Lessons from a Rebrand

In this episode of Invision’s podcast, we’re pulling back the curtain on our agency’s recent rebrand, a shift that reflects not just where we’ve been, but where we’re going.

Join Strategy Director Evan Strange and Senior Creative Director John Edgington as they break down the process behind redefining who we are, what we do, and what we believe in. From the early signals (internal feedback, shifting industry dynamics, and evolving client needs) to the many rounds of exploration, feedback, and alignment, this episode explores the rebrand from every angle.

Key takeaways:

• How internal voices and external perceptions converged to spark the need for change.
• The balance between honoring legacy and embracing evolution.
• Why simplicity, truth, and plain-speak became the pillars of our new positioning.
• What it means to “own every moment” and how that belief now guides everything we do.

Whether you're navigating a rebrand, considering one, or just curious how agencies rethink their own identity, tune in for a real-world glimpse at the thinking, process, and lessons behind ours.

Transcript

Evan Strange (00:09): 

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Invision's podcast. I'm Evan Strange, strategy director here at Invision, but today we're going to do something a little bit different and hopefully a little exciting just a little bit. 

(00:23): 

So as you've probably seen or heard, if you're here listening, we actually went through a full rebrand internally and now externally, and we have new positioning and messaging, kind of a new look and logo, and it was a pretty big shift for us. 

(00:37): 

So what we wanted to do today was really just take you behind the scenes, pull back the curtain and share the story of how we got here. Because if there's any marketers listening, chances are you've probably gone through this yourselves or you're about to and you want to know more, or you just want some people to commiserate with. And we are here to help with that. 

(00:58): 

So to join me for this conversation, I've brought my partner in crime, a creative director, senior creative director, John Edgington. And we're going to break down the strategy, the execution, and kind of everything in between. 

(01:12): 

And hopefully, we'll share a few insights along the way about the process, the challenges that we all face during this type of internal rebrand and navigating personalities and historical learnings and everything in between. And so we'll share a few things we've learned along the way. So Edge, welcome. 

John Edgington (01:32): 

Hey Evan, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, excited to dig into this. It's been a process. It's been a journey. There's been lots of rounds of review; shocker; spoiler alert. 

Evan Strange (01:45): 

Shocker. 

John Edgington (01:45): 

But- 

Evan Strange (01:45): 

Yeah. 

John Edgington (01:46): 

Yeah, shocker. Really excited to dig into it. I think this should be fun, should be interesting for everyone listening as well. But Evan, I'm curious from your perspective... Let's just jump right in. 

(01:58): 

This all started with strategy, digging in as strategy does. Curious if you could take us back to the beginning, how did we get here? Why are we doing this? What's the driving force? Why do we feel like it was time for a change? 

Evan Strange (02:10): 

Man, how far do you want to go back?  

John Edgington (02:13): 

No. Start with birth, please. 

Evan Strange (02:18): 

Birth, let's see- 

John Edgington (02:19): 

Where were you born? What was the hospital? 

Evan Strange (02:21): 

I was born at... No. Just a little bit about our agency if you're listening and don't know, we have been around for about 33 years now. We started as events production, a video company, and 33 years ago we were doing mainly events. 

(02:43): 

Since then, our agency has evolved quite a bit. We've grown, not only in size and talent, the people that we've brought on board in that 33 years have... had very different skill sets from outside of the events and even the experiential world. And I think during that time, the agency and what we do and our offerings have grown alongside the changing talent as well. 

(03:10): 

So I think probably in the last 10 years in particular, maybe you go back even 12, we've become a more full service experiential agency. And what we've seen over the last five is we've started to do more experiential adjacent and full campaign work as well. So you have that historical knowledge of us as an agency, all of this change, but how we talked about ourselves didn't quite keep up with that. Does that make sense to you? 

