Laurie McGrath
Chief Marketing Officer
When it comes to branding, I feel confident in saying that I have seen it all. I have had to answer obtuse questions like, “What kind of car would your company be?” I have had to make things out of clay in workshops. I have been through pages of spreadsheets on consumer data. I have had a front-row seat to all of the trends – the good and the bad – through all of marketing.
But something that all of these trends seemed to lack was an overt strategy to focus on the purpose or intention of the organization. (See my post on the most important word in branding.)
That is why during our recent rebranding effort at Tecsys, I wanted to make certain we were focused on our “Why.” There is already so much that is beautiful about this 35-year-old company (and the people that make up that company) that nothing needed to be added. So our process focused on revealing.
And I believe we were wildly successful. Not just because we have created some beautiful elements, but because the process of searching for a why does what good brand work should do: It began to inspire meaningful behavior.
Just a few months ago, before we were even halfway done with our rebranding summit, I received a copy of an email from our head of research and development. He was already vibing on the new position that we had uncovered for our brand, and he was so excited that he could not wait to share his new understanding with his team.
In this message, he immediately applied the “why” to a recruiting challenge. He connected the purpose of empowering good organizations to be great with the technical challenges that a new recruit would be tackling. He wrote about what we believe and not as much about what we do. Reinvigorated with an articulation of our purpose, he found a way to solve a problem that was otherwise too complex.
This exercise of uncovering what is more essential about our brand – this idea of revealing – is what good branding is supposed to do. It should not seek to add anything or simply change a color palette or images on mouse pads. A good brand reveals the purpose and ethos of an organization. It, very simply, articulates something that is already in the hearts of the collective of humans within an organization.
And this kind of revealing is exactly what we focused on when we went through this rebranding at Tecsys. As the team worked on this initiative, we focused on ensuring that the essence of what makes us Tecsys continues to be our guiding light. In all of the years that I have been through rebranding exercises, I’ve never seen a more driven, caring group of employees that comes together time and time again to help customers achieve their goals. This is a source of pride for the leadership team, and it’s something that is core to the brand.
One other element of this brand that was exposed through this process is that our brand’s customer is the hero of their journey toward transforming their supply chain. And, in that spirit, I would invite you to get a taste for what the rebranding journey was like for us. Check out our brand explainer video below and a story on what our rebrand was like here.
Everyone in the leadership team at Tecsys is grateful to our employees, clients and partners, because this unique position for our brand would not exist without you. We also know that we have just begun to scratch the surface of what our rebrand could inspire, but we know that we are headed for an even greater global impact. And this process has reinvigorated our vision for creating a business world in which more good companies have an opportunity to thrive.