It might be time to revolutionize your brand

0:00Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the factory floor. My name is Nick Lden. I am joined by Corey Haynes and Zach Stevens, my partners in crime, though we don't commit any. And uh today we have something super special to talk about which I'm very excited about because Zach will be imparting his wisdom onto us as we absorb uh everything we need to know about branding. Specifically, we're talking about branding options and like rebrand options is maybe a better verbiage for that. Not specifically just branding, but rebranding. >> So a lot of times when we're working with clients, they like they want to rebrand, but that could mean a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people. But uh Zach has kind of come up

0:52with a little bit better of a way of sorting out what those types of rebrands are. So Zach kind of can you give me like the why where this came out of how this these three types of options were like birthed in your mind and how it came to life? >> Yeah. When we've had clients come to us that want to improve their design, but they're not necessarily looking for a complete brand overhaul. And so it got me thinking there's a spectrum to which everybody is going to fall on as far as how intense and how much depth is going to be included in their rebrand. And I have it listed into three buckets. There are revolutions, evolutions, and then optimizations. So figure revolutions and optimizations are at the complete

1:42opposite end of the spectrum, and evolutions fall somewhere in the middle. Um, and I did this because I wanted to have something that was pocketed and readily available to send clients to give them an idea of what are your expectations for this. Are you looking for complete total transformation or are we just looking to use the assets that you currently have but in a improved way? Not necessarily changing them but uh focusing more on refined execution. And I feel like clients usually have once you kind of break it down, they tend to have an idea of what type of rebrand they're looking for. Is there anything that you would do like outside of their uh goal where you would kind of like sift through and be like, "Yeah, I

2:27think you are in a good position to just do an optimization or you're in a position like what are the markers you look for? Like, no, no, I really want to hold on to that. I don't want to lose that in a rebrand." And so like this is more of an evolution or an optimization than a total revolution. >> Yeah. I Well, we have our our 73 point audit that we run clients through as well. And a lot of that details the branding assets that I would say are key. So it's stuff like does your logo function really well like it's supposed to. Is it simple, distinct, and um appropriate for the brand? Do you have a defined color palette that you use consistently? Do you have a defined typographic palette that you use

3:04consistently? Do you have uh consistent graphic visuals that all feel thematic and like they've come from the same place that they carry the same visual characteristics regardless of whether it's a printed PDF or on your website? Um do you have defined icon libraries? And that ranges as well from things like more utilitarian icons like things that you'd see on a button all the way to very illustrative ones that you could use in place of uh in place of your product sometimes like more abstracted elements and I think and then pattern and texture as well. So like do you have brand patterns that you use to kind of unify as a backdrop to all of your other material? And then there's cool like, do you have good accented elements that we

3:52can bring in to add a little bit of fun and dynamism to your your layouts? >> Dynamism? That's a word I never heard. Is that a real word? That's awesome. >> Dynamism. >> Yeah, dynamism. >> Is that different than just dynamic? >> It'd be a version of it. >> It is to be dynamic. >> Yeah, it is to be dynamism. >> Dude, you guys are so schooled. Um, okay. Let's get back to it. Sorry. Sorry for the the point being, we check those things and of course offer our suggestion as far as we think based on this criteria that you are in need of major overhaul or you have a lot of these things. They're just probably not used very well. And you know, maybe there's some stuff we want to keep, there's some stuff we want to

4:40add. That'd be that evolution area where it's somewhere in the middle. um compared to optimizations like you have good things they're just not executed well. >> Can can you show us like those differences and that way like someone can kind of put themselves in the client seat and be like oh and like you know you'll send them a loom like hey here are the types of of differences and kind of what we're evaluating kind of just show them that >> um so we can look at it. So we have our three options here. They are Revolution. So this one you can see here. It's like it doesn't even look like the same brand. If I zoom in, this is what we did for Ruya. So this is what they look like before. They didn't even have the same name

5:24anymore. And then they became this. So vastly different as far as like the the colors that we're using, the type faces, the patterns, and the the visual themes that are applied to this compared to this one. Pretty much nothing's off the table here when you're going down the revolution route >> all the way to name >> all the way. >> We renamed them. Yeah. >> Mhm. Then you have an evolution, which is where you keep some stuff, but then you add some things that uh you know, maybe we're missing. HOA Life was actually the first client that we had where I came up with this idea of doing something like a really really quick creative direction that maintained some stuff like, you know, they were really big on their

