PolyAI Rebrand

As an AI company who was building their premium product well before the big AI boom, PolyAI recognized that their previous brand did not represent the level of power and maturity they had achieved — it was time to level up.

It was a pleasure to have Kylie Whitehead, Senior Director of Marketing and Brand at PolyAI, sit down with Focus Lab CEO Bill Kenney to reflect on their rebrand project with our team. Tune is as they discuss PolyAI's choice to reposition their company prior to finding a rebrand partner, the major benefits of transparency in a rebrand project, the importance of getting your C-suite on board, and so much more.

Click here to view more of our work with PolyAI.

Full Transcript:

[Bill Kenney]

Hey, everyone. This is Bill Kenney, CEO and co founder of Focus Lab and Odi, two global B2B brand agencies. I'm back with another episode of The Debrief. As a reminder, The Debrief is a series where I sit down with past Focus Lab or Odi partners and we relive their project, what it was actually like to go through the branding exercise.

The highs, the lows and everything in between. In today's episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kylie Whitehead. She's the Senior Director of Marketing and Brand at a company called PolyAI.

PolyAI has been around for five years. They are pre- what we would consider the general public, the AI boom. Now let's think about the context of brand, in that world. Which is to say they realized, both before the boom and into the boom, that their current brand was not reflecting both the power and the maturity and everything else that was great about their business, it still looked, more of like a scrappy startup, and that's not who they actually are.

Right? Brand is a game of perception, and the perception needs to be accurate if you want to appeal to the right customer. That was exactly the case with PolyAI and now Kylie and I sit down and relive what it was like to go through that experience, how she decided when it was time to act, who to work with and why, and ultimately the outcomes that they're feeling already having only launched a few months ago.

Another wonderful conversation. Really enjoyed this one. I hope you enjoy as well.

[Bill Kenney]

Kylie, welcome to the show. I'm excited to chat with you.

This is the first time we're meeting. I say this over and over again in these episodes. I really enjoy that. Although we are a small team of 20 plus, I don't always get to meet with everybody we work with. So we're going to talk about the PolyAI project, but before we do any of that, I just want to pass you the mic and have you just tell people who you are and what you do at PolyAI.

[Kylie Whitehead]

I'm Kylie Whitehead. I'm Senior Director of Marketing and Brand at PolyAI. We build voice assistance for customer service. So maybe we'll talk about this a bit later, but you know, when you, maybe you've been at your bank and, um, you're greeted by this message that says, please tell me in a few words, why are you calling?

Um, and you're there going, agent, agent, put me through to a human. Um, we exist so that that problem doesn't happen anymore. Right. By making automated experiences that feel like talking to a person. And so I work on our marketing team. I was the first marketing hire. I've been with PolyAI for five years.

Um, and yeah, a huge amount has changed since then. Um, and yeah, we worked together. Was it last year on the rebrand?

[Bill Kenney]

Just last year. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Like, did it launch this year? I start to lose track too.

[Kylie Whitehead]

I think it was last year. Um, then I was like, is it the year before? Um, bearing in mind, it still feels like January to me. So,

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I'm very interested. You've already spawned some questions I'm going to ask. I won't go there yet, but I'll allude to them maybe so I don't forget myself, which is five years now in an AI product, the AI world, as we know it as consumers, I'll put myself on that side is still very new.

So I'm going to be very interested to hear what it was like to be kind of pre this AI wave, building an AI product, and then having the wave show up. Very cool. Very interesting. But let's not start there.

Uh, so the purpose of these episodes is really just to kind of pull back the curtain and uncover what it's like for someone like yourself to consider a branding effort, to try to find the right partner to then engage, go through that process. And what the hell is that like both scary and fun and all things in between. And then the outputs of that. So I'm going to start at the front side of that, which is to ask, how did you know that it was time to invest in brand.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. So I mean a lot of things happening at the same time, right? So one was that we were going to quite a lot of industry conferences. Um, and we were seeing a lot of other companies that looked like us. They had the same colors, they had the same gradient, the logos were similar, um, even the messaging was, was similar.

Um, so we knew we had a differentiated product, um, but that was just not reflected at all in our visual identity. And I like to think that maybe we were responsible for this sort of everyone looking the same. I'd like to think that we were really the trailblazers in that, um, whether that's true, I'll leave that on the table.

Um, so we knew that our, our, our product differentiation was really about quality. You know, we're premium voice, AI vendor, uh, our solutions are all about creating lifelike experiences, engaging experiences, not just something that is, um, you know, cheap and easy and off the shelf and our brand just didn't have that premium feel right.

