What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video I'm going to break down the rebrand of Mailchimp in this brand
strategy case study so you can understand the why and the
how behind a successful rebrand and leverage this effective strategy for
your own brand or for your clients.
now if you're new to the channel and you're interested in building brand
strategy for yourself or for your client then you're in the right place hit that
subscribe button and hit the notification bell
and I'll let you know when we've got new videos coming out now rebranding is an
extremely effective strategy but it's also a necessary strategy sometimes
as well if you consider that most businesses that go into the
marketplace don't have any real strategy at all now
of course most businesses fail within the first one to
three years but there are a lot of businesses that do gain traction
despite the fact that they don't have any kind of brand strategy and when they
get some revenue coming in the door that's when they realize that
you know they don't have a clear idea of who their audience is they don't have
a clearly defined differentiator or positioning strategy within the market
and they don't have a messaging strategy either so
when they do get revenue coming in the door that's when they get the
opportunity to take another look at their brand so that is why rebranding
is sometimes very necessary for brands who have gained a little bit of traction
in the market but they don't really have that focus but in this video I want to
dive into the rebrand of Mailchimp so you can understand some decision making
that goes on within a rebrand and look at how a successful brand like
Mailchimp navigated those difficult decisions now
20 years ago two guys by the name of Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius
saw an opportunity in the market now they were entrepreneurs they had been
long-time entrepreneurs and had actually come from
entrepreneurial backgrounds and entrepreneurial families so
they understood small business and although they started to use
email for their businesses they realized that there wasn't a software out there
that catered to small businesses the email software that
was available back then tended to cater for larger organizations
it was clunky it was difficult to operate it
wasn't very user friendly and it certainly wasn't affordable so
that was their opportunity in the market they wanted to cater to small businesses
they wanted to give them an email software that they could use
that was user friendly and that was cost effective and that's
how Mailchimp was born now as I said the two founders did have
an entrepreneurial background they understood the needs
and the wants and the challenges of small business owners
and they stayed nimble with their business they were able to add features
when their customers needed they were able to help them to grow
help them to evolve but over time their customers started to evolve in leaps and
bounds and they started to realize that they
needed more than just an email platform and
that was the demand coming from their customers they were evolving past
just using email and they wanted to go out and to build
an actual brand and they wanted Mailchimp to evolve with
them in that journey so Mailchimp didn't reposition for the
sake of repositioning and they didn't reposition
for the sake of innovation either now of course the founders
were pretty innovative and they did embrace innovation but that's not why
they evolved that's not why they repositioned now when you think of a
lot of brands that reposition many of them reposition because
they're not really connecting with who their audience is their audience is not
responding to the messaging that they're putting out there to
their brand identity and they want to refresh that to
you know focus in on who their audience is and communicate with them better
and resonate with them better but Mailchimp evolved
from a different source they evolved from the demand
of their customers their customers were happy with them they were
vibing with their customers they were connecting and resonating with their
customers but their customers had evolved past simple email
communication and they were bringing Mailchimp along
for the ride they were asking Mailchimp to set the path forward and to evolve
with them now this insight all came about because
Mailchimp has a great relationship with their
customers they reach out to them on a regular basis they ask them questions
they survey them and the insights that they got back from
their customers was that they didn't see Mailchimp as an email provider they saw
them as a tool to help them be more professional to
help them seem more professional to their customers and
Ben Chestnut the CEO said that when they landed on that insight
it was a feeling of liberation all of a sudden they
didn't have to stay in the niche of an email software provider their customers
saw them as a tool to help them be more professional and
that opened up the doors and it opened up the possibilities of what they
could be but long before that interview with the New York Times
and long before any announcement of any rebranding or repositioning
Mailchimp has had already started to subtly change
their messaging on their website so their website was
previously all about email it was all about
send better email and the messaging started to change slightly so it went
from send better email to build better brands and sell more stuff
so it was less about the micro less about
the email more about the macro more about
helping them to solve their everyday marketing and business problems so
that was the first sign that Mailchimp were
repositioning themselves and rebranding was through that subtle shift
in their messaging now although the Mailchimp visual identity had been
pretty dated that wasn't the reason behind the
rebrand the reason behind the rebrand was
their evolution they had evolved past their email niche
and they needed to take a new position they needed to
take a fresh position in the marketplace so it wasn't about the visual identity
it was more about the strategy what they wanted to be seen as
in the marketplace they needed to shift their positioning they needed to
shift their differentiation strategy and they needed to consider
