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Engaging Employees While Launching a New Brand

APRIL 4, 2012: Jen Joly, Director of Marketing and Communications

Branding Leadership

The fact that you are here, on bluespiremarketing.com, means that you are likely aware of our recent rebrand. If not, please let me welcome you! Over the past 6 months, we have been hard at work uniting Priority Integrated Marketing and Dowden Custom Media as BlueSpire Strategic Marketing. Those of you who have gone through a rebrand no doubt understand the immense amount of work that goes into these projects.

While so much rebranding work is focused on announcing to the external world that you’re better than ever … marketers should not dismiss the importance of internal audiences. I’ll walk you through phases you may go through in a rebrand and show you how we worked hard to engage our own staff.

Phase One – Research

During the research phase, we included staff from across all departments in interviews. While we were interviewing select clients and assessing the marketplace, we were gathering valuable insights from these staff members – our brand team.

Phase Two – Creating Our Voice

As the findings were being compiled, it was clear that we would likely be selecting a new name. We let staff know that a new name was a distinct possibility and invited them to submit ideas within a set of criteria. We have a very creative group of people and many great names were submitted. (On a personal note, I was not prepared for the amount of legal work selecting a new name would bring! Have you done this? If so, maybe we should start a support group together!)

Once the research phase was complete, we presented the research to our brand team. The findings did ultimately conclude that we should select a new name. So, we also presented ideas along with reasoning and potential key messaging. We asked for the brand team’s feedback. Responses were quite positive for the name and key messaging that we ultimately selected, BlueSpire. We adopted various feedback from this meeting into the new brand as it began to take shape.

After the executive team made the final decision to go with BlueSpire, we also invited our entire design team to submit logos for us to consider. We have a very talented team and were blessed with many great designs to choose from.

Phase Three – Launching Internally

Our staff outside of the brand team was very excited about the buzz they were hearing from the brand team … and we were excited to share with the rest of the staff our new name, brand and key messaging. We selected a small group of staff from the brand team to serve as the internal launch committee. The internal launch committee came up with some really fun ideas to make the announcement even more inspiring (I should mention inspiration is a core attribute of our new brand)!

All day anticipation. Our internal launch committee decided to launch the brand approximately 6 weeks prior to the full public rollout. All staff was invited to a meeting on an afternoon in February. On that day, we had balloons in our new brand colors inflated with a small slip of paper with our new logo inserted into them. Each employee had a balloon at their desk, held down by a small stone with the word “inspire” engraved on it. In the morning, we emailed staff and asked them to bring their balloon to the room where we were holding the meeting (in Minneapolis and Montvale – our remote staff received a package earlier that week labeled “Do Not Open Until 3 p.m. on Feb. 15.”).

Once staff arrived (as our remote staff dialed in), we offered champagne and non-alcoholic beverages. Small thumb tacks were passed around and we held a countdown … 3-2-1 … then everyone’s balloons went “POP!” The new logo was revealed on the slip of paper now exposed. We served cake with our logo on it (check out how similar our locally produced cakes in Minneapolis and Montvale were on our new Facebook page). We gave a small presentation sharing some of the research and work that went into the new brand.

Welcome to the brand kits. We used the delivery of our new business cards as an opportunity to wow people with a small package that included the cards along with our new notepad and a new BlueSpire pen. This week, to commemorate the start of our new week as BlueSpire employees, all staff members are receiving a new BlueSpire mug.

Phase Four – Launching Externally

We had another committee of brand team members who helped contribute ideas for rolling out the new brand to clients and prospects. In addition to ideas, a few stepped up to help assist with some of our teaser communication about the new brand that would go out to get people excited about our announcement.

Phase Five – Ongoing

We will continue to place a high value on engaging staff with the brand. As we roll out new marketing and branding initiatives, staff members will play a critical role.

Employees and the external world have shown a positive reaction to our new brand, which obviously means this marketer is sleeping well now. Have you recently engaged employees with a branding or marketing project? Any tips to share?

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