As the case study for today’s article, let’s look at the The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. There’s been buzz this month in the luxury press about The Ritz-Carlton’s new rebranding initiative, which, like most such initiatives, focuses on color choice (a new light blue) and logo (an improved redraw of its iconic lion and crown illustration that is more friendly to digital reproduction and resizing). But to get at what makes up a brand like The Ritz-Carlton, which is perhaps the most frequently-cited exemplar of customer service in today’s business world, we need to look elsewhere, including at how its style of customer service has evolved over the years, and, speaking more generally, how any company, by updating its customer service style, can keep its brand in touch with what customers–customers of all ages, including the important and very informal Millennial generation of customers–are looking for today.