Rebranding for Sub-scale SaaS: What / Whether / When / How (2 of 2)

This is the second of two posts focused on rebranding initiatives in SaaS businesses. Part 1 explored whether / when to consider undertaking a rebrand project. Part 2 will offer lessons learned regarding how to manage such projects with as little pain as possible.

We’ve found critical themes for those entrusted with ensuring successful rebranding / renaming initiatives:

1. Manage the Stakeholders
2. Own the Project
3. Leverage partners

Manage the Stakeholders

As outlined earlier, rebranding initiatives are strategic, creative, and high stakes. Unsurprisingly, they can also be extremely emotional for people. With that in mind, the most under-appreciated and overlooked aspect of these projects is managing stakeholders’ expectations every step of the way:

• Start Senior / Start Small: Although it will eventually be important to garner broad support for the brand direction, it’s best to start small. Working with a close, senior team makes the process go faster by securing early buy-in among execs about “what good looks like.” It also allows the Project Leader to tap this group for feedback and key decision-making. This will be necessary to avoid delays and backsliding later on.
• Build a Coalition of the Willing: To build early buy-in for a rebrand, a cross-functional Brand Ambassador group can work wonders. The Brand Ambassador program gives select employees from across the company an insider's view on deliverables. They are not veto-holders in the process, per se, but it helps bring them along and incorporate their views. They can then credibly advocate for the brand when it's time to launch internally. Be sure that all departments are represented and feel heard. Silos are the enemy of good brand roll-outs.
• Anticipate the Emotion: It's natural for employees to be emotionally attached to the business’ previous brand and / or to have strong opinions about what the future brand should look & feel like. Figure out where the centers of influence are in your company and choose representatives from each of those centers to be involved in the process. Failure to do so runs the risk of a hard-to-manage emotional response from the team later.
• Honor the Past: Make sure to honor the legacy of the previous brand. Emphasizing the years of prior success is crucial. It is also a ton easier to leverage foundational aspects of the legacy brand, rather than starting completely from scratch. Honoring legacy should also be about preserving brand equity where possible. For example, a company may have historically used a bright and "ownable" color. Keeping such a color, but migrating to a more mature shade may be a way of celebrating the past while also keeping with a new identity.
• Expect the Eagerness: New branding can be like catnip for a team whose prior brand had historically underperformed. And, left unchecked, they will inevitably jump to using brand artifacts (logo, type treatments, color palette) in some very “creative” ways. While this comes from enthusiasm, it must be managed to retain the standards and integrity of the new brand.
• Communicate Proactively: It’s easy to get focused internally, but don’t forget about your customers! Communicate the rebrand to your most important clients and partners before it goes public to avoid them feeling blindsided. Remember to rinse-and-repeat in terms of explaining the WHY behind the rebrand (why are we doing this // why customers should care).

Own the Project

With so much attention on these high-profile, company-wide initiatives, flawless project execution is table stakes. Project Leaders (who are typically, but not always, Marketers) need to be bomb-proof in how they manage these projects. Below is a quick-hit checklist of items that Project Leaders should diligently follow:

• Project tracking: Avoid the chaos of multiple spreadsheets! Instead, commit to using a single tracker to keep everything—brand artifacts, roadmap, audit, messaging, rollout dates—in one place to ensure clarity and ease of tracking.
• Schedule management: Establish a project schedule early-on; and update stakeholders relentlessly on changes / interdependencies. There WILL be changes and slippage!
• Buffer time: Always include time-padding in all launch activities to avoid late-night scrambling and snap-decisions. Note: timelines for these projects are generally not well understood. Be extra vigilant to educate on this front.
• Planned interdependencies: Map out and pre-manage the countless interconnected parts of this project. For example, plan for a dip in site traffic when relaunching a website and be prepared to attack that shortfall ASAP with an experienced SEO expert / dedicated person to make edits and optimize the site (whether it be blog posts, case studies, product videos or even PR efforts). Also, be sure to have tracking in place and baseline your old site to mark progress as the new site builds back momentum.
• Approval commitment: Late decisions can have a domino effect on the entire rebrand process—don’t underestimate the need for timely approvals. Treat every round of approvals as a major milestone and impress upon decision-makers the degree to which other stakeholders are relying on their upholding their responsibility in a timely manner. But…the need to make timely decisions always needs to be balanced with taking enough time for proper reflection. Knee-jerk decisions just to keep a timeline can deliver subpar outcomes. Taking time to simmer is well worth it.
• Embargo…THEN Launch: There’s a tendency to want to tease bits of the rebrand – bad idea. Embargo everything until ready to go all at one official launch. Otherwise, you risk confusing the market. The same goes for internal releases. Sure, it’s fine to share the finished brand to the team via a presentation, but no one gets swag or other assets until the launch is officially released.
• Post-launch checklist: Create a plan for all the items to be updated in follow-up to the brand launch. Prioritize mission-critical things (e.g. email domains) over nice to haves (e.g. a properly rendered logo for the internal Google drive). This may well be the most often overlooked aspect of rebrands – don’t sleep on the Post-Launch Check-list!

Leverage Partners

Sub-scale SaaS businesses typically look outside of their organizations for assistance on a rebrand / rename from creative experts. The success of a rebrand depends on a productive working relationship with these valuable specialists. A few points to help that collaboration go smoothly:

• Trust Them: Any partner worth their salt will bring rigorous processes, fresh perspectives, new ideas, and bold brand options for your consideration. Give your partner room to ply their craft; don’t micro-manage. Feedback during a rebrand should center on brand strategy, not design execution. Aim to guide the “why,” leaving the “how” to the creative experts. If you find yourself saying things like, “I’d like that line to be thicker,” just…STOP!
• Be Accountable: The best thing you can do for your partner is provide clear, timely, consistent feedback, with one voice on behalf of the company. Your feedback can make or break the project; take that responsibility seriously. Conversely, exposing your partner to multiple different / conflicting points of view will typically result in a worse end product (you’ll get a camel, not a horse). Take the time and make the effort to get internal stakeholders aligned BEFORE providing feedback to the partner.
• Educate Them: Don’t expect your creative partner to understand your business or end-market. Commit to educating them on your industry, competitors, and trends. This is an investment worth making; it enables your partner to understand the ethos of your brand, not just what colors and fonts you might like.
• Blend Art and Science: Remember that you are relying on your partner for ideas and execution – not project management. That is your job. The blend of art & science also encompasses things like preserving SEO as you build a new site, and ensuring your vendors are thinking through practical matters like the impact of SEO loss with the new navigation. The blended expertise of your vendors will give you a better outcome, and may even educate your vendors for future work. In these ways, you must endeavor to blend art and science.

On a parting note, it is worth flagging one more key behavior in support of successful rebranding initiatives – always remain open to possibilities. When organizations are open to taking risks with new directions, bold departures from the past, and creative ways to envision their brand, they tend to make thoughtful brand decisions that drive impactful business results.

Conversely, being closed-off from considering options tends to be self-limiting. This stifles creativity and yields sub-optimal results. This is what happens when businesses:

• Refuse to even explore the possibility of a rebrand / rename
• Play it safe by shying away from design choices that feel uncomfortable
• Set the bar too low in terms of imagining a brand they can uniquely OWN

I’ll close with this quote from one of our portfolio companies that executed a highly successful rebrand and rename:

“We reluctantly agreed to the name exploration, but we weren’t convinced we’d get a winner until the first round of suggestions was presented. While many were not right for us, the possibilities were evident. We later admitted to each other that we didn’t actually think we’d change the name until we had that emotional response to the first round. We are so glad we gave it a shot.”

Good luck, everyone, it’s worth giving it a shot.