John Edgington (03:45): 

Yeah, totally. And I think part of it was an intentional growth in the talent we have and intentional sort of augmentation of these different things that we felt like we needed. But also it's a little bit of just a general way the industry is shifting, the lines kind of blurring between these different industries. It's not no longer enough to just be a ballroom company or to just rely on execution. You sort of have to have expertise across all of these other verticals. 

Evan Strange (04:18): 

Yeah. And I think during that time, even our experiential clients, we were mainly doing experiences and events and this is again years ago, but we started to see that one of their big problems is that their audiences were consuming content and having experiences everywhere and not just in a ballroom or onsite an event or at Coachella. 

(04:42): 

The experiences that the consumer have and have now really became kind of channel list, even though they're in thousands of channels now. So with our clients, we've had to find a way to start reaching them regardless of whether it was an event or not. 

(05:01): 

So going back you have... to your original question, how did we get here, we have kind of our own historical change and how we've grown out in the industry. You have fragmented channels and fragmented audiences going everywhere for these experiences. 

(05:17): 

And then probably eight or so months ago, I think we internally started realizing that we needed to change how we are communicating about ourselves and how we're telling our story because it wasn't quite keeping up. 

(05:32): 

So with all of that floating around, the first thing you can do, you guessed it, little strategy, little research. We dug in to all of our employee surveys. A lot of companies do these surveys just to get a pulse of how their employees are feeling. And we thought that was gold, right? 

(05:50): 

We went through all of the open-ended questions, how people are feeling about the vision, how people are feeling about leadership, and how we communicate and market ourselves, everything. 

(06:02): 

And what we found in those surveys is that there's a few areas we needed to go deeper. So we just started holding focus groups and talking to people. I mean, I think I talked to you at one point and just asked you what type of agency do you even think we are. If you're talking to your parents or whoever it might be, how would you describe yourselves? And we started asking that to a lot of people. 

John Edgington (06:26): 

I thought it was a trick question. I thought you were trying to trick me. 

Evan Strange (06:27): 

No, real question. And I think it really did help us get to where we are today. So what we heard from everyone is that everyone understands the type of work that we're doing. Again, it's not just experiential, it's campaign work. We're helping with sales enablement in some cases, storytelling, digital activations, and experiences as well. 

(06:53): 

People understand the vision of the agency, but just in general, we started to get a little noisy in how we talked about ourselves. Used probably a few too many buzzwords, a little too much jargon as marketers tend to do. And we found that we needed to really clarify and simplify how we talk about ourselves. Point-blank. 

John Edgington (07:12): 

You know what's interesting in that too, that was a lot of internal soul-searching within our company, within our own survey results and that type of thing. It's interesting though, you start seeing things reflected back to you in the spaces around you. 

(07:25): 

So as we're going on pitches or as we're exploring new clients or that type of thing, you start hearing things reflected back towards you that sort of set off your spidey senses a little bit. 

(07:36): 

When someone has a perception of you before you've even met them because of something they've read or because of a different conversation they've had with a different person, you start hearing things back from clients or perspective clients that are a little bit like, "Oh, but that's not... We're not just that. We can also do this." Or, "Oh, maybe that's just in response to a certain aspect of our company, but we're much more." 

(08:03): 

So when you find yourself having those types of conversations and then you pair that with the internal soul-searching and the internal survey results, you start to realize that there's a little bit of a challenge and an opportunity there with the messaging, with the brand itself, that "Okay, maybe everything isn't as streamlined as it could be." 

(08:22): 

So I think that that's also a part of it. There's the internal side, but that there's also the external world outside of the agency reflecting things back at you that sort of tip off your spidey senses. 

Evan Strange (08:33): 

Yeah. And good segue to the external positioning and messaging that we move towards. I'll also note, when you talk about the internal, again, if anybody is listening that has been with an agency that's seen a lot of growth, you are bringing in new people, you're bringing in new teammates, but you're keeping this culture that you've always had. 