6:08logo. Like we don't want to change your logo at all. Great. Let's not change your logo, but let's add pretty much everything else around this change. The typography is different. The colors are similar, but they're a little bit updated. you know, we really just stuck with the blues and then changed the orange to be a little bit um less red and intense and then added things like, you know, the icon libraries and the the motif of putting their logo as a backdrop within some photos and the gradients. So you can see here it's like it maintained the color palette a little bit and then the logo and their name but it looks really well improve or there's a lot of improvement that was done in here and we added some stuff as well

6:51like these squiggles and graphic marks to add that dynamism that we were talking about right and lastly we have an optimization so sensible I think is the best example of this that we had done where they had really good brand assets like their colors were great they had a good logo good type faces is really good brand patterns, but you can see here like this layout's kind of boring and there's a lot of harsh contrast between the patterns that were here and the text. So, it made it really difficult to read and they didn't have a lot of structure as far as like well this is when we used this type size and um you know secondary type face colors. So, we fixed that and just cleaned things up quite a bit. We made the

7:32patterns still visible but more subdued. uh and general cleanup is the the route to go here where we're taking like I said what you currently have but making it feel better. So we didn't change the type faces here um didn't change the color palette but more of a focus on things like layout hierarchy and execution. Can you like Okay, just again from like the client or potential client like shoes. Let's say I'm like, oh, I I would like a revolution. I want like I would love the all new stuff, but I'm also concerned about speed and execution. Like I want to move quickly and so I that would make me lean towards an optimization or maybe even an evolution. Um, can you talk about like the differences in like how long one takes

8:22versus the other and like kind of the routes that you take to get those executed and completed? So, doing the the the trade-off as these go up is time or um a loss in builtup brand equity. So, some of the the trade-offs that I list if you were going to be doing a um a revolution is that you're going to spend a lot of time replacing your current brand because it means that everything that you had created in the past, like your website, your collateral, that's all going to be redone. You know, you don't want to have two separate brands living out there in the wild, especially when they look so vastly different. It's it's not going to make any sense. H um you're asking for timelines as well. So the timelines to actually get the the

9:11actual branding part done like building those foundational pieces and get in the creative direction for us takes two to four weeks depending on how much you're looking to do. That gap in there is usually because they're doing something like naming which takes a lot of feedback to get done and that lengthens the process quite a bit. Um, evolutions are a lot quicker where it's a it's one to two weeks because we relegate that specifically to exercises on a website hero section. Um, and it's it's a far more condensed route and optimization is immediately, you know, like we we start working on stuff and are just applying good design skills to the assets that you have and there isn't a gap. You know, you start with what you

9:59currently have. You can keep your existing collateral, although you probably will want to update it to have it match the new way that things are executed. Like in the case of Sensible, um the the patterns uh intensity was something that we scaled back quite a bit as far as its usage and that's something that should be consistent throughout all your collateral. >> Right. Okay, that makes sense. >> I have a question. when um I think like you said it's it's usually like a big lift for someone to go through a brand revolution. Um so for clients that are like, "Oh, can we just do an an evolution?" What are the things that you're like, "Oh, there's this, this, and this. We should really push for a

10:42revolution because this, this, and this just aren't going to cut it." Yeah. Well, I think that if you if you never took the time to formulate and think about your branding more concretely, like what do you want people to feel and what are some things that inspire you and how can we take that and apply that to your brand? Those are good indicators that it's time to take this more seriously or if you're growing quite rapidly like you know maybe you finally um you know you nailed product market fit and this is something that you could potentially see having a um an exit in you know 3 years or something like that. do it now because otherwise you're going to end up with the dirty dish problem of we have a bunch of stuff like mismatched

11:27hodge podgeed collateral and website and now this company taking over is going to redo all of that. Whereas if you the sooner you start the better your chances of maintaining that continuity and actually building brand equity where people recognize your stuff >> um and you know they don't have to be told this belongs to Acme Co. Acmeico already has a visual language that makes it more easily identified in the context of your competitors. Or it might be a really good time to do it. If you had really good branding at one point, you know, maybe you went through this in the 2000s and then it's been 25 years and you haven't modernized anything, >> then it's time to uh give it more of a revolution and and