It felt like a seed company. It felt like a Series A company. Um, it just, it wasn't reflective of where we had grown as a business, which was, you know, well, like you just said, we've, um, closed our Series C this year. Um, so we were, you know, we were on a massive, thank you. We're on an amazing growth trajectory and our brand was just sort of lagging behind.

And we actually didn't go straight in for the rebrand. We did an entire repositioning project beforehand. So, um, we work with this company called Zoom Marketing. Um, and they do data driven positioning. So basically we sort of, we got everything we thought about the story, the company, the values, the differentiators, all of that down.

Um, and then they took that away and tested that with our existing customers. And then with, um, potential prospects as well to really get their take on how we were talking about things versus how they were talking about things. And then we ended up on this, this customer-led voice assistance messaging, which is all about customers in the driver's seat of these conversations, you know, not forcing people to act according to the kind of boundaries, limitations of the technology.

So, you know, you're not having to say a word or press the button, just being able to be yourself. Um, and over the voice channel as well, which is, which is really, really difficult, especially over the phone in a contact center enterprise setting.

Um, so yeah, we, we probably started thinking about a rebrand and then it was probably, you know, a year and a half, two years until we, we actually came to the visual part of that, but I'm, I'm glad we did it that way. I think we learned a lot.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Interesting. So, of note in your response there, First and foremost, yes. I think most of our clients, the lionshare, 90% fall into the bucket of, we didn't look the part anymore, right? We had grown the perception of our business just was not accurate. We need to address that perception.

That's kind of like brand in a nutshell anyways. Right. Um, so. Not surprising, especially when I was looking back through the case study of PolyAI on our current site. We do the like, there's a little visual where it shows the previous identity. I mean, anybody that goes and looks at that right would say that does not look premium, even if we just wanted to stop the sentence there.

Um, so totally makes sense to me. Let's sit a minute on this like data-driven customer research. This is quite interesting. Um, we have often in the past died on the hill of customers shouldn't define your brand. We've come off that hill. And personally, I've come off that hill. But there's still this area of like, how much does a customer inform versus how much is the core DNA and the purpose and the vision of the company and where do those meet?

So I'm very interested to hear what of that customer data and feedback that you got was truly kind of enlightening and really pulled you in a different direction or was more confirming.

[Kylie Whitehead]

It was definitely confirming, right? We didn't have this big moment where we thought, Oh my God, they've told us something we've never considered before. Um, it was much more confirming and it really gave us the language to talk about what we did in a way that wasn't super technical because this was still sort of pre-gen AI boom, right?

We're living in the world of Siri and Alexa and Google Home at this point. We're not, we're not in the ChatGPT world yet. Um, And so, you know, you, you, you could talk about LLMs and all of the amazing technology, but people would just glaze over. That wasn't what our audience was interested in.

So it really gave us the language to talk about our product and also gave us this, I think it's recognition that we're a very empathetic company. Like this is, this is something that we do. And as we work through brand values with Focus Lab, I think empowering was the term that, that we came, one of the values that we came away with.

Which was really all about like empowering our customers. So these are people who run contact centers in massive organizations, typically B2C, right? The kind of company that you might phone in if you face a query, really empowering them to empower their customers to have the conversations that they need to have in a way that is not painful, um, for them.

[Bill Kenney]

I love that. That empowerment thread goes all the way to the end, and it's actually the user, the end user that becomes empowered as a result.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Exactly. And so as we were having these conversations, you can, you can talk about automation and you can say, I mean, the main benefit of a lot of automation is going to be efficiency, right? Like you, you need to keep things running. You need to be able to answer calls. You've got people, you know, calling in and waiting on hold for an hour.

Um, you can't afford, you can't maintain to, you know, to, to hire and maintain a contact center to handle all of those. So you look to automation and you can tell this story and it is an important story and it really speaks to the business value that the buyer is going to get with something like PolyAI.

But actually, you know, these people are thinking all day about their customers. What are my customers, you know, what experience are they having? How are we serving them? They're basically, you know, CX leaders. They're just in this, this different side of the business than your traditional CX leader. And so really being able to understand that, that we wanted to, to speak to that at the beginning of this project was really useful.

Um, did we stick to that all the way through? No. Um, but I think it was really useful to start there.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay. So something for the viewers and listeners to note — things will change in project. Duh. Maybe that's obvious, but maybe it's not. And what I would say is, as we experience this over and over again, those need not be points of frustration. Change is part of the process, right?

