than-forecasted financials do signal that Niccol has the company turning (back the clock) in the right direction.
Pandemic social media got readers back in Barnes & Noble
Speaking of ’90s nostalgia, you can’t talk about Starbucks’s historical brand without a nod to Barnes & Noble, the bookseller that put Starbucks on the map for a large part of the United States. The strategic coffee shop-in-bookstore partnership that started in 1993 was a natural fit, and each company benefited from access to the other’s customers. However, the rise of e-commerce was devastating for in-person book-shopping, and by 2018, Amazon was writing Barnes & Noble’s epitaph.
Surely the Covid-19 pandemic would be the final nail in the coffin, right? Actually, the company is experiencing a renaissance of growth since CEO James Daunt kicked off a bottom-up retrobrand after assuming his position in 2019.
Daunt quickly identified a huge problem: the shelves weren’t full of books that mattered to the consumer. Items better suited for drugstores or convenience markets like batteries, trinkets, and gifts were taking up space, and big publishers dominated optimal floorspace and display areas. According to Daunt, Barnes & Noble should be a bookstore first and foremost — and even more, operate like an independent bookseller, where local tastes and interest determine layouts and inventory. His solutions included ending the promotional payment schemes that favored the big publishers, granting local managers more autonomy, and organizing book sections by subject matter instead of alphabetically by author name to encourage more browsing.
This new attitude had Barnes & Noble ready to capitalize on an unexpected TikTok trend that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reading enthusiasts stuck at home had developed a digital community known as “BookTok,” where they would share book recommendations and videos of their… wait for it… physical book collections.
It was the perfect opportunity for communicating brand identity through a new medium. Barnes & Noble embraced the trend with new BookTok feature sections, both online and in stores, while also engaging through its own TikTok account, which now boasts nearly 300,000 followers. This focus is helping the brand attract Gen Zers who are actively seeking “third space” environments – like a Starbucks location – as places to go in person.
That’s a big part of why monthly foot traffic at Barnes & Noble locations is on an upward trend, even surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Just seven years after many thought Barnes & Noble would die, business is thriving, with 57 stores opening in the U.S. last year and plans to add another 60 in 2025.
Domino’s is a delivery company with a pizza problem
Business has also been thriving for the Domino’s pizza chain since the company went public in 2004. In fact, investing in Domino’s IPO has generated a better return than the same investment in Google’s IPO later that year – an impressive feat when considering that Domino’s hasn’t always been known for great pizza.
Indeed, Domino’s brand is all about delivery speed. This core principle started with the “30 minutes or less” guarantee in the 1980s and remained a priority when Domino’s became the first in its industry to offer mobile ordering in 2007. However, the pizza itself was a punchline. Market research revealed customers saying it tasted like “cardboard,” and Domino’s eventually launched a total recipe revamp in 2009.
The marketing push for the “Domino’s Turnaround” would become one of the most successful food industry rebrands of all time. Customers appreciated the honesty – and, apparently, the results, because profits doubled within months of the new release.
But sixteen years later, Domino’s is still wowing investors. And it’s not just on the back of pizza, it’s the secret sauce of remaining ahead of the curve of mobile ordering trends because of its best-in-the-business mobile app, which has earned praise for its intuitive design and patented “pizza tracker.” The app became the point of sale for 35% of Domino’s online orders by 2013 and has been a key ingredient in increasing both carryout and delivery orders.
In a way, Domino’s is still chiefly a delivery company that also now serves a better product, and this duality makes Domino’s a great retrobrand example.
Two components to a retrobrand
For each of these companies, there are two common threads. First, they all deliberately sought to emphasize attributes their customers had always associated with their brands – speed of service, a “3rd space” to gather, or unique approach to facilitating both personal and digital connection. For the most part, it wasn’t really about a flagship product, either, but what customers wanted from their brands and how they felt when engaging.
Secondly, from an operations standpoint, not one of these companies acted as if it were opening a time capsule to the “good ol’ days.” No one turned off the mobile apps, Barnes & Noble didn’t stop online book sales, and Meta didn’t spin off Instagram. They all introduced major upgrades to their marketing and development protocols, and especially to their technological infrastructure, so that they could deliver on what their brands promised.
A controversial influencer or a peculiar ad campaign might make a one-time marketing splash, but that’s about all a rebranding gimmick will get you. A smart retrobranding initiative, on the other hand, gives long-term customers concrete reasons to increase engagement with a brand, while simultaneously introducing the historical quality of that brand to a new generation.
Robert Kuykendall originally published this piece at TabbFORUM.
