Competitive analysis before rebranding
Who to include in the analysis: balancing three types of competitors
The most common mistake at the start is to include everyone who even remotely resembles your company in the list. In the end, you get 20-30 brands, the focus gets blurred, and by the end of the month researchers drown in data that cannot be compared. Another principle works: 5-7 competitors, but not random ones, but from three different categories.
- Direct competitors (2-3 brand) — the same products, the same audience. This is the baseline: they show where the market is standardized and where everyone does the same thing.
- Indirect competitors (2-3 brand) — different offering, but the same target audience. They compete for attention and client budget, even if they do not formally intersect with you in terms of product.
- Aspirational competitors (1-2 brand) — companies that are one level higher in market perception, not necessarily from your niche. They set the benchmark for communication quality, service, tone of voice—this is where you can grow.
Without indirect competitors, the analysis becomes technically correct but strategically blind: you see who is doing the same thing, but you don't see where audience attention is flowing. Without aspirational elements — you miss the ceiling of ambitions.
What to analyze: 15 criteria instead of price and assortment
Most competitor analyses are limited to unique selling proposition, price, and visual. For rebranding this is insufficient — you need to look at the brand as a system that works across all touchpoints.
| Analysis area | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Positioning and promise | Not just a slogan, but a real promise that the client reads from the entire communication |
| Tone of voice | Formality, humor, expertise, distance from the audience |
| Color strategy | Not a separate color, but the logic of its use — where it stands out, where it is muted |
| Brand architecture | The brand house or a single master brand, as product lines are called |
| Promotion channels | Where the competitor is physically present and where only in digital |
| The entire customer journey | From first contact to post-purchase service, not only the website and packaging |
| Speed of response to the market | How quickly the competitor changes the product and communication to follow trends |
| Price architecture | Not the price itself, but the logic of the lines and upsells |
| Reviews and reputation | What they are praised for, what they are criticized for — this is a direct source of unmet needs |
| Hiring and internal culture | Vacancy and career pages often reveal the real strategy before press releases |
It is worth separately looking not only at market leaders but also at fast-growing players — often they are the first to break the old rules of the game and redefine audience expectations.
Case: how OCS made a bet on anti-trend
A good example of why a broad analysis scope is needed — the OCS story. The company studied 18 brands in its distribution market and saw a clear trend: competitors one after another rebranded themselves as consultants, added expert services, changed positioning from 'supplier' to 'solution partner'. A logical step would be to follow this path.
But the team went in the opposite direction. After analyzing where the market is oversaturated with promises like 'we don't just sell, we consult', OCS consciously remained a distributor — honest, fast, without unnecessary claims to expertise that clients didn't particularly ask for. This is the essence of competitive analysis: not to copy the trend of the majority, but to find a gap that the trend creates with its pressure.
From positioning map to strategy: how to find truly in-demand gaps
Perceptual map is a working tool, but it is usually used incorrectly. Two axes (for example, "premium — affordable" and "generalist — specialist") do not show just free zones, but zones that are oversaturated. Case of "Solid Investments": almost all competitors clustered around the "reliability" position, although client interviews showed a different request — flexibility and speed of solutions. The empty cell on the map was not empty by accident; it reflected a real, unmet need.
Here lies the difference between theoretical gap and practical one. The gap on the map is a hypothesis. It should be tested not by a single round of 'interviews with the audience' just for the sake of it, but sequentially:
- Formulate 3-4 positioning hypotheses based on the map.
- Conduct 15-20 in-depth interviews with current and potential clients, not asking 'do you like this idea', but 'how do you solve this task now and what in this solution irritates you'.
- Compare the responses with data on rejections and attrition — if the hypothesis matches the real reason of clients leaving for competitors, it is viable.
- Test the message on a narrow audience segment before full launch — through a landing, ad campaign or pilot product.
It is necessary to look not only at the target segment separately. The rebranding of 'Provence' in FMCG improved brand perception among young audience, but the packaging was not recognized by elderly buyers — the company lost market share exactly there. The conclusion is harsh: if you analyze competitors and audience only through the prism of the segmentation you want to achieve, it is easy to miss the segment that simply won't recognize you at the moment of purchase.
