Accurx rebranded: what, why and how
‘A new Accurx logo?! A new tagline? AND a new spelling of their company name?!’
Yes it’s true: we’ve rebranded! 🙌 If you’ve recently visited our newly designed website or caught us on social media, you’ll probably have spotted some changes in the words and visuals we’re using to talk about ourselves.
But why was this needed? What was the purpose of our recent rebrand? Here we explain what the project was all about and share our lovely new branding.
Let’s start with ‘why’
Things move quickly at Accurx, from how we do research and learn from mistakes to how we develop software (ahem ✊ building a vaccine booking solution in just four weeks). That’s why lots of us work in eight week cycles — to keep us agile, responsive and on our toes to all the emerging needs and developments that come our way.
We’ve also grown lots over the last couple of years, not just in employee headcount and all the new teams and functions that have evolved over time, but also in the ways our software supports people right the way across healthcare.
With all that change — and lots of ambitions for the future — it’s fair to say that overseeing Accurx’s brand hasn’t always been at the very top of our to-do list. But of course, our brand needs to reflect all the changes, great and small, which makes Accurx what it is today. That’s why we’ve rebranded — so that our brand matures with us as we mature as a company, and we can effectively explain what we do and how we meet the communication needs of the health system.
What were the aims of Accurx’s rebrand?
- Bring our brand messaging and design up to date to reflect who we are today, where we’re going and to help us connect with our key audiences.
- Create a brand that can be the bedrock for all our marketing and communications.
- Equip everyone across our team with the resources to communicate effectively about the company.
How we did it
Before the establishment of the Communications team last year, our brand and comms had largely been managed on an ad hoc basis, without any central ownership.
That changed with the rebrand project. It gave us marketing and communications folk an opportunity to get a handle on how we communicate Accurx’s identity and tell a powerful and consistent story about ourselves. To do this, we had to take a bird’s eye view of Accurx, covering everything from our work culture and values to our products, our users and positioning.
Over the following months, we held brainstorming sessions, conducted user research and tested potential routes for the rebrand with users and others in the healthcare system. All of this helped us to better define who we are, what we do and how we should pitch ourselves. Rather than falling into navel-gazing, we knew that identifying and crafting a clear and distinct identity for ourselves had the power to improve and unify all of our future marketing and communications.
Naturally, part of the process of defining what our brand is also entailed defining what we’re not. We thought deeply about what makes us unique. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do too much soul-searching on this front due to the strength and distinctness of our company vision.
Whether you’re an Engineering Manager or a People Ops Partner, everyone at Accurx is familiar with the phrase ‘We believe healthcare is a communication industry’. This belief, which underpins both our company mission and vision, gave us a robust foundation for our refreshed branding.
So here’s our new branding…
Rebranding: our words
Before the brand project, both Accufolk and our users found that we weren’t always being consistent in our brand communications. One day, we might call ourselves a ‘British-born tech start up’, another ‘a healtech scale up’. We knew that, added up, all these little inconsistencies made a difference. They left people scratching their heads about exactly who we are and what we do.
So after lots of thought, feed-in and iteration, we’ve reworked our brand messaging.
Our new brand messaging includes: our mission and vision statements, our brand personality, tailored elevator pitches and our brand story. Having been informed by people right across Accurx and signed off, our new brand messaging enables us to communicate much better — and much more consistently — about ourselves.
Rebranding: our logo and designs
Our new logo is a real centrepiece of the recent rebrand. While lots of the parts of the rebrand took a few goes to get right, we hit upon our new logo relatively quickly.
With its two C-shaped ‘magnets’ facing each other, our logo is inspired by the drive to connect people across healthcare. It symbolises this connection and, particularly as integrated care systems form next month, it fittingly captures the need to bring together people, teams and services across healthcare.
Our brill Brand Designer Ineke also found us a great new brand font and developed this new set of iconography:
Rebranding: Our website
So, after months of work, we had our new branding worked up and signed off. What better place to send it out into the wild than with a nice new website? We gave our whole website a makeover, refreshing, merging and cutting pages to make the site more welcoming and user-friendly to visitors, improving the user journey for all.
To show you the difference, here’s a before and after of our homepage:
Our new website offers a much more seamless user journey. Where previously visitors to the website often had to click around to find the information they were looking for, it’s now far easier to navigate, whether you’re a patient or healthcare professional.
What’s next for Accurx’s brand?
Since the team launched our new Accurx branding earlier this month, we’ve been rolling out changes right the way across our marketing, communications and internal materials. In the brand team, we’re thrilled to have established the building blocks which teams across the company can take into pitches, products, emails, events… and EVERYTHING else. It’s been a really fun project, which has had the happy side effect of establishing us as a brand and comms function and building us as a team.
But this is just the start. Like I said earlier, change happens fast at Accurx and our communications need to keep up the pace. Now, we’ve got a solid team and a strong, consistent brand to make that happen!
Interested in joining Accurx? Check out our latest opportunities on our careers page!