(08:55): 

I think we've done a really good job at maintaining that culture as we grow. And there's also a good chunk of people... I mean, 30 so years since we've been around, there's a good chunk of our workforce that have been here since the beginning. 

(09:10): 

So throughout all of this, you are taking into consideration what the people that have been here since the beginning think and believe and how they talk about us as an agency. But you also have to meld some of these newer perspectives, which I know you'll probably talk a little bit about later, which does prove challenging. But it's our job as a strategist and creative to make sure we thread that needle, so we're telling a story for everyone. 

(09:37): 

So I'd say for us, our new messaging, we started just by asking ourselves some pretty simple questions like who we are, what do we do, what do we believe? And we heard a ton of different answers to that, right? You gave an answer, I gave one, 50 some different employees probably gave a slightly different version of that. 

(10:00): 

And for the question, what do we do? We distilled everything we heard down, again, to its most basic of forms. And what we realized is that we as an agency are creating brand experiences for everyone, anywhere. 

(10:17): 

For everyone, to us, means that we are really good at the strategy and creative portion. We understand audiences, but everyone also means clients across industries. We do work... Regardless of whether it's tech or biopharma or B2C or insurance, it doesn't really matter to us, we like to do work with brands that we want to work for and work with. And so that's where this term, everyone, came in. 

(10:46): 

And then the word anywhere, again, very intentional. We do work across channels. Again, started in the keynote space at events 33 years ago. But what we do now really knows no boundary. We're doing work everywhere, anywhere, doesn't matter the channel. It could be a billboard in Las Vegas or some sort of crazy kick-ass digital experience that we're doing for a client over here. Our experience is no, no channel. And we do that anywhere, which I think is pretty cool. 

John Edgington (11:16): 

And it's again... Again, back to what we were saying, that sort of internal rumbling you start to hear paired with the external things that are being reflected back at you. When you have an internal digital experiential innovation team and we're winning awards or VR experiences up against some of the biggest and baddest digital-only agencies in the space, and then you're hearing clients reflect back at you that they think of you as strictly production, those don't match. 

(11:52): 

So the goal was, how do we find language that's wide enough to welcome in sort of both the production experience, which is our legacy and our history and something we're known for in the industry? How do you wed that to a digital innovation group, all internal, who's winning awards purely on merit? 

(12:15): 

There has to be something. We had to find language that could sort of welcome both of those things in under the same umbrella. And so that's where we netted out with the building experiences for anyone, anywhere. It welcomes in both of those aspects of our company. 

Evan Strange (12:32): 

Love it. Let's talk about beliefs for a second. Obviously, our brand platform now is own every moment as you've seen, as you've heard. Those beliefs, I think again, positioning is our unique promise to our clients, to our friends. It's what we believe that we deliver better than anybody else. We do a pretty dang good job at it. 

(12:54): 

And we did the same thing internally. What is it that we believe is an agency? And what we heard over and over again is this kind of moments answer that whether it is on a keynote stage or on the radio, I mean if we still do that, you- 

John Edgington (13:12): 

Yeah. What's radio? 

Evan Strange (13:14): 

I don't know. I mean, I listen occasionally when I'm driving the kids to school. But again, the point being it doesn't really matter where you are as a consumer. You're having these moments where you're engaging with brands. 

(13:26): 

And what we found is that we are helping our clients and our partners engage audiences at all of these different moments. And we're empowering them to really take charge of it and do something in that moment with their audience where they're getting the audience to do something, to drive them to action. 

(13:47): 

And so from that, I think we realized that our unique promise to the brand, to our clients, to our partners, is that we are uniquely suited to help them own every moment they get with their audience. 

John Edgington (14:02): 

Yeah, and a little bit of just color on that, it's interesting one of the things that we really wanted to move the needle on during this whole brand, during all the messaging exercises we went through is finding a way to peel out some of the jargon that's become sort of second nature in our industry and industries around us. And so how do we be more plain-speaking? 

