What Zara Larsson's Rebrand Can Teach You About Brand Identity

A dolphin meme relaunched a pop career. Here's what that actually means for your brand.

In the summer of 2024, an old Zara Larsson song went viral on TikTok. Not because of a new campaign, a press push, or a carefully timed release. Because of dolphins. Glittery, Lisa Frank-adjacent, absurdly joyful dolphins swimming across people's screens to the sound of "Symphony" - a song that had already had its moment back in 2017.

Larsson could have ignored it. A lot of artists would have. Instead, she leaned in completely. "I want to live with the dolphins in a Lisa Frank world," she told Spotify for Artists. And just like that, the foundation of a full rebrand was laid - not in a boardroom, but in a comment section.

By 2025, she had a new album, a sold-out headline tour, a Lisa Frank collaboration, a viral makeup aesthetic, and a resurgence of songs that were nearly a decade old.

The rebrand worked. And it wasn't an accident.

Here's what it actually signals - and why it matters far beyond pop music.

Your audience will tell you what your brand is.

Are you listening?

This is the part most brands get wrong. They spend months building a brand strategy internally - the mood boards, the mission statements, the typography decisions - and then push it outward, hoping it sticks. Larsson did the opposite. The internet told her exactly how it saw her: maximalist, summery, warm, a little nostalgic, full of colour. She listened, and she committed.

This doesn't mean you hand over creative control to whoever is loudest online. It means paying attention to what genuinely resonates and having the confidence to build on it rather than starting from scratch every cycle.

Aesthetic commitment is a strategy, not a finishing touch.

Once Larsson locked in the direction, her entire team moved in the same world. Makeup, styling, hair, stage design, album art, merch - everything spoke the same visual language.

Her makeup artist described how for years the aesthetic had "gone all over the place." The rebrand changed that. Every surface became consistent.

This is where most brand efforts fall apart. The strategy is there but the execution is fragmented. A brand isn't a logo. It's every single touchpoint, all saying the same thing at the same time. When that alignment happens, it doesn't just look good - it builds trust.

Old content doesn't disappear. It gets recontextualised.

"Lush Life" is nearly ten years old. It returned to the charts in 2025 because a fan joined Larsson onstage and knew every move of the choreography. That clip went viral. Suddenly an old song had a new moment - because the rebrand gave people a reason to go back and look.

A strong brand identity doesn't erase your archive. It gives everything you've ever made a new context to live in. For agencies, studios, and brands alike, this is worth remembering: the work you did three years ago can become your best-performing content tomorrow, if the frame around it is right.

Virality without strategy is a spike. With strategy, it's a launch.

The dolphin meme could have been a funny moment that faded in two weeks. For many artists, that's exactly what would have happened.

What made the difference was that Larsson and her team recognised it not as a punchline but as a signal - and built something real around it. The meme became the entry point. The rebrand became the destination.

This is the part that requires nerve. It's easy to ride a trend. It's harder to commit to it so fully that it becomes your identity.

But that commitment is exactly what separates a moment from a movement.

Your brand's next era might already exist in how people talk about you

What they save, what they share, what they keep coming back to. The question is whether you're paying attention - and whether you have the clarity to act on what you find.

That's what we do at Envole Studios. If you're ready to find your next era, you know where we are.