Iterating, ideating, thinking, Oh, we spent time on this. Now we're, we're putting it aside. That's not lost time. That is part of the journey.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. I think sometimes you need to see what you don't want to know what you do want. And so we were having these conversations about empathy, about empowerment, about really, you know, helping people to do their jobs and then helping people to, you know, do the job of speaking to customer service. Um, and then your team would do an excellent job of showing us something that, you know, really spoke to that.

And we'd be like, Oh no, that's, that's not who we are. That's not it. Um, and we didn't know that until we saw it and then we went, Oh no, actually that's, and, and when you look at the brand that we came out with, um, I mean, you can see it feels much more. It feels much more like a tech brand. It feels much more like a, an exciting company than perhaps like a warm, fuzzy, friendly, um, consultancy, because I think that was the angle.

As we started to see some of these options, we were like, Oh no, this feels like a, a people company. And that's not what we are. We're, you know, we are a tech company. We are a product company, we're empowering people through that. So trying to find that balance was, um, interesting.

[Bill Kenney]

And tricky, right? The balance is always hard. Every rebrand project is always trying to find a balance. It's just the words on either side of that line are different for every company. Often actually, they're kind of very similar, which is approachable, more premium, like you're, you're trying, but not overly fun, which feels startup.

More up enterprise, but not totally stuffy and boring. Everyone's trying to walk a line there. But they do end up in their own version of that.

[Kylie Whitehead]

You are, I feel like you're making me out as a real cliché here, but it's all true.

[Bill Kenney]

That is only because, and this is a humble brag, not a flex. Uh, we've done 600 projects. I only know that number because we just had our 14 year birthday a couple of weeks ago and somebody on our team went digging to figure out how many projects have we completed.

When you have that many projects, you can easily spot the trends. I've been here from day one, 14 years. These projects are the same to a large degree, like, kind of, like I said, everyone's hunting for the same thing to change the perception of who they are so they can reach where they're trying to go.

And in doing that, we also work in B2B tech. The desires are often the same, you know? So like, it's not as much cliche as it is kind of the natural flow of what everybody's trying to achieve. Everyone that goes to the gym is trying to achieve the same thing as well. Right? So their answers are probably the same.

[Kylie Whitehead]

It was a little bit of a flex. 600 projects.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. All right. Fine.

[Kylie Whitehead]

It was a good one. A deserved flex.

[Bill Kenney]

So. All right. So you realize we got to do this. You even said it. It was a year plus in the making before you even engaged on our side of the project. How does one go about finding a partner? I know how I might think about it, but like, I also understand from someone, from your perspective, there are thousands of agencies that all tout themselves as this.

And is that, and the prices are all over the spectrum. You go from freelancer, you go from friend of a friend, all the way up to the biggest agencies in the world. And we're kind of jammed somewhere in the middle of all of that. What were you looking for in a partner?

[Kylie Whitehead]

I think the first, the first challenge with any kind of, finding any kind of creative partner is, how do I buy something that I just don't know what it is going to be? Like, I can't say to you, can you design this for me? And then I'll decide if I'm going to buy it. Right. I have no idea. I can look at your past projects.

I can speak to you guys. I can speak to all the team. We can ask you loads of questions, but ultimately there's a point where you have to go, all right, let's do this. I don't know what's coming up. You’ve just got to take that risk.

[Bill Kenney]

And I don't know if it'll work either. Meaning the final output. 'cause that's a whole nother like thing that can't be tested necessarily.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, exactly. And you, you ask this, you know, you. You, if you're like me and you just say whatever's on your mind and don't really have a filter, um, you say this to your creative agency and you say like, why should I, I don't know how, how can I work with you? Cause I don't know what I'm buying. And, and, you know, um, most people in your position are like, yeah.

That is kind of the truth of it. You, you do have to take a punt. Um, so when we started looking, I was looking for agencies who had a proven track record of B2B tech companies, right? Because it just, I just wanted to feel comfortable. Just wanted to feel a little bit safe, a little bit like, yeah, I've made this decision because they have a track record of working with a company that I trust.

And you guys had a couple of those logos, which was great. But then I also wanted to work with a team who really understood the, uh, the challenges of the enterprise sale. So we are selling to pretty diverse teams, right? You, we want to talk to the contact center person, the IT person, the marketing person, you know, so many different people across the companies.

They've all got competing priorities. They've got differing levels of understanding and you need to be able to speak to all of them, and not exclude any of them. Um, so really being able to

[Bill Kenney]

Easy, right?

