Here's when you should change a logo, according to the leader behind Walmart, Burger King and Uber rebrands

There's a lot going on in branding. We were at par with last year with the quantity of rebrands that are being entered into D&AD. And I think with the really big brands, like the Amazons, the Walmarts, the Adobes, their businesses are adapting and changing right now. A lot of them are growing beyond what their core offering is.

So, take Walmart, which is all about retail, and traditionally you go to the physical store, it’s got the rise of direct to consumer, then you're selling advertising, so there's Walmart Connect. And then you've got all the B2Bs – the fulfilment, the delivery, the logistics. When it rebranded many years ago it was just the core identity. And this is very similar for Amazon, mirrored in slightly different ways.

One's always been core digital, the other has physical retail, but both of them have expanded beyond what their core offering is into other areas, and with that, the brands have sort of fractured. The identity was very limited, I presume, for both in terms of what they were. I would argue that Amazon had even lost its way in colour. It was originally an orange and black brand, but now some of the deliveries are in blue.

So both of them have huge architecture challenges. It was getting them back to what they're great at doing, and then being able to look at the architecture and how they behave across everything they do – whether it's direct, whether it’s B2C or B2B.

Yeah, they're both the same. Again, from judging and looking at other projects that I've seen here this week, like the Olympics or something like that, these are all humongous undertakings, and they take a big in-house team and collaboration with many other partners, whether it's their advertising agencies or their experiential agencies.

It's a big thing to undergo any kind of change within something like a Walmart. Equally, I work on all spectrums, and so when I think about maybe more mid-sized ones like Mozilla, for example… what's interesting about Mozilla's culture is that they're from the grassroots, they're not top down. So there's a lot of opinions. There's a lot of people that you take on the journey. There's a lot of people that are like, ‘this is the way we have always done it’. And you're like, ‘Oh, this might be getting in our way’....

Obviously doing the creative work is just one part of the job. It's actually how you get it through, in partnership with whoever's leading within the brand. [Some rebrands] can still take a while, but you can also do some really fast. Years ago, Chobani we did in eight months. I think I did Zocdoc in 12 weeks. What I've done so far depends on what the structure of the organisation is, and who's endorsing it, who's leading it, who's championing it, essentially.

When we embark on a rebrand, we look at what their equities and assets are at that point and sometimes we do testing, sometimes you just know. Take Budweiser, yes we did modernise that when we did that many years ago, but you're not going to get rid of something that's so deeply rooted in the heritage that represents the essence of what that brand stands for.

I think when we did Uber, Uber had had one sort of misfire rebrand that had not gone so well. Wolf Ollins were amazing, and got it back on track… But I think the design system had run its course.

[We have to say], okay, what is working and what isn't and what's not helping you communicate what you need to do? And with Uber, the brand had completely changed in the pandemic. They went from being a rides brand… and they've become a delivery company during a pandemic, where you could deliver anything – that was the idea underneath.

And the rise of Uber Eats almost started to equal what was traditionally their rides side of the business. And then it was like, actually, you can get anything. I can have stuff delivered from the pharmacy. I can have food delivered. I can get stuff from anywhere. And so we needed to also re-look at the architecture and sort of disseminate what their colour palette is.

For the first time ever, we gave them a core master brand. When they sign up drivers and partners, it is white with black type, but then when it switches to rides, it's black, and then on white, because that is famously what everyone knows. So we kept that, and then we started to introduce the green for Eat.

We've given them a portfolio if they start to go into freight and beyond, which they're going to go into as their business continues to grow. So it's creating architectures and systems. That was the brief, really, around the architecture and the system, and how does the identity fix and flex? And there was no issue with the logo.

Obviously it's a beloved British icon brand, but I think it was done really respectfully. That is a great example of where everything pretty much changed. I know it's a dotted line to blue, but it's a very different pigment of blue. So you could call that the evolution. But everything else. I mean, all the character illustrations of the animals, how we partnered and collaborated with the whole of the organisation through that change… It's very special.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as, like my ego, but I think it is nice to see teams’ work get validated by other peers. Every award has their own take on different criteria. But I think we're filling judges rooms with all age groups, people from everywhere, getting to hear different kinds of points of view around work is really great. And so I know we've been trying to capture loads of insights out of D&AD. It's so inspiring.

Every year my colleague says to me, ‘you don't need to judge as many awards. You should give them to the younger ones.’ And I always do. But I always want to do at least one if someone asks me, because when I get to see that year's work, I just feel so inspired, and it raises the bar for the work that I want to do.