Irwin Rebrand

In this episode of The Debrief, we're sitting down with Irwin's VP of Marketing, Melissa Homère, and digging into their team's experience working alongside Focus Lab to level up their existing brand. Irwin had an innovative product and a respected brand, but recognized that they were in need of a refresh to get organized, strategic, and elevated.

In our conversation, we touch on everything from:

👉 Verbalizing the importance of a rebrand to the larger team

👉 The importance of strategy in their rebrand effort

👉 How brand archetypes started their brand project off on a high-note

👉 Quantifying the ROI of the rebrand after just a few months

And so much more!

Additional Resources:

Irwin case study: https://focuslab.agency/work/irwin

Rebrand launch PR: https://www.getirwin.com/blog/boldly-forward-introducing-our-new-brand

Full Transcript:

[Bill Kenney]

Hey everyone, this is Bill Kenney, CEO and co-founder of Focus Lab and Odi. Two global B2B brand agencies back with another episode of The Debrief.

In today's episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Marissa Homère. She's the VP of Marketing at Irwin. Marissa and I relive what that journey was like with her team and our team to go through what we would call more of a brand refresh, an evolution, quite an evolution, I might add.

So we talk about the challenges of that journey, right? Very specifically, we talk about what it's like to bring the entire company on that journey, to socialize that effort, how to socialize that effort in a way that allows everybody to understand why it is important and remind everybody why we're doing it.

Hint: it's all rooted in strategy. And the strategy efforts become really helpful in that socializing. We go on to talk about what the most rewarding aspects of the project were for her.

It was all around the brand archetype. And then we finish out with some highlights from the project. We touch on the fact that she also comes from an agency background. So you'll get to hear those highlights as well. Another valuable episode. Hope you enjoy.

[Bill Kenney]

Okay. Marissa, we're finally meeting. We've actually not met, which happens now all the time in these interviews. Which I was actually thinking about a minute ago, I think that's great and better because it kind of proves maybe how unbiased these conversations are.

It’s the first time you and I are literally talking about your project. But before we do all that, could you just take a minute, maybe introduce yourself and tell people what you're doing over at Irwin.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah, sure. So I am the VP of Marketing at Irwin. I've been here for three years almost to the day. Uh, funny enough. And, I have kind of come in and built the marketing team here alongside Morgan, who is also part of this project with me. She's my senior director of brand marketing. So we've built the marketing program and sales enablement program at Irwin.

And part of that obviously is the brand side of things. Prior to my role here, I worked at another software company. And prior to that, I was an agency for seven years, which is probably something that is challenging for the agency on the other side of this project.

It's been a crazy journey at Irwin. We essentially make software for investor relations and capital markets, um, professional. So that's usually like a very small part of very big companies. So it's a lot of, um, pressure for the brand to also, you know, stand out and be different in a way that works for that audience.

[Bill Kenney]

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you touched on the previous life in agency because I think that will be a unique perspective in this conversation that doesn't always show up in these. Uh, so we'll see how that maybe organically comes out in the conversation. So my first question that I always lead out with is how did you know that it was time to invest in brand?

[Marissa Homére]

So actually we've always invested in brand from day one. Um, when I joined, they had just gone through a bit of a brand redevelopment and refresh process. Um, and you know, it was kind of like modern for our space, I would say, and good by most standards. And we've kind of built the brand beyond just the visual element.

We've invested a ton of time, resources, energy into building a trusted thought-leadership brand and community. We're big proponents of that here at Irwin, which is just, you know, enabling space and content for our audience. You know, no one gets a degree in investor relations. It doesn't exist.

They often come from either finance or marketing and communications. Um, and so it's kind of lonely, especially considering these are people within very large companies that, you know, are a team of one. Even at some of the largest companies, a team of two or three. And so it becomes very isolating and, and we've built our brand around supporting our audience and supporting what they do and uplifting their role in the community.

And so we've always invested in brand. And it came time where the previous brand was just no longer serving us and not even that it wasn't serving us because actually I think if you ask most people, they would say like it was fine. It was good. A lot of people loved it. Um, but it wasn't what was going to take us through our next stage of growth, which I think was the catalyst, you know. Morgan and I have been talking about this for over a year in terms of like, we've gotten to a certain point, but there was something that just felt startup-y and risky.