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, I mean, if we crack that, then we're all millionaires. Um, it's, it's really complicated and it's getting harder, right? Buying teams are getting bigger and they're getting more, um, discerning. And so you really need to

[Bill Kenney]

More competition in the market. So like, how do you find your little wedge in there too? Yeah.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. And again, this is still like pre-ChatGPT boom, which has been a whole thing for us. And then I think, you know, you want to work with somebody who's really excited about what you do. So they start asking questions during the, you know, when we're having these sales calls, basically, um, you'll find that there's some agencies that just can't help themselves from asking questions and getting excited about your product.

And some of them are maybe, you know, hold back a little bit more. And it's really nice to see that, that energy.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Kylie Whitehead]

And then I think finally, it's a bit fluffy, but having a good relationship because I knew going in that we were not necessarily going to be the easiest client. Um, we, we're opinionated. Um, you know, we love telling stories.

We have a lot of storytellers in the company, right? People who are really invested in figuring out how to do this. Um, And we had a lot of internal buy-in for the existing brand. Like we had people who had been there since the beginning, who felt strongly as they should of, of what the company had built up and to them, the existing brand was a symbol of that.

Um, and so we needed to make sure that we could work with somebody where we could be a difficult client if we needed to and just say it how it is and trust that we can just have these conversations like normal people, um, and work it out together.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that because it is one of the things, if not the thing we care about the most, right? The craft at the end of the day starts to become table stakes, industry specific helps a little bit, right? It gives some more security and like trust built in there. But at the end of the day, are we going to be able to go on a long challenging journey, different degrees of challenge for each project, but they are all challenging in their own right.

And are we going to be able to do that like normal human beings? To use your words. Are we going to be able to have open, vulnerable conversations and not have feelings hurt? Are we going to be able to push each other, check each other? No, I don't agree with that, but let's talk about it. That is instrumental in the success of a project.

And we really try to lean on that as one of, like, our biggest differentiators. Honestly.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. And I think you, you know, you know, I'm not a designer. Um, luckily I have a wonderful designer on my team and I frequently catch myself saying things like, can we just give that a bit more pep? Can we make that feel a bit more premium? But you're saying this stuff that doesn't mean anything. And you want to work with somebody who's like, who understands that you're saying that because you don't know how to say what you mean.

You don't really know what it is. But you know something doesn't feel right and you need to start a conversation with that and you do have to start with those cliches sometimes and you need a designer who's able to go like okay, let's let's work this out.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, discernment becomes like a superpower of a craftsperson, right? Being able to read between the lines. You can say something to me and you don't have to say it the right way. And to other people it might be confusing, but again, thinking about the experience you're able to discern what that person is actually hungry for.

You're like, Oh, okay. You didn't say this, but I know actually even subconsciously, this is kind of what you want to see. So I'm going to come at it with something totally new that you didn't say, I need new, you needed this. No, no, you actually need new. And I'm going to show you, you're going to go, Oh my God, that's it.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yes. That's great. That makes me feel better.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, that's, that's, listen, that's the game that we're in. I just put up this post on LinkedIn yesterday. We are not in the creative services game. We're in the C-suite alignment game, but you can change C-suite to whatever you want, team alignment, business alignment, all this stuff is being able to take the information, discern it, put it back in people and get everybody going in the same direction.

Again, the pixels and the words and all that stuff kind of sort themselves out. Now we're, now we'll be measuring on. It's these types of things. Are we going to be able to get on with these people and have like, Proper discussions and really kind of get into the nuances. Are they going to understand us, but also read between the lines on what we're saying.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

I'm so happy you said that. Cause that's what I would want people to know outside of this recording. Like that's where we really bring the value. That is also what makes a project go a lot smoother. For what it's worth.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, I'd forgotten about this until we were just talking, but one of the things I, I really, I was nervous about before the project. And then afterwards, looking back, I was really grateful for is that I was really the conduit between the company, like PolyAI and Focus Lab.

At no point did you insist that my CEO sits down in a three hour strategy meeting, and then you ask him a load of questions that he's been asked millions of times before. Um, and then he would have come out at that being like, why have you just wasted my time with this? Um, and you know, would you have got what you needed? Maybe some of it, maybe not all of it. Um, and at first that was a little bit frightening, because I'm, like, well, this is kind of the process everyone else is pitching to me, is that they're going to do this discovery workshop.

It's going to work like this. Um, and I can see it, you know, working like that. I've worked on projects like that before. Um, but in the end, it really made me the face of this rebrand in the company and my team, of course, my designer and my SVP of marketing, who were both amazing. And my CEO, to be fair, was incredible throughout this, um, this process, but it really allowed us to, to own it from that respect

[Bill Kenney]

I was just going to share that, the point you're making, and I'll just share from my perspective, not to cut you short, that role that you played in the project, which is the conduit, is such an important role. I can't emphasize how important, like you could not overstate how important that role is.