12:13revisit but extensively because >> you let those things go for too long and then they became stale, you know, they got they got put on ice. >> Yeah. Yeah, I was >> I was I was trying to think of of times too where we've seen like big companies who do have product market fit rebrand for some reason and do that that revolution style rebrand where it's not just a you know we've used terms before like oh it's not a rebrand it's a refresh or yeah you know there's like these kind of different terms to try to >> classify like how big of a change is happening but I'm wondering too kind of the strategic implications of when it's good to do a revolution true rebrand. Um there's a couple examples out there. I think like one

12:59that just came to mind recently was uh Verscell. Um Verscell is like a super super successful dev tool and like well-known brand in the space. And I remember actually when they were one of the uh not one of the first but um when they were first starting out and I was the head of growth at Barametrics, I did a demo call with them and their new CFO and back then they were called Zeit and everyone actually really liked the name Zeite and then they chose to rebrand I think maybe a year later this is probably like 2019 2020 something like that and they rebranded to Verscell. Um and that was more of like a strategic move. So walk me through a little bit more of the strategy side. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the case of someone

13:46like Versell, um, they probably changed their name because Zite is a German word and if they were expanding into English-speaking markets, it probably was very difficult to spell or, you know, cuz I'm assuming it was spelled zeit and which means, you know, site in in German, but Verscell is far more uh phonetic as far as its spelling um, and easy to understand. >> And you also have different tiers of these, right? So Verscell, I'm assuming they're not a publicly listed company yet, are they? >> No, but they're a high growth startup. >> Yeah, super super high growth startup. So when you do a rebrand like that and it comes out as polished as theirs did, um it signals quite a few things. A, you're here to play and you are going to

14:32compete at a really really high level. You know, it's it's a question of first impressions there where we're not standing shoulder-to-shoulder. We're a head taller. Just look at us, you know, like we know what we're doing very clearly and we have time to work on stuff like a rebrand like this or enough money to pay somebody to do it. There is also um PR plays as well. Um you know Uber uh had a they had some mishaps with their former CEO with with Travis Kalanick in the late 20 you know 201. Um, and so to move forward from that, when they took on a new CEO, they rebranded and, you know, kept the name Uber, but changed the visual language quite a bit so that it appeared less aggressive. And this is

15:25particularly because there were sexual harassment allegations. Um, so they wanted to make it appear a little bit more friendly. There's also reasons to do it in the context of something like that too where your old branding doesn't fit a global u expansion you know like that's one of and this doesn't necessarily fall into a revolution uh only but you know Amazon did this where they created their own type face because they needed something that could expand into Arabic that could expand beyond Latin characters it could do it could do um Chinese or Japanese and still all look and feel the same. So, I wouldn't necessarily consider that type change always a revolutionary thing. It's very expensive and but it's

16:11not always a a revolution. So, >> does that help? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I have two other scenarios that triggered um this live stream too is one uh like positioning changes um >> and here's hear your thoughts on that and like positioning not even just like oh we're we're changing our product completely positioning change doesn't have to be like a total product pivot but it could just be the way that you're trying to communicate >> what you do like I think of convert kit to kit for example example. Um, and number two was actually the other scenario was acquisitions either getting acquired or acquiring another company that you're rolling in and that's changing your product suite or product

17:00strategy. So, what about those two? >> Okay, so first one, um, a change in your positioning with ConvertKit. they they were changing their value proposition as well alongside their which you know it's part of the same thing with the positioning of you know being for creators who mean business and so if you look at their old branding it was far more Etsy you know arts and crafts like when you took a look at their visuals um didn't look like the creator OS that they were looking to create and you know when you have people like James Clear and Andrew Huberman Matthew McConna Hey, and Tim McGrath, you know, these really huge creators that use your tool to send out your stuff. And when your value

17:45becomes now about, well, we can help you, you know, go from turning your craft into a source of income, your perception has to change visually. They also had some issues as well with where their their visuals were a little it wasn't as systemized. And so that's why they started working with COD to do the brand visuals and they were changing their name, you know. So they were they had all the elements of yeah, you need a revolution. You're changing your name. You're changing your positioning. Your visual system is a little bit antiquated. It's time to create something for the next phase of your company. Maybe that's a good way of phrasing it is if you are entering into a new era, then a revolution might be in