And, you know, we're working alongside some of the largest companies in the world, uh, and it was kind of a bit of a mismatch and our competitors are these like massive monolithic companies, and they certainly convey a lot of professionalism and not that we didn't, but it did come across as more risky to our audience. And so it was time to kind of tighten it up and take it through its next phase of growth.

[Bill Kenney]

We hear that often and actually when I was looking back at the case study, um, today, you're right from a design perspective, right? It's like an image. So I only can go off of design.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

It feels startup-y right through just color and execution. And, um, most of the people that we work with actually a large majority are in that okay. That was cool. And it worked, but like we're trying to get here now.

So what do we want to look like? Speak like? Execute on? To fit that, strategic direction. Yeah. Great. So then you have the task of trying to find an agency, right? Which I'm on the other side of that. So I can't even imagine how challenging that is, right?

There's just so many options, right? You can do freelancer or more like solopreneur. Or you can do small company, big company prices are all over the damn place. What were you looking for in the right partner?

Like, how'd you narrow that down?

[Marissa Homére]

So it was actually funny having worked in an agency for a long time. At first we did an exploration with a kind of I would say design production agency. And like, it just didn't feel right.

We were looking for someone who would really take the reins on the strategy side, as opposed to just like, give us something that is almost equivalent to what we have now, but maybe it looks a little bit better. I feel like that wasn't the case. And, in my previous life working at, what is now Craft&Crew, um, who I believe is a partner of yours.

The team, they're always looked up to Focus Lab and, and I feel like I had that in the back of my head and I was like, ah, but I feel like, you know, it's going to be kind of like out of our price range or, you know, maybe even just too far in advance for us. And, I suggested we at least explore it and see what the options were. And it ended up just being a good fit. We really liked the approach to the brand. And we really liked the flexibility and openness.

We didn't necessarily need to rebrand Irwin, we just needed to bring it to its current state and, I think the Focus Lab team was really flexible in, you know, the direction that we were going to go on the project and, um, really started with strategy.

So it would help us kind of determine what it was that we needed. And that was kind of one of the main reasons that we decided to go with you all.

[Bill Kenney]

Great. Shout out Craft&Crew. Great partner. Uh, and shout out to the strategy team, right? Uh, design often gets a lot of love in these interviews. So any moment I can shout out strategy for being an important in not, let us not even maybe misspeak it like a, a keystone element in all of these projects.

[Marissa Homére]

I mean, without it, I don't think that the design matters, to be honest with you. I think, like, we had a fine, and at the time, like, really good design for, you know, our stage and our product. But there was no strategy. So it always kind of felt like it was missing the mark and it wasn't representative or cohesive, in terms of showing who we were and telling our story and resonating with the end user.

So I think that the strategy is arguably like, that's why we chose Focus Lab over the design capability for sure.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Great. Happy to hear it. And I'm glad you, you reached out. It's actually one of the things that keeps me up at night is people thinking like, They're out of our league and whatever that word means to them, right? Like, Oh, they've got big names on there and we're not a giant name or their price points are probably too high.

Like, those are the things that make me cringe. Cause I know it's, I try to always say like, just reach out to us and talk like no strings attached, we're always happy to help, we're always happy to chat and often we are looking for ways to make partnerships work, right? It doesn't always have to just be big dollar, big name.

[Marissa Homére]

Yep. A hundred percent.

[Bill Kenney]

And you all are perfect examples of that, right? We just want to do good work with good people. All right. So you select us. Yay.

And then we get into the project. So it's where the rubber hits the road. So I’ve got a couple of questions here. The first one is what was the most challenging aspect of the project from your perspective?

[Marissa Homére]

I think there were a couple of challenges and not in a bad way. I think these processes always kind of force you to think about business differently. To think about what you're doing differently to get comfortable with, you know, getting rid of something that you've built and something that you love and something that, you know, you've put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in, so to speak.

I think like facing that reality was for not necessarily even my team more for like the broader team is like, Okay. Like we really need to share and socialize like the purpose and the reason of this and like what the end goal looks like. And it's not even an end goal. It's just like, what does this enable us to do?

Um, I think communicating and sharing that within our team was challenging for us. And like I said, in a good way, I think that friction always gives positive outcomes. Um, and then I think it was like, distilling our brand visually into something that made sense. You know, we went back and forth quite a bit on logomark, no logomark, which sounds like a really small thing.

Um, we had a logomark previously. But, Through the process and through the back and forth with the team at Focus Lab, we were able to be like, actually, our name can kind of just stand on its own and like, that's enough.