If you feel unempowered or uncomfortable, any other adjective you want to insert there. You can't do that job well. It takes a certain person in these projects to really sit in between both parties, making all these things, putting it through, sharing it, sharing the right amount, not sharing all of it, asking the right questions, not the wrong question, putting it back and guiding both parties as something's being built is really, really hard.

And I would tell you that a lot of projects hinge on that person's ability to do that. they're unable to do it well, even out of their own capabilities, that might just be that the team is so large and C-suite is so big and so disjointed that they can't wrangle it. The project will fail. So I've kind of cut you off mid-thought, but I, I wanted to express basically, a thank you and a praise to you.

Cause I don't think you realize how important that role is to the success of a project.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, well, it, it felt, you know, it just felt great at the time. It felt very empowering for me. Um, it enabled me to, to strengthen my relationships with the, you know, the rest of the leadership team at PolyAI and really just, um, you know, prove that I could, could run with this and that I could also take on board what they were saying when, again, when they didn't know what they were saying.

So then you have layers. of extrapolation because they're saying, well, I think this and I'm like, all right, how am I going to try and explain this now to Focus Lab so that they can try and do something about it? Um, yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, I guess there really is something there which is, there are gonna be things that you're nervous about. Go on the journey and also let yourself accept the reality that the things you're nervous about might be the greatest wins You don't know yet.

It's this idea of like, if you're going to assume the worst, you have to give yourself the benefit of also assuming the best, because all options are open at the beginning.

And it seems like maybe you've, you've come to that realization at the end now and kind of being, putting yourself back in the project.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, I mean, and I, I'm really fortunate, right? I have really great relationships with the founding team. I've, I've been here. I joined the company. Like two or three years in, I've been there for five years. You know, we've, we've built really great relationships. We bought on an SVP of marketing while we were having these conversations about potentially doing this project.

And she joined and she really helped me, um, to push that forwards, um, and to communicate everything. And then I have my designer as well. Who's again, just like an absolute rock. Um, and we had this brilliant team where we could just say anything to each other. Again, normal conversations like normal people, we can just talk and then being able to have your team as an extension of that, um, is really important because like you said, I'm sure anybody would do a good job of designing something pretty.

Um, but it's A, like, does that thing actually reflect what we want it to reflect, which is probably not what we thought in the first place. Um, and B, can you help us have those conversations with each other so that we can. Um, really identify what those things are.

[Bill Kenney]

The facilitation side of the journey. Super valuable, super duper valuable. Yeah you can't just be throwing things over a fence. Well, I know how to make pretty things. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna keep throwing pretty things over the fence. It's like, no, we need to break the fence down. Meeting, talking, um, poking holes and things.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Again, it highlights the importance of the relationship, right? Because sometimes you're, you're speaking to the designer and you're saying, I don't like this. I don't know why, but the thing is, I don't like it. Um, and so again, you, you need to have that relationship where you can, and even at times like laugh about it, like we're laughing about it now.

[Bill Kenney]

You gotta be able to laugh about.

[Kylie Whitehead]

You have to be like, I know this is ridiculous and I'm being ridiculous, but that's where we are. You have to speak right. Uh, all right, so let's move us into the project then. And we may have covered some of these, so feel free to kind of attack them quickly, if that feels appropriate to you. I want to ask you two questions on opposite sides of the spectrum.

The first is, what was the most challenging aspect of the entire project to either you or maybe just like your team in general?

[Kylie Whitehead]

I think like initially committing to we're going to do this. Um, once we had made that decision and moved into the project, I feel like there was lots of, you know, moments when we're trying to communicate stuff and, and trying to understand why we're making certain decisions and make sure that everybody agrees with that.

But really just getting to this point where we're like, Yeah, this, this feels like a big risk. Um, this feels like a really big moment for the company. It is a big moment for the company.

And I think if you can get everybody aligned to say, yes, like we're ready to, to make this leap. Um, it's a challenge, but the one that kind of sets everything else up, like I said, I'm, I'm really lucky with my team.

So all the conversation throughout. I'm sure there was, I'm sure there was many difficult conversations throughout, but we were able to, to work through them. And so if you have those, that relationship, that transparency, um, I think it will be fine.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, I love that. It's basically all hinged on this idea of like, we're committed to do this. So that's no longer part of the challenge. We are committed. We see, not often, but we do see the inverse of that. Sometimes you can tell the project team, marketing, if you will, is committed. But maybe not people around it, whether that be all the way up to the founder, maybe still not fully committed, but letting marketing do their job or maybe even at the board level, right?

