How research drove the bold rebranding of an iconic company

Marketing leaders are often told to think outside the box and break the rules. Whether it's a new ad campaign, tag line, logo or a new brand, we’ve all had opportunities to go for it with a big, out-there idea that could be a game-changer. But big ideas can be a big risk, and most companies end up taking the safe route. The same people that encourage you to push the envelope can cave when faced with taking bold action. At Momentive, we did all of the above a few months ago—changed our company name from the well-known SurveyMonkey, as well as our logo, our positioning, our identity—well, just about everything about our corporate brand. And as the leader of the brand team, I sensed we were willing to go bold, but that we might need to gather some data to move forward with confidence. Known for our eponymous SurveyMonkey feedback platform, we wanted to take a research-first approach to rebranding. So, we started our 14-month journey by collecting insights from our customers, our employees and the market. Here’s an inside look at how we used agile market research to drive the why, what and why now of our rebrand.* Evolving a 20-year brand for the future SurveyMonkey launched more than 20 years ago and grew organically over the years as millions of people used our product. The logo—which was refreshed over the years—is a fun, approachable symbol, and stood for our company ethos of curiosity. However we started seeing signs—through feedback from our customers and sales—that this brand may not have represented our company's future. As we continued to move upmarket, we were concerned that the “cuteness” of our logo overshadowed the seriousness of our offerings. In short: Our brand strategy no longer matched our business strategy. We needed to understand what to change to carry us into our next chapter. Digging deeper into our brand story The rebrand started as a discovery journey with no preconceived notions of which—if any—elements of our brand should change. Our gut told us that we needed to make a bold move and answer a hard question: Is SurveyMonkey the right name for our company for the next 20-plus years? We turned to research to shine a light on the best path forward. The rebrand spanned 3 initiatives: • Brand positioning: We offer market research, customer experience and survey solutions in addition to brands including GetFeedback, Wufoo and TechValidate. What was the best brand architecture for our future? • Brand name: Was SurveyMonkey associated with a more consumer-focused business and did that limit the perception of our capabilities and breadth of offerings? • Brand identity: Was there a better visual to communicate the “why” behind our existence that would allow us to maintain our legacy while signaling our ability to provide an enterprise solution? To answer these questions, we launched a multi-stream research project that consisted of 10 studies, capturing the voices of more than 22,000 people in seven countries over the course of 14 months. Laying the foundation with qualitative research We started by conducting one-on-one interviews with our leadership, then analyzed the financial contributions of each SurveyMonkey product to understand where our branding efforts and investment should be focused. Our design team conducted a deep dive into leading B2B brands' visual representations and brand architectures to understand the landscape, and how we could create a visual identity that would stand out. We conducted a study on SurveyMonkey and discovered that its popularity was strong. This reinforced our decision to keep the SurveyMonkey brand in our portfolio. Leveraging our platform to tap into market sentiment It became clear that our brand strategy did not match our business strategy, which was increasingly focused on moving upmarket. And so the search for a new company name began. We started with almost 1,000 names that got whittled down to 50, which were presented to leadership. After discussions, we narrowed the list to 10 and conducted brand name testing with the final group. Using a monadic methodology—meaning that each person saw one name option—we asked 2,000 people to evaluate the 10 names based on attributes, pronounceability, associations and ultimately fit-to-concept. That’s 200 responses per name. We evaluated open-ended text responses as positive, neutral or negative to quickly assess the feelings associated with each name. Our sentiment analysis solution automatically created scorecards that highlighted the top-two box scores. All of the final 10 names tested well—any of them could have been a winner. But a leader started to emerge: Momentive was ranked high by respondents, pretty much across every attribute. Name attributes scorecard (automatically generated by Momentive Name Testing solution) How did we make the final decision? We looked at the data, but we also checked our gut with a creative exploration. For example, would the final name map to our goal to move upmarket? Would it be flexible for the future? Would it allow us a big creative canvas for brand storytelling? We landed on Momentive, a name that gives a nod to the words “momentum” and “movement,” and sounds both active and forward-looking. Our new logo mark represents the intersection of humanity and technology, with interlocking shapes like a data visualization. The overlapping slice where yellow and blue come together is called “heritage green,” a color that pays homage to the green that’s always been part of our brand. And we chose Momentive.ai as the domain for telling our new corporate story and showcasing our AI-powered solutions. Tracking our rebrand efforts Measuring the impact of the rebrand is a high priority. From establishing a baseline for awareness to understanding the impact across customer sets, our goal is to track our brand health long term. Our always-on brand tracking solution monitors our brand awareness and our brand conversion funnel on a monthly basis to base decisions on a fresh data set. And we can keep a pulse on our brand attributes, associations and other brands to identify shifts as we evolve our marketing strategy. Tracking Momentive brand awareness, over time What we learned and what will guide us Because we used research and gathered feedback throughout the process, we learned a lot. Looking back, a few lessons from our rebrand journey stand out: • Let the data guide you, but explore creative pathways and listen to your gut, too. We started with a data-first approach, but we knew there was an art to the decision-making that we couldn’t overlook. • Be clear on which parts of the past you want to carry forward and which parts of your identity, mission, and values should remain. If the data tells you something different than expected, be open to change. • Use an agile research methodology to understand the impact of your decisions and inform future choices. Automating the process of tracking can help you keep a pulse on brand health and performance, post rebrand. So let’s go back to the challenge of pushing the envelope and thinking differently. It turns out that being bold was the only way that we could have gotten to where we are now. And it was the excitement from our customers—and the data and insights surfaced from using our solutions—that gave us the confidence to take that big, bold leap and start a new chapter for our company. ___________________________________________________ * Methodology: We completed 10 studies in total, over a 14-month period, starting in January 2020. Six studies were quantitative and conducted on the Momentive.ai platform. The remaining four studies were qualitative. About SurveyMonkey SurveyMonkey is a global leader in online surveys and forms that empowers people with the insights they need to make decisions with speed and confidence. Our fast, intuitive feedback management platform connects millions of users worldwide with real-time AI-powered insights that drive meaningful decisions. We provide answers to more than 20 million questions every day so that people and organizations can attract new audiences, delight customers, create advocates, and extend their competitive advantage in the marketplace. Our vision is to raise the bar for human experiences by amplifying individual voices. Learn more at SurveyMonkey.com

How research drove the bold rebranding of an iconic company

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