We don't need to overcomplicate it. And so I think that was a challenging thought process to go through. I think the outcome and the benefit of that is like our new brand. It's very simple. Um, and I think that that actually draws a lot of love from our community from our team. You know, before we had what we, we called like a lot of decoration in our brand and it kind of was busy and noisy and not necessarily meaningful or strategic.

And I think the simplicity has made everything kind of feel elevated and next level while still being bold and human and fun in certain ways. So yeah, I think that was a really big challenge. Simplifying. We also work in a very complex space, like not only corporate finance, but IR is incredibly complex with the capital markets component.

And, you know, all of the different tasks that our audience handles. And so, it's easier to do more to speak to everything, but really distilling it down to something that's meaningful and strategic was challenging for sure.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, fantastic. I want to maybe double click into a couple of those things. Is there any tips you would share with people that are going to run into, let's be real, they will also run into the challenge of socializing what we're doing, why we're doing it. Was there anything in there that really helped as a breakthrough in that moment?

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to have a certain level of grit and, you know, you're going to face questions, I think like mid-project where somebody is like, why are we doing this? Like, what is even the point of this? You know, and I think the Focus Lab team did a really, really good job of discovery.

And that is something that I'm a very big proponent for because that context is so necessary for those conversations. Um, and going through the process of actually even just like writing it down allows you to be like, this is why we're doing it. Remember? We all agreed on this. And it just kind of drives the vision, Forward in a smoother way, you know, referring back to the why and pushing forward on that and, bringing your team along with you, having them co create that I think definitely limits the friction over the process.

But, it's just a lot of pushing through and, sometimes it can feel like, well, why are we doing this? Like, you know, I don't even know, but, when you come through it and, what's been really satisfying for us since we launched the new brand is that everybody's like, yeah, it's just makes so much sense,

[Bill Kenney]

Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Grit and get through it for sure. Right. In all aspects of what's challenging in the, in the branding journey. But also leveraging the strategic discovery outputs as objective reasoning, Not just subjective. Well, because we look startup-y and we want to look different. Okay. Maybe some people can rationalize that, but that's still like not enough, right?

Because of this, because of this, because we talked about this, but yeah, I can see how that makes it a lot easier. Uh, and let me maybe just celebrate you. Not even a question, celebrate you all for having the courage to actually go with just a logotype. So for the people that are unfamiliar, that means just the word as the logo, the name as the logo, and not an accompanying mark.

That's usually a pretty tall task for people to mentally work their way through. And often they cannot get to the finish line on that. It's like, I hear you. I understand. We trust your judgment. I just can't resolve that. I still need the thing, need to have the thing. or the fact that you are able to actually get through that.

And understand that it's actually a great solution for you, given even the structure of the letters in your name and the size of your name and all of that, it’s perfect for that.

[Marissa Homére]

It's great. It's bold. It's strong. It stands on its own. We have a number of partnerships. One of them being with, with FactSet, which is, you know, a very large, very respected, very well known company. And now, Our name stands alongside their name with equal power and weight, because we found ourselves just trying to find something that needed to be decoded.

And then we're like, well, does anybody actually, is anybody going to care about that?

[Bill Kenney]

Exactly.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah, it turned out great. And I think it represents us in a great way without being too corporate or stuffy. It still has a very human feel to it, which is good. And, and we're, we're all very happy with it.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah. I love it. And again, just kudos to you all for being able to embrace that. Um, fantastic. Fantastic.

So on the flip side, you kind of noted one of the aspects, but what was the most rewarding aspect of the project? Now let's still think in project, not outcomes. Like in the moment living and breathing the project, what was the most rewarding aspect?

[Marissa Homére]

There's a particular moment that I remember really well, which was, the brand archetypes part and this is very early in the process, but when, the team showed us, you know, our like leading archetype as the ruler and gave the description, um, seeing how that resonated with our founders and how they continued to use it, uh, I think was really, really, really rewarding.

Um, because it was such a, it's kind of like a satisfying part of it, you know, like seeing things come together and outcomes is great and rewarding and satisfying. But I think seeing that level of clarity on who we are in a really simple, distilled, relatable way was really, really rewarding to me anyway.

[Bill Kenney]

I love that. And I'm, I'm guessing that was especially rewarding and satisfying for you as well, because of what you said, which is that you were able to see the founders instantly start to sink their teeth into and feel benefit and even joy, maybe. And excitement early in the project. That is also pivotal, right?