Maybe the board level is kind of like, I don't know if this is right. God, having that commitment makes everything easier. Great point.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, a lot easier. And where you are today is still going to be the benchmark. Like you, you, you're not going to say we're never going to look back. You're, you're going to look at where you are and compare what you're working on with that. Um, but yeah, if you feel that people are hungry for it, it helps.

[Bill Kenney]

Absolutely. Uh, what was the most enjoyable aspect of the project? Start to finish post launch, anything that you can wrap into what is most enjoyable.

[Kylie Whitehead]

I mean, the whole thing was great. We would have conversations and I would hear myself talking about the company. And I would kind of realize the amount that I have learned, um, over the years working here. And I would kind of. you know, it was, it was quite affirming for me in my career to, to think that, you know, that I have got to this point and that I'm able to, to do this.

Um, so that was fantastic. Um, obviously then the feedback and the praise and the love since it's been launched has been incredible. We had the brand party, just a little party in our office and We got loads of balloons and we got everyone bucket hats printed. And it was just, was just this sea of Macaw, like everywhere.

And you come out of the room and everyone's like, this is amazing. This is great. Um, and then since then we've, we've, we've seen some really exciting things. Uh, we've put together a new, um, events booth. We have competitors coming up to our booths at conferences saying like, everybody's talking about you guys, you look amazing.

And we're like, yeah, we do.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Yes.

[Kylie Whitehead]

And we have, our designer has just done an excellent job. She's been working really, really hard on a series of billboards and like taxi toppers, which are going to be live in Vegas next week, um, to coincide with a, uh, a conference there. So we're, we're starting to experiment

[Bill Kenney]

Hell yeah.

[Kylie Whitehead]

And just seeing the brand in all of these new places is, um, yeah, it's just amazing.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, I love that. Um, you, you noted the Macaw. So some people might be like, what the hell is that? I know what that is. Macaw is the branded name of the color of PolyAI's primary, kind of this vibrant green, yellow. Ooh, I don't know. I wasn't on the project. I don't know how it was described, but it is named Macaw.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's very. Recognizable. It definitely jumps out. So yes, I can imagine everybody wearing that color hat was pretty loud, but that loud, loud is good. Yeah,

[Kylie Whitehead]

Loud is what we wanted. I believe at one point, we used the term invasive. Um, you know, when you're at an event with thousands of booths around you, you know, thousands of salespeople trying to grab you to have a conversation, you just kind of want to punch somebody in the face and make them have a conversation with you.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes.

[Kylie Whitehead]

That's what the Macaw is for us. Exactly.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Oh, wow. I, I love this and I can't wait until there's an event and I suspect there would be at some point that y'all are at, that I'm going to be there too.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Well, you won't miss us. So yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

And that’s the goal, right? Not everybody leans on color to be their “notice us” funny enough. Some people try to do it in different ways. They want to either do it through voice, like a very bold voice, but then they balance to come back to that word, the color down so that everything is shouting. Um, I, Y'all have ended up in a really good position where I do feel like you're balanced as well.

The Macaw, the color palette is very much like, look at us, you're going to find us. But the tones of the other colors, the darks really balance that out and make it feel sophisticated and mature and not just loud for loud sake. Uh, and then the technical aspects of the voice and the product, et cetera, it all balances out really well.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, and we use these really nice kind of pastel colors which I would have never have put with that like lime green, I would never have thought of that. But they're much warmer, they're much more human, they're much softer and they speak to that, you know, part that we thought was going to be the, the main character.

The biggest part of our brand that actually ended up being a bit more of an accent. Um, but like you said, we're kind of balancing that with the language that we use, with the way that we speak, with this sort of high tech, bright, visible, invasive, um, color.

[Bill Kenney]

I'm here for that word. I've been doing it long enough where I'm like, go, go big, go bold, or like, go home, right? Like, own it. Have an opinion on it and own it. It's okay to say, like, invasive. It's like, okay, I know what you mean by that. I know what we're trying to achieve.

[Kylie Whitehead]

So yeah, it's like better than a bit more pizazz.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah. Alright, so, you've, you might have answered the next question, which there are only two left. My next question was going to be what return and positive outcomes have you seen as a result of having the new brand? I know you just raised the Series C 50 million. Congrats on that.

Uh, you've talked about some of the conference stuff. Is there anything else that you would share? Have you basically answered it?

