Rebranding: a short horror story
Once upon a time there was an awesome startup with a terrible name: PharmAssistant. Or PharmAssistance. No, PharmAssist! No wait, I got it, FarmAssistant! Or was it PhartAssistant… I’m not sure anymore…
Anyway… We started a year and a half ago, give or take, and since then our product, business plan and market strategy changed dramatically. But one thing failed to change along with the rest: our brand.
Besides being a long, hard to understand, vulnerable name, the logo itself was too cartoonish and didn’t communicate the values we wanted. But of course, in a startup there’s always something way more urgent to take care of, and the matter was dragged along for months.
First we thought about giving PharmAssistant a fresh face, buying us time to come up with a better name, but soon realised it would be a waste of energy and the delaying of an inevitable death. It was go big or go home.
Step 1 — The Name
Oh boy, finding names is always so hard. If only it was a child we could just name it Eugene or Mabel. But no, it had to be a company.
After countless brainstorming sessions, with outcomes like “Integrated Health Solutions Corp”, “Patient Engagement Management Inc.” or “Apps, Devices & Co”, we realised we weren’t in the 90’s anymore, and our name should reflect the value of our products, and not what they are per se. So we went to the core.
What do we do? We provide an overview of our users’ health, showing them all their health data in one intuitive timeline, integrating everything into one simple view. And as we do so, we bring value to all the players in the healthcare space, from insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies to the healthcare system itself, including every stakeholder in the equation. In short, we show you your health in one line, and we align all the stakeholders. We are a connecting line in the health space. We are Line Health.
Holy Jesus it felt like the chinese new year had drop by for a coffee. Getting to this name was painful, but there it was, and it was perfect. The hard part was done, now all there was left to do was mould it into a graphic form that represented what the name said. Easy as pie. Right?
Step 2 — The Logo
Yeah… you were wrong there pal… it’s not as easy as pie (even though “pie” is a very complex number). I’m gonna go all out here and say that putting a logo together is 10 times worse than finding a name.
Ok, maybe if you’re making a logo for the village’s fish stand it becomes an easier process. It’s not your fish stand. It doesn’t have to convey anything, it’s just “Frank’s Stand: fresh fish all week”. As long as it has the colors that Frank chose, Frank is happy, and you’re happy. It’s not your fish stand. You don’t have to stand behind it everyday as if it was your skin.
But when it is in fact your skin, nothing is ever good enough. And when there’s a whole team involved everyone has their own idea of what the skin should be.
Now if you try the direct and obvious approach of including everyone in the process, asking for feedback at every step and including everyone’s opinions in the design, you’re gonna have a bad time. Guess which one we tried first?
Yep. That’s what we did. For weeks. We constantly sat down with everyone and let them choose the way, from the concept to the shape, the alignment, the font, the colors… even though in a screen with over 80 different shades of blue they only saw 5. The result was an array of Frankenstein’s that made no sense.
But it didn’t matter, it was a team project, something as huge as a rebranding simply had to have everyone involved. Well, we got one thing right: it had to have everyone involved, but not that way. In order to win the race we had to stop.
And so we did. I gathered everything we had done so far and took it to the ones who knew how to do it: the ones that had gone through it and could tell me how they got there, and the one that does it for a living like no other, our dear Pedro Monteiro. I showed him what we had and he confirmed it: we had a Frankenstein. The brilliance of this man and the most awesome thing about this meeting, is that he didn’t give me any answers. Instead, he got me asking the right questions. Suddenly, the path was clear.
The next day I asked the team to write. Anything. Anything and everything they wanted to write about the company. What it meant to them, what was it we were doing, how we were doing it, what made us different, how we should present ourselves, anything. And so they did. I took their nameless texts, read them, and put them together in a manifesto. All their ideas, opinions and inputs were in that manifesto. Something as huge as a rebranding simply had to have everyone involved.
After reading, re-reading and dissecting those words, it was more than obvious who all of us felt we were, and how the world should see us. From there, the logo created itself, and it had been there all along.
We are full of energy and life, we are young, driven, fearless and determined to change the game — hence the vibrant green circle; and we bring a simple solution to the complicated health space — as the tagline shows. So in one image we have “life”, “health” and “simplicity”, and that’s exactly what we are and what we offer. Spot on.
I know it sounds like a hard process to get to something so simple, but I assure you it was a lot worse than you can imagine. Any (good) designer will tell you that less is more, and simplicity is the hardest thing to reach. And anyone in this team will tell you that now we all work in a company with a strong identity, with a brand that everyone relates to and feels part of.
So if you’re thinking about doing a rebranding, I’ll go ahead and light up a candle for you, but I’m sure you’ll get there. Just remember to ask the right questions. It’s that simple.
If you are going through a rebranding yourself, or just have something to say, please drop me a line, I’m always available for a chat!
