Not a graphic designer but am friends with a few.

So the first part is you have to sit with the client and figure out whats wrong with their existing branding. Is it stodgy, old fashioned, out dated? If we revise it, are we going to alienate or lose what slice of our long-time customer demographic? what about the old branding can we retain in the revamp, and what can we toss? How many people relate to the "King", how many people find him super creepy. So... all of those "requirements" type meeting take maybe a few hundred hours - at $300/hr or more + expenses.

Then the designers go away and sketch up half a dozen new logos/brandings. Present to customer. Mind you, each one takes several days to prepare, its more than just the logo. Its how that logo appears on the letterhead, the website, the email footers, the actual bricks and mortar signage, the weekly newspring circular -it has to look good and convey the "message" of the new branding in ALL circumstances.

So each proposed new branding could take days or weeks to prepare. You make two dozen and present half a dozen to the customer. They hate every one. Back to the drawing board. And these are good designers who make $200+/hr - or at least that's what you charge the client for.

Go back and forth a few times, you've narrowed it down to 1-2 contenders. Now the focus groups. How does this new logo make you feel vs. the old one? Customer engagement research takes time and money.

So just the ideation here can run you many hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars and you haven't actually changed anything. You've finally picked the new look and feel of your brand. Now you go to actually make the change.

Sure, telling whoever prints your napkins and takeout bags to just ue the new logo is easy, and you'll consume the stock of old ones in about a week. The new logo doesn't cost any extra to print on a bag or napkin or paper cup than the old one. But now all of your locations have to change. The color scheme of all your interiors. Each location has a 40' lite up sign that needs to change - at $50k per and you have 4,000 locations nationwide. Who eats that? the franchisee or the chain? The franchisees fight back. Um no, Im not eating $200k to change my sign and redo my interior, the staff uniforms, the stupid forms that I use to schedule a bunch of high school kids just because you decided the Burger in Burger King needed to be revamped.

Suddenly you're looking at a tens of millions of dollars change. Seems less attractive. Maybe if we get Spike Jonze to do a Super Bowl commercial for us...