[Kylie Whitehead]

Um, yeah, I mean, our brand awareness has gone through the roof and that's, you know, this brand project has coincided with us just scaling up, you know, everything across all of our marketing channels. And I think the room we have now, the space that we have within the brand to interpret things differently is, is so much, it's so much broader than it was before.

And that's not because we have millions of colors or loads of different fonts or anything like that, but it, it just feels like there are elements that we can apply in different ways to, to really highlight different parts of the story. Um, which is what's really enabled us to go with out of home, to improve our events presence, to do all of these other things, to stand out.

Um, and so I think the result is just, everything, just dialing everything up a little bit, you know?

[Bill Kenney]

That's right. Yep. And then seeing the actual return on that, what you're talking about, which is basically better tools and the enablement to do those things. What will that lead to in 10 years, 15 years? That doesn't mean. There might not be adaptations to the system or evolution of the system, but that new toolbox allows you to go much further than, say, kind of the old system, if you will.

So yeah, the return is yet to be determined in a lot of ways. That's no different than how long it took Nike to be able to sell a pair of sneakers for $1,000 that are made out of the same material as a Reebok sneaker that nobody cares about, right? It's all brand. Uh, so yeah, fun stuff. All right. Final question.

Final question. Since you know everything now, your words, not mine. Just kidding. Just kidding. Uh, if and when I, maybe I say that, uh, you sit down with a peer, another marketing person, and they're considering going through a rebrand, take focus out of it. And you're just trying to tell them, listen, okay, I learned a lot.

Here's the one thing you’ve got to get right. If you do nothing else, do this to set yourself up for success. What would you tell them?

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. Great question. Um, CEO wants and not just, you know, You know, in the, in terms of this is the message that we want to tell customers, or this is where we see the company in five years, but what they, what they want as a, as a person, you know, what is going to make them feel good. Um, because you're, you're going to need them to push this out across the whole company to get everyone else bought in, you know, you need them on your side.

So just invest that time and understand them as a person, um, as a founder, if they are a founder, um, and then once you can, you can get that, it's just a case of being able to communicate that across.

[Bill Kenney]

That's the first time that's been said, so props to you. You're living up to your hype. I want to add additional light to that, to share from my perspective, how important that is as well. I'm really glad you said that this has become top of mind for me lately.

So much so that I now do CEO to CEO calls. I didn't even do those when your project started, which was not that long ago. At the front end of every project as part of the onboarding, I take a one on one call with the CEO to also uncover that exact question. What's your greatest desire in this rebrand question mark, and just let them run with that thought.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Because it's very important to know what they're thinking, teeling. I go into more questions. What's your greatest fear? You know, what would failure look like? I talked to them about what I think a level of involvement should be on their part. All these types of things to really help them understand how this project will flow.

Typically, the marketing people just understand that more intuitively being in the role that they're in. But really, my primary question, first question, is that one that you've just asked. What's your greatest desire? Because then you can distill that down to how that shows up visually, verbally, all those types of things.

Um, props to you for understanding the importance of that. I think that founders and CEOs, they're often, they're like in one of two camps. And I don't, this is no projection on your current CEO. Uh, they're in one of two camps. They're often looked at as they have strong opinions, but they don't understand what we're about to do.

So we're going to keep them further away, so we can do our job and they've empowered us to do it. Or we love them, we want them in as close as possible. And that is also a balance of trying to figure out how to involve that person then depending on what camp they fall in. But to your point, regardless of what camp they fall in or how you feel about their opinions or not, they have to be involved if, if not only right at the front end, trying to figure out what are they actually looking for themselves in this project.

And sometimes it's very personal. And as much as people like you and I would want to say, these projects should not be personal. They should be very objective. You can't negate that. They become very personal.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there is a degree of subjectivity here. There isn't a science that is going to say, if you get this exact logo, you're going to increase revenue by 10% in the next year, like that's not, you can't think about it like that, which can make it difficult for somebody in a executive position to, to want to invest in something like this, because it's very difficult to, you know, to, um, predict that return.

And I think on your note some people maybe wanting to keep the CEO. Uh, you know, at a distance, I think that's fine, but also understanding what the CEO wants. Like if, if, if somebody feels like you're holding them at a distance, it's going to be very difficult for them to feel bought in to what you actually do.

So there's what's right for your team, but there's also what's right for them. And sometimes that might mean letting someone into the conversation that you didn't really want to. Um, and I think that we probably have instances of that and your team handled it wonderfully. So it's just a case of being like, sometimes somebody just needs to be heard.

