How we pulled off an in-house rebrand in four months

Stage setting

Stepping into the position of Brand Lead at Rippling meant stepping into some choppy water. The executive team had mixed feelings, perceptions and objectives when it came to scope, budget, and deliverables:

• The state of the company name and mark

• The “creative process”

• What specifically I was there to do

Not a huge surprise.

What was a surprise—and a pleasant one—was the tight alignment the executive team had when it came to the company and product and what makes both so special. Things like:

• We solve problems with software, not by adding more employees

• As a product, Rippling is premium and powerful

• Rippling scales with our customers, and our brand should do the same

• We don’t just service hipster coffee and flower shops—we help (for example) mid-sized, midwestern manufacturing businesses, too

From my perspective, the latter situation canceled out the former, and my concerns were quickly alleviated. Call me an optimist.

Keep in mind that I was a Brand Team of one. We had a strategy partner to lean on, but beyond that I was filling the positions of captain and crew.

Here’s how that went…

Original audit of the previous visual identity system

Project plan in Asana, including stacked timelines

1/5

Final moodboard based on input from the executive team

Final, full positioning statement

Preliminary logo hand-sketches

With my team of two focused on the logo, I was able to center my attention on other visual assets while navigating a multitude of CMO and CEO requests. Stuff like:

• “Pick a color that I can see on a billboard from miles away.”

• “Every tech company uses cartoons these days. Pick a style that matches our product. High performance.”

• “Make sure our icons and fonts work well in both product and marketing.”

• “Do something cool with our paystubs.”

Before growing the team any further, I had progress to make...

WEEK 8

Building trust (again)

Seven weeks in startup time is like six months. So at this point I was feeling a lot of people buzzing around my desk, curious to see "cool creative stuff."

The buzziest was our CEO, Parker. Great!

See, he wasn’t used to having access to a creative team or exposure to the process. He was also eager (to say the least) to see his vision of the company translated into this squishy thing called “brand,” and he hadn’t been shown any tangible expressions to date.

I’m a worrier, and I was worried that Parker wasn’t sure I “got it.” The pressure was on, but it was a familiar feeling. I knew I had to keep cool and stay the course. But maybe I could offer Parker something in the meantime to show him I was listening.

Who is Rippling? I was going to answer that question visually.

Revisiting my notes to date, I zeroed in on four main items:

1. Our competition is either big, slow, and technologically dated (ADP), or nimble and modern but able to service only very small businesses (Gusto)

2. Our product is really, really powerful

3. Our product is really, really premium—but we don’t take ourselves too seriously

4. Ultimately, our identity needs to resonate with fast-growing tech and mid-sized companies from coast to coast and all the places in between

A stroke of inspiration: let’s convey how Rippling distinguishes itself from the competition through a simple visual metaphor.

Drill metaphor for Rippling's competitive position

WEEK 9

Building the brand team (part 2)

I needed to expand the contract team to help advance the many dimensions of the brand launch—far too much for just three people. From a team-building and management standpoint, my goal was to:

• Create excitement for the work by sharing a focused but not final vision

• Give the team creative skin in the game by letting them shape the foundational assets (within very specific boundaries)

With that in mind, I put together a team that included:

• Design director

• Motion designer

• Brand designer

• Product/web designer

• 2D illustrator

• Copywriter

• 3D illustrator

• Presentation designer

• Icon designer

• Production designer

The average hourly rate was $85, and we burned approximately $40,000 per month. Hours were tracked and reported weekly.

In my experience, a full, best-in-class rebrand—from logo to website—runs about $500,000. This one would ultimately come to about $250,000. I attribute those cost savings to the quality of the team and our ability to work seamlessly from many locations.

To keep this fully remote, contract team connected, we committed to a common set of tools from the beginning. The key was right-sizing for our needs, ensuring 100% adoption and no unnecessary complexity. Our arsenal included:

• Google Sheets for time tracking

• Google Slides for presentations

• Google Drive and File Stream for file storage and organization

• Adobe Creative Suite for obvious reasons

• Figma for web design

• Slack for real-time comunication

• Asana for project management

• Rippling for payments

Assembled and equipped, we were ready to make a brand...

Final brand snapshot in eight-box visual framework

WEEKS 13 – 15

Launching the new brand (internally)

The date of the internal launch was set to coincide with the Rippling holiday party. Our goal was to get everyone in the company hyped. To that end, we had to put ourselves in the shoes of all employees. Which is to say, we needed to think—and speak—like engineers and salespeople.

So obviously we created a slide presentation. We made it breezy (10 slides) and covered just the essentials:

• What’s changing

• Why it’s changing

• Why it’ll help us scale

For added inspiration, we created a sizzle video. There’s nothing like a good sizzle video to get employees on board with a rebrand.*

Play video1:15

Internal sizzle video to get employees excited and inspired.

* With a startup, you need to walk a fine line of production value with something like a sizzle video. If it looks too expensive (even if it wasn’t), current and potential investors may very well think you’re spending it all on marketing instead of on the product—not a good thing. This very helpful tip came from our COO.

WEEK 16

Creating a growth ad campaign

With brand guidelines in place and billboard campaign in market, we moved on to develop a series of rough digital growth ads to start testing the brand more deliberately. We obviously hoped the ads would drive leads, but more importantly (at this stage) we wanted them to yield insights like:

• Which background colors work best?

• Which headlines are hitting the mark? With whom?

• Which features and benefits drive the most interest?

• Does illustration or photography work best?

• Does lifestyle or portraiture work best?

• What’s the best way to visually merchandise our product? (On a device or not?)

This wasn’t a precious, refined campaign. We were thinking and working like product designers, embracing iteration and continuous improvement. It was more of an exercise—and a fun one—intended to help guide future assets and applications, especially the website...

Selected pages from the new Rippling website

Coming up next

So the new Rippling brand is in place. This isn’t the end—it’s the beginning.

Now we need to manage it, monitor it, adapt it to product and marketplace changes as they arise, and keep it working consistently, efficiently, and effectively. To do that we’ll need clear goals, the right team, seamless communication and processes, and a well-managed budget and operational infrastructure.

That’s what I’m focused on now, and it’s what future blog posts will cover:

• How we “did something cool with our paystubs"

• How we recruit and retain top creative talent as a nerdy HR and IT software company

• Which processes, tools, templates, and operational frameworks work best in managing our decentralized team

• How we think simultaneously about the short term and long term

• How we identify good creative opportunities to rally around

• Why my first full-time hire was in operations, not design or content (this won’t be as boring as it sounds)

So, you know, check back soon. And, in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on my story thus far.