18:26order. But it might not. It depends. It made it made me think of like uh I know for ConvertKit especially I've heard Nathan Barry their CEO talk about this where you know he started as basically just another email marketing tool right and then you start building and building building building you find product market fit uh you start expanding and now you're thinking a little bit more strategically about okay now like what is our strong suits it's automations oh no now we're going to loop in commerce oh now we're going to loop in landing pages and forms um and now it kind of like it went from just being an email marketing tool with good automations to like an entire suite of products for creators like I said that

19:05creator OS and sometimes I feel like all the connotations of what you do can be wrapped up in your name where when you hear convert kit you think of email tool with strong automations but now if you're trying to break out of that >> you need something like kit where it's like oh now it's an all-in-one or it has a whole suite of tools. Yes, changing the way people think about you. Airbnb had something really similar happen where they were trying to become a top contender and they needed a better brand that felt global and so they hired Design Studio out of London to make that happen. Um, same thing with Mailchimp but kind of like in a reverse way where they felt that they had become a little bit too corporate and stuffy and they

19:48wanted to go back to their roots a little bit but in a way that was very artistic. And so that's where you get things like, you know, the introduction of Cooper as their type face and these really funky images and sketches and doodles, but done in a very, very high-end tasteway. It's kind of like, you know, like high art where if it's done very poorly, it sucks, but if it's executed really well and you could see the cleverness behind it, you're like, I I really respect um what what they've done. >> Yeah. Uh, I was going to ask um because you mentioned earlier about uh like not enterprise but companies that are needing to have more polished brands for like you know raising money or selling or and I thought of a lot of the calls

20:35we've had with companies where they're like yeah our our >> ICP you know our we're selling to enterprise um and so we need to look a certain way and so we're like okay well you don't look like that now you know like we you know you're you got a big project on your hands to overhaul this whole thing. And I feel like there's a lot more push back on that than I would have expected. I'd say it's maybe 50/50. Like 50% of the time they're like, "Yes, we need to look different. We need to look more professional, more trustworthy." And then the other 50 are like, you know, it's like it's not a top priority. Like I'm worried about other things. Um, it seems pretty like universal that a lot of the anybody who

21:15is selling to enterprise needs to be very clean in their branding for the most part, very like high-end. And I need you to debunk that if it's not true because to me it seems true as a layman, a branding layman. I don't like the I think that the terms are misconstrued because what pe what people will say most often is we want to look professional and that term is not used well which is why I I don't include it in vocabulary that we put people on like do you want to feel masculine or feminine youthful or established um luxurious or uh economic you know I don't put professional in there Because professional is far more tact t tactical in the way that you like all it means is can you do your job you know like

22:08regardless of the how the day is going. Can you show up and and play? Fisher Price is a are they a professional brand? Yes. I trust them to make really good kids toys and to you know not use lead paint in the stuff that they're going to sell to kids. But do they look stuffy and corporate and you know like they have a stick up their butt? No. That they're all about the numbers? No. And I think that's the confusion people have when they say we want to look professional. So what you need to have with an enterprise brand because Intercom or Expensify or um let me think of some others here. Uh I mean that corporate Memphis was a huge thing for a long time. the the style of like oblong illustrative illustrative

22:59people. What you need is to have things buttoned up and consistent and displayed in a way that uses basic design principles. And then the flavor and the the spin that you put on it can vary depending on whether you want to be something that's a little bit more cutting edge or if you're trying to be very approachable and friendly. And that's where I think it's good design always, but the flavor that you assign to it can vary regardless of whether you're enterprise or mid-market or entry level. >> Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. >> Could we circle back to the acquisitions part cuz I'm curious about that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had another thought too which was just about to whether you are rolling up to another

23:43like rolling into another product or company or whether you're rolling something into you or if you're building more of like a suite or ecosystem >> you know I mean that's a topic in and of itself apart from just these three routes but um the the question is about brand architecture and how things play off of one another. Um, and there is a brand decision tree that my mentor Bernie Schroeder wrote about in his book Brands and that we've referenced quite a few times. Um, and it's a series of questions to ask like, you know, does this brand will it be owned entirely by the the brand that's acquiring it? If the answer is no, then it stays at Suns Cyber Brand. um is this company is a acquiring company interested in the business