And so we need to bring that person in, um, and make sure that they're heard because ultimately. That's important, even if it feels frustrating at the time.

[Bill Kenney]

Sure. And even if it's disruptive to the portion of the project you're in, none of that matters. That's taken me a long time to get there in my career to realize that, you know, there are these positions that people could take up like, Oh, that's going to be disruptive. Let's not blow up the project. No, that person needs to be heard.

So anytime that I hear in a project, Oh, the CEO has an opinion on this. And like, we hadn't heard that yet. I'm basically saying, let's get that person in the meeting. Bring them to the next meeting. Like let's hear all, I want to hear all of that. Let's have an awesome, fruitful, vulnerable conversation about, okay, how are you feeling?

Why didn't that land for you? Let's not run that through six filters before in both directions.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

But yes, to your point earlier, they don't also need to be in every single meeting where we're talking about one shade difference of the Macaw. Lime green and that person is like, I don't need to be here for this.

Right. So you have to use your best judgment

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yeah. Respecting, like, other people's time and other people's priorities, and just making sure you understand, you know, who wants to be involved and how. And sometimes people want to be involved and you don't want to, you know, have them involved, so you have to make those decisions as well. not equal, I just let everyone in.

[Bill Kenney]

It comes back to the conduit point.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Yes. Yes.

[Bill Kenney]

There’s a lot of pressure on the person in the middle, trying to determine the right time of those involvements and not, um, we didn't get to it, but maybe I'll, maybe this'll be like a, a final, final question, a little, uh, surprise. And there's one more thing, Steve Jobs moment.

What has it felt like to ride this AI wave seeing the before and after this new world showed up and you were already there, like, What are the feelings? What's the energy behind that? Yeah.

[Kylie Whitehead]

You know, you've, I've put in four years of my life, five years of my life until this has sort of become common knowledge that this technology is, is actually, you know, real and amazing. And I think for those five years, we were sort of battling previous technology. So like I spoke at the beginning of this call, everybody's understanding of voice AI was just, I'm just going to shout agent, or I'm going to mash my keypad, or I'm just going to swear, like say a whole string of swear words in the hope that one of them triggers something that puts me through.

Um, so we were really having to fight against that to be like, yeah, that nascent technology that was used, you know, in its early stages and yeah, it's gonna suck for a while. We are at this stage where we've created something much, much better, much more realistic, much more lifelike, much more engaging, and to now have that, um, as an expectation, like a mainstream expectation of this technology is, is really helpful to us.

And it's really interesting because we're seeing a lot more executive teams and board members asking, what are you doing with AI? What are you doing with generative AI? And so, you know, it's, it's coming from the top down now, like, you need to be looking at this technology, which is really exciting and a little bit frightening, um, depending on how that person decides to interpret that.

Um, but obviously it comes with its, its own challenges of, you know, there are a lot of, you know, startups popping up who are basically putting thin wrappers around ChatGPT and, and sort of saying that they can offer things that perhaps don't take into account the nuances of actual enterprise problems.

Um, there's a lot more noise. But overall, I'd say it's, it's, you know, it's a great thing. I think people are understanding this technology and I'm sure we'll also have many laughs over the next couple of years when these things go wrong, like Google's AI summaries, it's been quite amusing.

[Bill Kenney]

So the net net benefit is still largely positive. The analogy I was thinking about in my mind was like, you were waiting for a wave. It finally arrived and you're surfing it. And all of a sudden there's like a hundred other surfers on the wave, and you're like, Well, I'm glad the wave is here, but like, damn, there's a lot of people and it's kind of like messing up my ride a little bit.

Yeah. I didn't think about all the new players.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Maybe I feel a bit more cocky about that because I feel like we're, we're riding the wave and everyone else is just like trying to stand up on their board,

[Bill Kenney]

Oh, there you go. There you go. That's a good finish. I like that. Yeah. See, the boldness is more than Macaw. It's more than the color. It's also in the, yeah, we've been building this for a long time and we actually have something. All right. Awesome.

Wonderful conversation. I'll end with just saying thank you for trusting us in the first place and taking that leap, hiring us, partnering with us, going through this journey. Uh, it's been nothing but a pleasure.

Congrats again on the Series C raise. I saw the images in the New York Stock Exchange with the PolyAI banners and all that stuff, the newspaper articles you've been sharing. So It seems like there's even more momentum in wave forming for you all. And we couldn't be happier. We win when our clients win, period, end of sentence, right?

That's, that's how we succeed. So I'm very happy for you all. And thank you.

[Kylie Whitehead]

Thank you.