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It can invigorate a company's image or squander its brand equity. To see which gambles paid off, Fortune turned to a few experts to judge some of the most dramatic transformations.
Apple - A Chic Redesign
Talk about a makeover.
Just imagine what an iBook or iPhone would look like with this image on it: definitely not as chic.
Ronald Wayne designed Apple's original logo in 1976 when the company was still operating out of a garage.
It shows Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree with an apple dangling precariously above his head.
Rob Janoff used the same apple in his redesign a year later.
"You can almost feel the '70s and '80s taking place when you take a look at that rainbow apple," says Bill Gardner, principal of Gardner Design.
Apple dropped the multi-colored logo in 1998 for a monochromatic version, produced in every color imaginable, until transitioning it to today's popular shade of chrome.
BP - Re-Branding Faces Reality
After British Petroleum merged with Amoco, the oil giant commissioned branding firm Landor & Associates and advertising agency Oglivy & Mather to fashion a corporate identity that would convey the image of a forward-thinking, socially conscious company.
BP had already begun building that persona: After all, former CEO Lord John Browne was the first oil executive to acknowledge the threat of global warming.
The bursting green, yellow, and white Greek mythology-inspired "Helios" symbol that replaced BP's shield is meant to imply a shift toward alternative, environmentally-friendly sources of energy like solar and biofuels, and relentless advertising has made the company's initials synonymous with "beyond petroleum."
But a series of oil spills and accidents suggested that BP wasn't walking the walk, leading some to consider its wildly successful mark more a mask than its true face.
"If the story doesn't hold up, the mark and the brand start to lose their luster," says Brendán Murphy, senior partner at Lippinott, a brand management firm.
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