When the economy gets shaky, most small businesses cut their marketing and branding budget. Walmart just did the opposite and there’s a lesson in it for all of us.
Okay so I have to talk about this because I genuinely can’t stop thinking about it…
Last week Walmart announced a full rebrand of Great Value, their store brand that’s on 10,000 products. New logo, new packaging, new everything. A rebrand of this size takes time, this one will be rolling out over the next two years.
The part that stands out though is that they did it right now, in the middle of all of this economic uncertainty, when most businesses are doing the opposite and pulling back on anything that feels like a “nice to have.”
Some quick background info…
Great Value has been around since 1993. It’s in almost every American household (statistically). It covers food, cleaning products, paper goods, snacks, dairy… basically if Walmart sells it, there’s probably a Great Value version of it.
And for a long time the branding looked exactly like what you’d expect from a generic store brand. The old logo had this thin swoosh around it, a drop shadow going in a direction that defied physics, and typography that had gotten progressively worse over the years as people kept “improving” it. It looked like what it was — an afterthought.
The new version? Totally different. Clean logo, strong navy packaging, a design system that actually has flexibility and intention behind it. The whole thing was done in partnership with a global branding agency called JKR alongside Walmart’s own in-house team. It’s considered. It’s confident. It looks like a brand that gives a damn.
Before / After
Everyone’s tightening up right now. I see it, you probably see it. Businesses are looking at their expenses and the branding budget is usually one of the first things that gets cut because it feels optional. (it’s not).
But what Walmart understood and what I think a lot of small businesses miss, is that when people are being more careful with their money, your brand is working harder than ever. Or it’s failing harder than ever. There’s no neutral.
When someone is deciding between you and someone else, and they’re being more cautious than usual, they are absolutely looking for reasons to feel confident. And your branding is one of the loudest signals you’re sending before you ever have a conversation with them. Before the proposal, before the call, before any of it, they’ve already made a judgment call based on how you look.
If your brand looks inconsistent, outdated, or just kind of thrown together it makes an impression. It doesn’t always knock you out of the running but it plants a little seed of doubt. And right now nobody needs that seed.
Walmart knows their customer. They cater to a customer sub-set that is perfectly aligned to an economic downturn. Their shoppers are looking for deals and better pricing. So they understood that a major overhaul, right now, in this economy, would help them capture EVEN MORE of the deal finding shoppers out there right now (and let’s be honest thats pretty much all of us at this point).
There’s this thing that happens in every economic downturn and it plays out the same way every time. Businesses cut back on visibility (marketing, branding, showing up) because it feels responsible. And some of their competitors do the same. But some don’t.
And the ones that kept going? They come out the other side with more ground than they had going in, because they were the ones still in the room when everyone else left.
Kellogg’s did this during the Great Depression. Doubled their spend while Post pulled back. They became the industry leader and have been ever since. McDonald’s cut their ad spend in the 90’s recession and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell didn’t, those two came out of it with massive sales increases while McDonald’s lost ground. Same story, different decade.
I’m not saying you need to double your marketing budget right now. I’m just saying going invisible is a choice with real consequences.
You’re not Walmart, I get it. This isn’t about spending what they spent.
But the thinking is available to all of us.
Your customers are being more selective right now. They’re doing more research, taking longer to decide, paying more attention to whether you look like someone worth trusting. Your brand is either helping you or quietly working against you in that process.
And here’s the thing I always come back to — the small businesses that invest in branding during a downturn don’t just survive it. They come out the other side with something built. Something that’s already working. While everyone else is scrambling to catch up when things pick back up, you’re already there.
Walmart looked at all the uncertainty, looked at 10,000 products with outdated branding, and said: now is exactly the right time to fix this. Not later. Now.
I think they’re right.
Here’s some more pictures from the rebrand
If your brand is due for a look in the mirror, that’s kind of what I do. → Check out brand identity packages at Demelo Studio or if you want to start smaller, a Touchpoint Audit is a really good way to figure out where the gaps actually are before you do anything else. Send me an Email and let’s chat.
Ami Demelo is the founder of Demelo Studio, a brand identity and strategy studio based in Langley, BC.
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