(14:25): 

And one of the conversations that this reminds me of is that idea around clients and clients brands. And so what we've been talking about is that all of the brands we work with, all of our clients at this level have incredible brands. They have brands that external groups have come and worked on. They have people internally whose job it is to refine and nurture their brands. 

(14:55): 

But the wrinkle is the random consumer out there who's encountering their brand doesn't get a briefing from their brand team, doesn't get a brand book. They're not told how to engage or what this means or that mean. Those consumers come in, and they experience the brand in big moments like events and small moments like scrolling on their phone at night before bed. 

(15:17): 

And we are here, Invision is here to help those clients own all of those moments, own each of the moments along the way. And so when you say in a sentence like that and it kind of just flows, that's the sentiment we were trying to get at. 

(15:31): 

We didn't want to jargon it to death. We wanted it to feel like how people talk, how actual human beings talk about this stuff. And so that's a way we help them build experiences, big moments and small moments alike. And we try and own as many of those moments as possible. 

Evan Strange (15:48): 

That's awesome. Let me ask you a question. So obviously, how we talk about ourselves has changed, the words have changed, the tone has changed. I know you and I have talked a lot about the fact that we have to keep coming back to the fact that we are not writing as Evan or John Edge doing communications for the company. 

(16:14): 

How do you balance that? How do you balance your knee-jerk reaction to write in your preferred tone and your preferred style, but instead now air towards what we've chosen, which is this kind of straightforward, plain speaking... Not that we weren't before, but how do you make sure you are putting your own personal preference aside and following the new style of the brand? 

John Edgington (16:40): 

Honestly, that was the hardest part of the whole experience from my perspective. Part of it, one, it's like you and me are talking, but we were just two people that worked on this. This huge team of people... We brought in external brand strategists, pressure test this stuff with clients, with industry professionals that knew us, that didn't know us. 

(17:02): 

So we're just two people in a large, large team. So part of that naturally gets weeded out where your language is sort of butting up against someone else's interpretation. And those two things have to go head-to-head and we have to refine them and figure out what works best. 

(17:19): 

But that question was something that we kind of had to keep reminding ourselves throughout the whole process, because the natural urge is to push for things that you individually like, whether it's aesthetics or language choice or anything like that. That's the natural urge, is to push for stuff that you believe in, that you think is great. 

(17:39): 

But the real challenge is finding the right language and the right visuals that work for Invision to move forward with into this marketplace that positions us as an agency that's ready to take on all the types of work that we've been describing. 

(17:58): 

The funny thing is we're already doing a lot of that work. We've already got the talent in the agency. We're not pitching something that's a future state of the industry or of our agency. We're talking about what we actually do. 

(18:16): 

So the trick was, how do we find the right language and the right visuals to signal to somebody who doesn't know us in the marketplace that looks us up because they heard our name, they look us up? And do they see, feel, hear all the types of things that they are expecting to see from an agency that does this type of work? 

(18:38): 

So it's about trying to meet a potential future client's expectations as they scan the marketplace rather than us channeling our own desires. So it was way more about the marketplace than it was about the individual desires or preferences. 

Evan Strange (18:57): 

Right on. The idea of truth--let's talk about that for a second--truth and authenticity. I think, again, as marketers, as creatives, we see a lot of, sometimes brands not the ones we work with, obviously... 

(19:14): 

Sometimes agencies can put a lot of jargon out there or say the same thing or something that immediately gets your BS meter going where you're like, "That's not really true. They don't really own that." Talk a little bit about how we made sure everything that we say now is based in truth and it's authentic to who we are versus just a marketing smokescreen. 

John Edgington (19:41): 

Yeah, it's tough. We did kind of set that intention early on. That is something everyone kind of agreed on early on. And so we set that intention. And I just touched on a little bit, but we brought in outside help too. 

(19:53): 

So we told them, we brought an external brand strategist, we pressure tested the clients, but we told them, "Hey, the goal is no jargon. You know this industry, what does this sound like to you? Could you take a copy pass at this kind of stuff cold?" 