24:36full-time or for long term? If no, then it maintains its own brand. Where it becomes a little bit more nuanced is is it a expansion of the offers like uh are you moving into a new market with it or perhaps a new vertical with the the thing that you're doing? in which case it would be very closely endorsed. That's the suggested route to go. If it's a reinforcement where it's like, "No, no, no. This just makes us makes the acquiring company a lot stronger." It'd be like if LEGO >> acquired a um what's a good example? Like if they acquired something like uh Magnetiles, you know, like it's similar, but it, you know, it just it's more of a reinforcement of what we do already, which is make make toys and specifically

25:23things that you build with. Um maybe there's like a wooden version of Legos out there somewhere that exists which would be a reinforcement, not a new product. The my favorite example of this is a brand like Kashi where Kashi is actually owned by Kelloggs and you know Kelloggs is notorious for making sugary you know >> crack cocaine cereal and Kashi was known for making very healthy cereal. So Kellogg's Kashi doesn't work because the value proposition is false. >> Sugar healthy. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. There's the through line is lost between Kashi and um uh Kelloggs. Coca-Cola did the same thing when they I mean they own a bunch of different beverage companies, but Pure Leaf Tea is the one that comes to mind uh for me

26:13where it's like it's owned by Coca-Cola, but you would have no idea. So sometimes brands will go through this when they are looking to be acquired because it it's a signal to the market like we're here to play. Look at how like we're nice, new, and shiny. It's like getting doled up before you go on a date, you know, like we're ready to be acquired. Take me take me to bed or acquisition. Acquire. >> It's true. Um >> I I think of examples like uh Atlassian for you know they just bought um the browser company >> they just bought the browser company too. Yeah. >> Mhm. Yeah. And uh you know they have a whole suite they've bought products like Trello Jira um I don't know a bunch of others. >> Yeah they have. And so for me when I

26:59think about the the reo framework of revolution, evolution or optimization, you know, it's like okay, does Atlassian do an optimization, evolution or revolution, or does the browser company in order to kind of fit the product suite or none altogether because they each have good distinct brands in the first place? Yeah, with the browser company, it' probably be something where it's the browser company's left on its own and it's just funded by Atlassian, but you saw this with Loom. You know, Loom up uh was formerly a allpurp brand and now they have transitioned their colors. >> Um not necessarily I wouldn't even call that an evolution or a optimization optimization. It was like, you know, they they changed the colors just a

27:44little bit. It's somewhere in between the optimization and uh >> it's like a pivot or something, >> an evolution category. Not even. It's just like >> sidestep. >> It's a minor tweak. It's like, >> yeah, >> minor tweak to have it fit the larger suite of brands. The thing there though is that Loom was already well constructed and branded and designed. So, and their design was very ubiquitous as far as um its application. Atlasian lucked out because they both had that same SAS aesthetic that is quite modular and that as long as the colors match, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the two companies. >> Um, so they had that going for them. >> Um, is was Cracker Barrel an a revolution, evolution, or optimization?

28:34somewhere between a revolution and an evolution because they kept a lot of the the makeup of the stores or the the restaurants but just, you know, updated them, made them a lot cleaner. Um, they added I'm pretty sure they changed the type faces. They added a couple patterns. They modernized their logo, which I still stand by. It was a good decision. I don't think they should have come back on it, but they got rid of some things that were very valuable, like the guy sitting in in the rocking chair. You know, that's something that's like if you're going to do this, you have to maintain the things that like this is what I mean by diminishing your brand equity. You know, the the thing you have to watch out for when you're doing a

29:12revolution is you have a bunch of stuff that's already built up. And when you get rid of that for no reason, then people are pissed, but you can be very like it's creative work, you know, like you can find a way to bring in that guy for from Cracker Barrel without having to be a part of the logo. or maybe he is part of the logo, but it's the expanded logo, you know, like the the full-fledged one that could go on posters and ephemera and t-shirts and things where it doesn't have to be super small, but then you have other ones in there. So, I think that was just a faux paw roll out and one small thing of like, could you just kept could you have kept the guy in there? If they'd kept the guy as part of their branding, there