When everyone's working on so many different things. Although I would love branding efforts to be the most important thing happening in any company. It's not always the case, right? So I love that you got that early win and the founders got that as well. That's great.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah. Yeah. It's good. To your point, I think like they have their hands in so many things and they, as our entire leadership is kind of just stretched across the business and, and shared priorities are always a challenge in big and small companies. And, and so seeing that sort of hit well and also help define who we are.

Like we've known that for as long as the company has been around, but it has never been materialized into something simple and distillable that we could use and say and refer back to in terms of our, like who we are. So it was really, really satisfying for sure.

[Bill Kenney]

Love it. Love it. Another shout out to strategy. Let's go strategy. Um, all right, let's, I guess, transition out of the project. So we get. We go through picking colors and what's the right color and shade of this. And is there line work? Is there not line work? And all of these kinds of nuances that are what I think are really fun aspects of the project.

They are challenging, uh, but enjoyable and all these, you know, finding the right words and messaging. Strategy, visuals, words, the whole deal.

[Marissa Homére]

The whole deal.

[Bill Kenney]

We get to the end. Y'all have been launched for how long now?

[Marissa Homére]

Um, since early June, so a couple of months.

[Bill Kenney]

Not all that long. Yeah. A couple months. So still very early in that release. So this will be a very open, broad question. Feel free to attack it however you want, but I, we always want to address this ROI question, right? Like what's the return on brand or an investment like this? And then the easy answers are like, well, it takes a long time to see that return, but there are certainly things that's helping you do now already.

Uh, and I'd love to hear what some of those might be just so people can understand the impact.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah. I'm not a huge believer in that it's hard to quantify brand. We've, from the get go, invested in things that aren't direct response or direct return. In terms of our brand, you know, we spend hundreds of hours every year on content production including like a podcast that is hard to quantify in terms of like, we put this in, we get this out.

But I think, like, we have tracked since the beginning of our department, the lift and return that brand enables us to have and it is like a hockey stick. Like you, you see how that enables our sales, how that enables our growth, how our customers feel about us. So I definitely think that we've already started to see returns on it that kind of compound against all of the work that we've put in over the last couple of years.

But we use it for everything. And it's kind of leveled up everything. Our sales team, as an example of something you take for granted, is like a sales deck and being able to distill the messages and really showcase your value and your differentiators. And that definitely gets more use in this brand than it did in the old one, for sure.

So that's directly contributing to our growth. Um, all of our content has been rebranded, our website as well. So part of the project we did with Focus Lab, we kind of like tacked it on was, was kind of like a reskin of our existing website, uh, from a design perspective. The one part that is pretty hard to quantify is how different it feels like everything feels like it's a level up from what it was before. Everything now kind of matches who we are and the level of growth that we've kind of gotten to, um, it feels equal now. So, you know, whether it's our pricing or, you know, any document or sales deck or podcast episode, there's just so much more cohesion.

And, and I think that that definitely has an impact on how risky we look to our prospects. I think the decrease in kind of that transactional risk when you even just at a glance, looking at the website or A piece of content or a proposal or something of that nature, um, I think has, has definitely made an impact for sure.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Great. You're only a couple months out too, right? It's like, it's very fun to follow along for, for years and see how that brand and you are a great company where you take brand serious, continue investing in it in a variety of ways and continue to compound, to use your word, right? It's such a compounding effect.

[Marissa Homére]

I'll also add that we launched the new brand against your team's advice. Um, we, uh, participate in our biggest conference every year, which essentially has the entire profession of IR at it. In San Francisco this year we did a co-branded booth with our partners at FactSet, a 20x20 island.

The response from our partners as well was really positive on the new brand, which that's something that's kind of intangible, right? Like, and something that's hugely beneficial to us because the more we look equal to both them and to prospects who are evaluating our integrated solution.

Um, it's great for the relationship. It's good for the community. It's good for everything. So, uh, that's an add-on piece I would put in there.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. And I think maybe this is where, I don't know, maybe this is where our, uh, reservation came in. Don't rush the work to get to the moment in time, which would be the conference. And it's always the conference seemingly for us, right? We're always a conference date coming.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

That's where the reservation comes.

But if it times well, they do end up becoming really great moments in time, lightning strikes for the reveal of that brand. You have so many people there, like you even mentioned, right. Partners in the industry, competitors going like, Oh shit, they look way better than us now. Um, and then obviously like customers walking around.

That's great. Thanks for not listening to us.