Rebranding or restyling — is decided by competitive analysis, not by a designer
This decision is almost never taken at the art council. It directly follows from what the competitive analysis showed.
If the research reveals that the visual identity lags behind the actual positioning—for example, the product is premium, but the packaging and website look like economy segment compared to competitors—then a restyling will suffice. The appearance changes, but the positioning, tone of voice, and brand architecture remain the same.
If, however, the analysis shows that the positioning is vague, outdated, or coincides with half the market—then the visual identity won't save the day. A full rebranding is needed: reassembly of the promise, architecture, and often the name. In such a situation, simply repainting the logo is a waste of budget without changing the essence of the problem—the clients will simply see the updated packaging of the old ambiguity.
Typical mistakes and team alignment before launch
There are several mistakes that repeat from project to project:
- Analyzing only market leaders—fast-growing niche players often show first where demand is heading.
- The focus is exclusively on the visuals of competitors, without analyzing the customer journey or the brand's actual promise.
- Validating the positioning gap on too narrow a sample — 3-5 interviews with 'convenient' respondents will not replace systematic research.
- Ignoring the unsegmented audience — as in the case of 'Provence,' where focusing on one segment cost the company a share of the market in another.
But the main organizational mistake is not in the methodology of analysis, but in what happens after it. The results of competitive analysis usually remain in the marketing presentation and do not reach sales or product teams. Then the misalignment begins: marketing moves forward with the new positioning, while sales continues to sell using old scripts, and the product releases features not aligned with the new brand promise.
A working solution is to turn the analysis results into a shared document before the rebranding launch, with an obligatory round of discussion involving three teams: marketing identifies the found gap and target positioning, sales checks whether this sounds convincing in real client conversations, and product confirms that the company can physically fulfill this promise through features and service within the next year. If at least one team cannot support the new positioning, it's a signal that the analysis revealed a beautiful hypothesis, but not a viable strategy.
Who to include in the analysis: balancing three types of competitors
The most common mistake at the start is to include everyone who even remotely resembles your company in the list. In the end, you get 20-30 brands, the focus gets blurred, and by the end of the month researchers drown in data that cannot be compared. Another principle works: 5-7 competitors, but not random ones, but from three different categories.
- Direct competitors (2-3 brand) — the same products, the same audience. This is the baseline: they show where the market is standardized and where everyone does the same thing.
- Indirect competitors (2-3 brand) — different offering, but the same target audience. They compete for attention and client budget, even if they do not formally intersect with you in terms of product.
- Aspirational competitors (1-2 brand) — companies that are one level higher in market perception, not necessarily from your niche. They set the benchmark for communication quality, service, tone of voice—this is where you can grow.
Without indirect competitors, the analysis becomes technically correct but strategically blind: you see who is doing the same thing, but you don't see where audience attention is flowing. Without aspirational elements — you miss the ceiling of ambitions.
What to analyze: 15 criteria instead of price and assortment
Most competitor analyses are limited to unique selling proposition, price, and visual. For rebranding this is insufficient — you need to look at the brand as a system that works across all touchpoints.
| Analysis area | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Positioning and promise | Not just a slogan, but a real promise that the client reads from the entire communication |
| Tone of voice | Formality, humor, expertise, distance from the audience |
| Color strategy | Not a separate color, but the logic of its use — where it stands out, where it is muted |
| Brand architecture | The brand house or a single master brand, as product lines are called |
| Promotion channels | Where the competitor is physically present and where only in digital |
| The entire customer journey | From first contact to post-purchase service, not only the website and packaging |
| Speed of response to the market | How quickly the competitor changes the product and communication to follow trends |
| Price architecture | Not the price itself, but the logic of the lines and upsells |
| Reviews and reputation | What they are praised for, what they are criticized for — this is a direct source of unmet needs |
| Hiring and internal culture | Vacancy and career pages often reveal the real strategy before press releases |
It is worth separately looking not only at market leaders but also at fast-growing players — often they are the first to break the old rules of the game and redefine audience expectations.