29:49wouldn't have been any issues. >> Zach is woke. That's what we learned on this. Wasn't that like a whole woke thing? I don't even I was like I'm not even going to this >> say that I I think that's a a mass um >> hyperbole. It's a mass simplification and hyperbole on the on the side of on the right side of politics >> because if they'd kept the dude in with everything else like oh I mean they just made you know things a lot nicer and simplified >> they brought it back right they switch it back >> yeah they brought back their old logo but >> they just backpedalled completely like sorry I wonder how much they spent on that back pedal Crazy. Um, >> billions and billions of dollars.

30:40Millions. Not billions. Millions. Probably. >> Uh, Corey, anything left un unasked of our brand guru here? Probably a bunch of >> No, not not unasked, but if he has any comments on this, I'd be interested. But uh I know for example um Ryan Culp part of his acquisition playbook is to always do a rebrand. Sometimes it's not always a revolution, but it's usually always a evolution of some sort. And I remember that from his micro acquisitions course way back in the day that he uh that he created and that I bought and went through. And I always thought that was interesting because again he framed it always as like kind of marking the start of a new era for the company and the product and rolling that out with a bunch of new

31:30features to show that >> you're building momentum, you care, you're invested, >> and that you're listening to customers and you want to elevate the product. >> Um, and so I always like that because I never thought of it that way. Um, but I think it does really stick in people's minds. >> Totally. I mean, it's it's really similar to when people are selling their house. You know, that's actually when they go through the most amount of renovations. They're not changing the structure of the house, but they are putting a fresh coat of paint. They're perhaps getting some new furniture, making it look a little bit more updated. And it's no different than if you're selling a brand. Like, what you want? It's nice to get handed the keys

32:09to something that is functional and organized compared to something that is a mess. It's like just even something as simple as like this is our Figma website file and look at the style guide. You see, it's got all the components your design team could ever want to work with and it's going to be real easy for you to make updates to the same thing with the new website that we just built. You know, like you don't have to do that cuz it's arduous for someone to come in and have to like, you know, take over somebody else's mess. >> Yeah. Right. That's kind of his whole value prop. Like it using that same house analogy like his strategy was more, >> you know, finding the the dumpiest place on the block and then making it the

32:49nicest place on the block >> where he like sees the value in, okay, first we're going to do some like structural updates. Maybe we're going to add another bedroom. We're going to build a pool in there. We're going to fix up the front yard. And then we're also going to like do a interior remodel and we're going to put a fresh coat of paint on the outside. And then when they go to flip it again, all this new value structurally is reinforced by the aesthetic upgrades too. >> Yeah. To follow the analogy, I think a like an optimization in the context of a house would be like you clean things up and maybe put a new uh coat of paint on it. Probably hung some more furniture. It's things that don't require any kind

33:30of structural um >> demolition. Yeah. I wasn't even going to say it. Oh, you know what? Yeah, we'll follow that. It doesn't require any demolition to do those things. Whereas an evolution could include some where, you know, some of the stuff that you've made in the past has to get reworked. You know, like in the case of HOA life, it's like, well, you need to remake your entire website because we've changed your typographic palette, we've changed your color palette, we've updated your your positioning, we've updated your messaging. We're essentially the the only thing we're keeping is your color palette and your logo. So everything else is going to get touched. Um, and like in the context of a house, that

34:12might be something like, well, we're taking down some of the walls like cuz maybe they're moldy or they, you know, we're going to break down the wall that's separating the kitchen from the dining room to open up space. Um, and then we're going to repaint, reflo, and add new furniture on top of that. revolution is like down to the studs, you know, like we're we're changing everything but the foundation of the house and the like the wall layout and that's it. That which essentially means we're pretty much going to touch everything marketing related except for your product which can stay the same. >> I like that. >> Super great. Love it. Um, okay. I think we are at about a time to wrap up. We just want to say thank you to Zach for

35:01laying all that info out. Super super interesting. Uh, a lot of nuance in there. It's not all or nothing, people. You know, there's some half measures. I was I'm just kidding. Um, anyway, thanks for listening to the factory floor and we will see you next time. Peace.