[Marissa Homére]

Yeah. Sometimes you're just going to be like, well, you know, we're going to do what we're going to do and, uh, love it or hate it.

[Bill Kenney]

You're not the first person to actually say that in these types of interviews. Uh, Casey, another CMO over at Quantive talked about how we had also told them like, Oh, don't pin this whole thing to that, to that event. Maybe we don't know what we're talking about. Hey, we, we, we try.

[Marissa Homére]

I get, it was a lot of pressure and I think in the moment leading up to the week leading up to it, I was like, why did we do this? We should have listened. Um, but in retrospect, like I wouldn't change it. Like, I feel like it was the right moment and it was the right moment. Also in our story, like a week later, we, um, launched our partnership with the New York Stock Exchange.

It just, you know, it couldn't, it was a lot of pressure and a lot of work leading up to that moment in a condensed time period, but I think it was still the right time. If I had started a year earlier, maybe that would have been better, but we're here and we did what we could, you know?

[Bill Kenney]

Great. Yeah. I was leading us out, but let's, let's ask one more. Let's do a, and one more thing. Steve, let's Steve Jobs it. Was there anything that you found? That was especially unique or like refreshing that was part of our agency model.

[Marissa Homére]

I think like the, to the minute, like the nature of your process and how strong it is. It definitely takes a certain level of accountability from the client perspective to be able to agree and maintain those deadlines and dates. But the process was so strong. I just remember thinking like, Man, like they have their shit together because when I was an agency there was always a little bit of like, Oh, you know, you're trying to figure it out as you go along or, you know, different people in different departments have different processes than others.

But it was like a machine almost to the point where I was like, Oh my gosh, like, do we need to slow down? Because from our perspective, it was hard to keep up. But I think it was like, it was really evident that You all have, have done this and have established these projects for other companies and in our position that the team asked a lot of questions and discovery was super thorough, which I think helped the whole thing, but I think it's just like seeing how locked in that process was, is, I was blown away by that surprising and, and great in a good way, you know.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Um, we run a tight ship. You're right. We've been doing it for almost 15 years and we only do this thing. Right. So it allows us to really zero in.

[Marissa Homére]

And it keeps it, it keeps us focused on being accountable to those things, because it was like, oh, we need to do this. So every Monday or whatever it was, we would meet with both of our founders who are part of our like project team, go through what had been delivered, provide the feedback. At times. It was like getting, you know, everybody, especially since it was, it was all senior folks on the project, getting everybody to commit the time was a bit of a challenge, but it kept us on pace.

It kept, it made sure that everyone, um, knew what to expect, especially after the first couple of weeks. You know, you have to give your time to it. It definitely was a benefit. And, you know, we were never following or chasing things from you all, which is a hard thing to accomplish as an agency who's handling multiple projects, but the team was on point and, uh, kept us on point, which I think made us better through the experience too, for sure.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. It's like the training partner that's like, it's time to get up and go to the gym. And you're like, I don't want to today. And it's like, it's time we agreed. Uh, but in the end, right. It is better that that type of relationship is better.

[Marissa Homére]

A hundred percent.

[Bill Kenney]

Awesome. Well, well done. Well done. We are happy to have partnered with you all. You were such fantastic partners. We couldn't be more excited to watch you continue to build new partnerships and watch your growth and just you specifically, I would just pass along the team thoroughly enjoyed working with you and your team.

As the kind of direct relationship on this project. And, um, yeah, thanks. Thanks for trusting us. Thanks for reaching out and trying to at least see if we were the right fit. And, uh, and Hey, we were, it was, it was a great match.

[Marissa Homére]

Yep, it worked out. And I'm glad I did too. And especially being an agency for so long, you kind of have some pre-established, you know, expectation of like, oh, they're going to come back. And, you know, it's going to be like, we're not gonna be able to do it anyway. But it was worth the risk, I should say.

And the whole team was very accommodating to us and super professional. And, you know, we don't work with basically any agencies and haven't. I've had a really hard time as an ex-agency. Um, Especially in leadership, engaging in, in relationships with agencies. Um, and I feel like this was really a frictionless experience for this project and couldn't be happier.

[Bill Kenney]

Well, again, thanks, Marissa. It was such a pleasure working with you all.

And it was a pleasure meeting you here for the first time. Thanks for coming on, sharing your experience and we'll be in the background, just cheering you on, celebrating the wins.

[Marissa Homére]

Awesome. Thanks so much.