Case: how OCS made a bet on anti-trend
A good example of why a broad analysis scope is needed — the OCS story. The company studied 18 brands in its distribution market and saw a clear trend: competitors one after another rebranded themselves as consultants, added expert services, changed positioning from 'supplier' to 'solution partner'. A logical step would be to follow this path.
But the team went in the opposite direction. After analyzing where the market is oversaturated with promises like 'we don't just sell, we consult', OCS consciously remained a distributor — honest, fast, without unnecessary claims to expertise that clients didn't particularly ask for. This is the essence of competitive analysis: not to copy the trend of the majority, but to find a gap that the trend creates with its pressure.
From positioning map to strategy: how to find truly in-demand gaps
Perceptual map is a working tool, but it is usually used incorrectly. Two axes (for example, "premium — affordable" and "generalist — specialist") do not show just free zones, but zones that are oversaturated. Case of "Solid Investments": almost all competitors clustered around the "reliability" position, although client interviews showed a different request — flexibility and speed of solutions. The empty cell on the map was not empty by accident; it reflected a real, unmet need.
Here lies the difference between theoretical gap and practical one. The gap on the map is a hypothesis. It should be tested not by a single round of 'interviews with the audience' just for the sake of it, but sequentially:
- Formulate 3-4 positioning hypotheses based on the map.
- Conduct 15-20 in-depth interviews with current and potential clients, not asking 'do you like this idea', but 'how do you solve this task now and what in this solution irritates you'.
- Compare the responses with data on rejections and attrition — if the hypothesis matches the real reason of clients leaving for competitors, it is viable.
- Test the message on a narrow audience segment before full launch — through a landing, ad campaign or pilot product.
It is necessary to look not only at the target segment separately. The rebranding of 'Provence' in FMCG improved brand perception among young audience, but the packaging was not recognized by elderly buyers — the company lost market share exactly there. The conclusion is harsh: if you analyze competitors and audience only through the prism of the segmentation you want to achieve, it is easy to miss the segment that simply won't recognize you at the moment of purchase.
Rebranding or restyling — is decided by competitive analysis, not by a designer
This decision is almost never taken at the art council. It directly follows from what the competitive analysis showed.
If the research reveals that the visual identity lags behind the actual positioning—for example, the product is premium, but the packaging and website look like economy segment compared to competitors—then a restyling will suffice. The appearance changes, but the positioning, tone of voice, and brand architecture remain the same.
If, however, the analysis shows that the positioning is vague, outdated, or coincides with half the market—then the visual identity won't save the day. A full rebranding is needed: reassembly of the promise, architecture, and often the name. In such a situation, simply repainting the logo is a waste of budget without changing the essence of the problem—the clients will simply see the updated packaging of the old ambiguity.
Typical mistakes and team alignment before launch
There are several mistakes that repeat from project to project:
- Analyzing only market leaders—fast-growing niche players often show first where demand is heading.
- The focus is exclusively on the visuals of competitors, without analyzing the customer journey or the brand's actual promise.
- Validating the positioning gap on too narrow a sample — 3-5 interviews with 'convenient' respondents will not replace systematic research.
- Ignoring the unsegmented audience — as in the case of 'Provence,' where focusing on one segment cost the company a share of the market in another.
But the main organizational mistake is not in the methodology of analysis, but in what happens after it. The results of competitive analysis usually remain in the marketing presentation and do not reach sales or product teams. Then the misalignment begins: marketing moves forward with the new positioning, while sales continues to sell using old scripts, and the product releases features not aligned with the new brand promise.
A working solution is to turn the analysis results into a shared document before the rebranding launch, with an obligatory round of discussion involving three teams: marketing identifies the found gap and target positioning, sales checks whether this sounds convincing in real client conversations, and product confirms that the company can physically fulfill this promise through features and service within the next year. If at least one team cannot support the new positioning, it's a signal that the analysis revealed a beautiful hypothesis, but not a viable strategy.
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