their existing customers while appealing to
a broader customer base so that was the main reason behind
the repositioning it wasn't about refreshing their brand identity
they just took that as an opportunity to do both at the same time
now Mailchimp has always been a brand oozing personality they've always been
fun they've always been quirky and that's been part of the reason that
they were able to develop that really good relationship
with their clients before the rebrand now before the rebrand their revenue was
upwards of 400 million dollars and no doubt that
they involved some advisors when it came to the
rebrand and for sure the hot topic of
conversation would have been around their strategy
and their personality and their tone of voice and you can be guaranteed
that they had some suits in the room some advisors telling them that they
needed to be more of a sophisticated brand in order
to appeal to a broader audience and position
themselves as a marketing platform but Mailchimp as
I said it's always been a brand steeped in personality and that's what
they held on to they took that personality into the rebrand
and they continue that fun and quirky personality and
characteristics and that fun and quirkiness
from their personality comes across in their employer branding as well
Ben Chestnut once said that I only hire weirdos and I
let them fail all the time so essentially he's
creating and has created an environment of
creativity and self-expression and that must be
liberating for the brand representatives that work
there and there is this sense within the brand that
the staff there they want to be there they want to be working for that brand
and they feel a sense of purpose in the work that they do now if their
brand personality was a hot topic of conversation
in the boardroom with the c-suites then you can be guaranteed that their visual
identity was also a sticky topic as well because you
had a lot of technology companies at the time the likes of
Google and Spotify and Pinterest all pulling back from this funky typography
and falling into line with more of a Sans Serif more of an
ordered look and feel about their brand and
Mailchimp rebranded at a similar time and
that is what the norm was during that time that is what the trend was
especially when you see the likes of Google and the
likes of Spotify really rebranding and becoming more
conservative the pressure would have been on the business owners
to follow suit and to be more conservative especially considering
where they were going they were going into a bigger market they wanted to
appeal to a broader audience so the pressure
definitely would have been on there to be a lot more conservative with their
brand identity and that would have brought up the topic
of conversation about Freddie The Chimp now Freddie would have
been an absolute shoo-in for the chop and if the c-suites
had their way you definitely would have seen Freddie
fall by the wayside but the owners stayed loyal
to the brand identity as well as the personality and Freddie is still front
and center in the brand identity they have tweaked the icon slightly
but there he is front and center representing the brand so
again this comes back to the owners and their belief in the brand that they
initially built and the loyalty to those customers
and what helped to build a relationship with those customers
and they stayed true to that and their personality
and their tone of voice and their visual identity although it has changed
although it has evolved they still have their roots in
what made them successful in the first place
now the visual identity today is a lot more modern
than the visual identity before the rebrand the visual identity before the
rebrand definitely needed a lot of work but they kept a lot of
those characteristics going forward in the new identity and as I said they
went against the grain of all the other technology companies and you really do
feel that fun and energetic vibe from their visual identity certainly
with their Cavendish Yellow which is their primary colour palette and
they do have a secondary color palette with which is a lot more flexible but
it's still very fun and quirky as well and with their
typography Cooper Light again they've really kind of given the
middle finger to all of those other technology companies who went the
conservative route and they decided to go the other way and
they have this fun and quirkiness in their typography as well and
their illustrations are again going out on another level with that fun and
quirkiness they're almost borderline uncomfortable so you know
they're really bringing that fun and quirkiness and
those characteristics and that personality
right throughout their brand identity now rebranding is a delicate exercise
at the best of times but it's even more delicate when you have a loyal customer
base now if the owners hadn't listened to you
know the c-suite representatives or the advisors about
the rebranding for sure the outcome would have been completely
different but this brand and this rebrand wasn't driven by a
bigger slice of the pie it wasn't about getting
more market share it was about evolving to meet the needs of their customers so
their customers were very much a part of that rebrand
and very much considered at every step of the rebrand so it's a
really important case study when it comes to rebranding if you're rebranding
for yourself or rebranding for a client especially if
there's a loyal customer base involved then look towards Mailchimp
look towards this rebrand as an example of how to do
it successfully but I'd love to hand it back over to you
I'd love to hear from you about your experience
when it comes to rebranding have you rebranded for yourself or have you
rebranded for a client have you come across any
sticky situations or conversations with the leadership team about where to
bring the brand and how to consider the existing
existing customer base I'd love to hear your experiences if you've got any
questions or challenges in relation to rebranding let me know in the comments
below I'll do my best to answer all of those
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I said I'd love to hear from you about your experiences
your challenges I'll do my best to answer all of those until next time
brand like a master and I will see you in the next video!