What Roots Can Teach Us About Heritage Branding Identity Redesign
What heritage brands can teach us about rebranding and brand identity redesign
There is something slightly strange about the way businesses talk about rebranding. The assumption is often that if a company has been around for a while, its branding must eventually be made cleaner, simpler, younger, more digital and more “current.” And sometimes that is exactly what a business needs.
But sometimes, in the process of making a brand look more modern, you accidentally remove the very things that made people recognize it in the first place. Roots is an interesting example because so much of its identity could easily be described as old-fashioned. There is the beaver, the cabin-and-camp aesthetic, varsity lettering, leather, fleece, Canadian wilderness references and the feeling that somebody could have bought essentially the same sweatshirt decades ago. That is not necessarily a branding problem. In fact, it may be one of the brand’s biggest advantages.
Distinctive is often more valuable than trendy
Imagine somebody approaching a heritage brand and saying the logo needs to be simplified because modern brands use geometric symbols. The typography needs to become a neutral sans serif. The colour palette needs to be stripped back. The mascot needs to disappear because illustrated animals feel dated. You could probably make the result look very contemporary. You could also make it look like fifty other brands.
The Roots beaver is not valuable because beavers suddenly became fashionable. It is valuable because that symbol has been repeatedly associated with the company for decades. That distinction matters because branding is not simply an exercise in making something attractive. A strong brand identity helps people recognize you, remember you and distinguish you from alternatives.
When a business already owns unusual visual territory, throwing it away to resemble whatever is currently fashionable can be an expensive way of becoming less recognizable.
New brands can manufacture an aesthetic. They cannot manufacture history.
Heritage gives established businesses something startups spend enormous amounts of money trying to create: context. Roots was founded in 1973, and its Canadian outdoor identity is closely tied to the story the company has told from the beginning. The cabins, forests, leather goods, sweatshirts and beaver are not random decorative choices added because somebody created a “Canadian outdoors” moodboard.
They belong to the world the brand has built around itself. That creates a different kind of brand equity. A competitor can use similar colours. It can photograph models beside a lake. It can release a varsity jacket and write copy about escaping into nature. What it cannot do is retroactively give itself fifty years of associations with those things.
That is why history should not automatically be treated as baggage during a rebrand.
Sometimes history is exactly what makes the brand harder to imitate.
But heritage can become a box
None of this means old branding should simply be preserved forever. A company can absolutely become trapped by its own history. The visual identity might stop working digitally. The website might feel decades behind competitors. Packaging might become inconsistent. Messaging might no longer reflect what the company sells. Younger customers might struggle to understand why the brand is relevant to them.
The question, then, is not simply:
“Should we modernize?”
The better question is:
“What should we modernize, and what have we already earned the right to own?”
Those are very different conversations.
The best brand refreshes separate the system from the soul
When an established business begins to feel dated, there is a temptation to redesign everything at once. New logo. New fonts. New colours. New website. New voice.
Suddenly, the company looks wonderfully polished and almost completely unfamiliar.
A smarter brand refresh begins by identifying which elements actually carry recognition.
Maybe that is a symbol customers have seen for twenty years. Maybe it is an unusual colour combination, a particular product, a phrase, a packaging detail, a mascot, the founder story or even a style of signage that would never appear in a fashionable branding presentation today.
Those assets do not have to remain frozen. The surrounding system can evolve while they remain recognizable. Typography can become more functional. Photography can become stronger. The website can become easier to navigate. Packaging architecture can become clearer. Messaging can become sharper. The digital experience can finally feel like it belongs in the present. Modernization does not have to mean replacement.
This matters even more for small businesses
You do not need fifty years of history for this principle to matter. A restaurant that has served the same neighbourhood for twelve years may already have recognizable signage. A contractor might have trucks people immediately recognize around town. A family business may have packaging, a colour or even a slightly awkward logo that customers have been seeing for two decades. From a designer’s perspective, it can be tempting to look at those things and immediately see what could be improved.
But the first job should be understanding what those elements already mean to customers.
Because recognition has value. And a business owner who has spent fifteen years building that recognition should not casually throw it away just because beige minimalism happens to be having a good year.
So, when should you actually rebrand?
A rebrand makes sense when the existing identity is preventing the business from communicating clearly, reaching the right audience or supporting where the company is going next. That might happen because the business has changed dramatically. The audience has shifted. The offer has evolved. The identity has become inconsistent. Or the brand simply no longer represents the quality of the company behind it.
But “this looks old” is not enough of a diagnosis.
Before replacing anything, you need to know which parts are outdated and which parts are distinctive. Sometimes looking like you have been around for a long time is not the weakness. Sometimes it is the proof.
Your competitors can copy a trend. They can’t copy your history.
That is the bigger lesson behind the Roots example. Businesses spend a lot of time looking sideways at what newer competitors are doing, and that often pushes branding toward whatever visual style currently dominates the market.
But differentiation does not always come from inventing something completely new.
Sometimes it comes from looking carefully at what your business already owns and making it more intentional. The goal is not to preserve every old decision simply because it is old. The goal is to know what is worth keeping before you start deleting things.
Before you redesign everything, figure out what is actually broken.
If your business has been around for a while and the brand no longer feels right, Hot Hot Dog Studio can help you determine whether you need a complete rebrand, a focused refresh or simply a stronger system around what you already have.
Our Brand Audit looks at your visual identity, messaging, positioning and competitive landscape so you can understand what is working, what is weakening the brand and what should change before money is spent redesigning it.
Because sometimes your old logo really does need to go. And sometimes the old thing everybody wants to replace is exactly the thing customers remember.
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