(20:08): 

So people who weren't part of it, get it cold, read through it, listen through it, that type of thing. Does it set off any alarms? Does this sound like a regurgitation of a thought that you've had? What is that? 

(20:22): 

And it's a really vulnerable thing to go through as well. We're like, "Oh, you think you've got it? This is the best thing ever." And then someone comes in from the outside and shreds it because it's not the best thing ever because you were drinking your own Kool-Aid. 

(20:39): 

So it's a really vulnerable process. I think we were all open to it and I think there was enough desire from top down to make this true. To say, "Okay, let's peel out the jargon." We had to commit to it, and part of that commitment is being really sort of open and vulnerable when you're offering all this stuff up for sacrifice to be honest. But so it was kind of setting that honest intention at the beginning and then following through with it, using outside resources to pressure test. 

Evan Strange (21:12): 

Did anything surprise you during this process? Were there any aha moments or something that just... It could be anything. It could be the process of us getting this approved, something you found from our employees or you hear. What was something that surprised you the most? 

John Edgington (21:30): 

For me, honestly, it's more of a human thing. Like how different people's preferences are. Where you can say the same word, like let's feel modern. Everyone interprets that completely differently. 

(21:41): 

It's like you could say that and someone... Someone would turn around something that feels like mid-century or... Because you just don't have as shared of a vernacular with people as you maybe think you do until you start having to put something on paper, whether it's messaging or aesthetics. 

(22:00): 

Me, it's just how sometimes misleading words can be where everyone says we want these types of things but then everyone's interpretation is completely different across the board. 

(22:16): 

And so finding the commonalities and finding the right type of language to even just talk internally, nothing that a client would even see. Just how do we talk internally about this to get alignment to then move forward to positioning it for clients. But I ask you the same question, what was most surprising for you? 

Evan Strange (22:34): 

I think anytime that you have to go through one of these types of efforts, you have to bring everybody on board. To your point, everybody has a different preference. And I think that was the aha moment, is that 40% of the work that we did in this effort was bringing people along with us and telling the story of why we did what we did to everybody and making sure everybody know that it wasn't just our words that are now external facing. It's words that we heard from the entirety of the agency. 

(23:16): 

These aren't necessarily words, again, that Edge or Evan or Jonathan Brown, who you'll probably hear from about design on eventually... These aren't words that just we would use. We had to harness the collective of the entire agency in our external messaging. And then to get it approved and across the finish line, we really had to do a lot of work of just getting everybody on board. 

(23:38): 

And I think it was a pretty easy task for us, but it was still very important because when you roll these things out, you don't want people to be surprised by them necessarily. I mean, you want it to feel new and... but you don't want to feel like you're being forced into something. You want it to feel natural and like you had a part in it or a say in it and that you can see yourself in what was created. 

(24:04): 

So I think that was the biggest aha moment, the amount of time, which I think was valuable in bringing everybody along with us and showing them that they are the ones that actually inspired the work that we put out. All right, well, I think we're at time. Mr. Edgington, thank you for joining me. Any final thoughts? 

John Edgington (24:22): 

No, just a really interesting process. Really grateful to be part of it, proud of the work team was able to turn around. Like we said, it took a massive team. It almost feels awkward having two people talking about this because it was a gigantic, gigantic team. 

(24:41): 

Internal people, I feel like half the company worked on this, but then even external people that were pivotal in making this happen. So just excited to start seeing it out in the world. 

Evan Strange (24:54): 

Yeah, so true. Let me just reiterate, not just you and I that did this great work, a big, big village. A lot of people helped get this across the finish line. A lot of really smart people and their words kind of turned into this positioning and messaging and campaign that we're now putting out in the wild. And we're really, really thankful for everyone that put in the work to make this perfect and right. But for now, we will say goodbye and thanks for listening. We'll see you soon. 

John Edgington (25:26): 

Goodbye.