We’ve all found a questionable food item in the fridge or cabinet, wondering if it’s past its prime. Sometimes the answer is obvious: if it’s blue, fuzzy, or foul smelling, it’s got to go. But other times it’s not so easy to tell. Sure, the milk is a few days past its use-by date, but it smells okay, and you really don’t have time to run to the store.
Imagine applying this logic to the elements of your brand identity. Do they pass the sniff test?
We’ll be the first to admit we were overdue for a rebrand. When you spend every day helping other businesses build their brands, it’s challenging to do it for your own organization. But we finally did for ourselves what we love to do for our clients: we refreshed our visual and narrative identity to better align with who we are, what we do, and the value we provide others.
Rebranding our brand was a significant and deeply personal process––a labor of love we strove to squeeze in as day-to-day responsibilities carried on. We’re thrilled to share our new look and feel with our network, and hopefully inspire more 2025 rebrands while we’re at it. In truth, it’s a bit uncomfortable to pull back the curtain on our own rebrand, especially since our process wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was actually quite off brand for us.
So, how do you know if your brand is ripe or past its prime? And how do you know if you need a minor refresh or a complete overhaul? The answer is—like our team’s varied views on expiration dates—it depends. In true Hencove fashion, we’ve summed up our reasons for rebranding with an alliteration: timing, team, tone, and trust.
Timing Is Everything
We stand by what we’ve said: you shouldn’t rush a rebrand. But once you decide to do it, you shouldn’t drag it out. While we aim for client rebrands to take months to complete, our rebrand took years. We had begun playing with the idea of a rebrand in 2018, but we had a few false starts. Then, in March 2020, it was our time to shine—or so we thought: overnight, the pandemic turned everything upside down. Our priorities shifted to supporting clients around the clock, particularly in the healthcare industry, and our rebrand was paused. Since then, we started and stopped the process a few times for a variety of reasons: we were too busy, we were focused on new clients, we needed to hire more people—the list went on.
After a yearslong detour building strong client connections and thoughtfully expanding our team, we arrived at a significant milestone where the rebranding time felt right. In April 2024, we celebrated our 10th anniversary—the perfect push to start our next decade with a new brand. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but now we can see why earlier rebrand attempts fell short. For many reasons, our new identity reflects who we are today, not who we were five years ago.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Today, Hencove is quite a bit different than we were a few years ago. For one, we’ve nearly tripled in size. But it’s not just about a higher headcount; we’ve also hired colleagues who expand our range of skills and bring diverse work experiences to the table. Our bench is deeper and longer, enabling us to cover client work and tackle our rebrand simultaneously.
When we evaluated our existing brand last spring, we realized that while it had served us well for many years, it wasn’t doing justice to our current team and talent. As strategic and creative go-getters, we were embarrassed: our story was wishy-washy, our visual identity was undefined, and our website was outdated—all signs of expired brand identity elements.
As an aside, we consider our “team” to be bigger than Hencove. A decade in, it’s amazing to look around and see a lot of people cheering us on. We pride ourselves on the strong network we’ve built over the years, one connection at a time. In fact, most of our clients hear about us through the good ol’ grapevine. We’re always looking to make meaningful connections and grow our team—internally and externally.
Turn Up the Tone
Let’s face it: B2B marketing can be boring. But we believe it shouldn’t be. We do everything in our power to help clients get out of their comfort zone and push the boundaries of creativity. We ensure that our clients’ marketing isn’t too safe, while also helping them to avoid a disastrous brand fumble.
As an advisor to complex businesses, we take our role as a strategic and creative voice in the room seriously. Over the years, we’ve become more confident in who we are and when to speak up in our clients’ best interests. This bolder and more conversational tone no longer matched our earlier narrative and visual vibes, and it even started to hold us back. Sometimes your brand’s vocal range becomes too wide for your identity.
Trust Takes Years to Build
In a word, what ultimately got our rebrand over the finish line was trust. Sure, it may have taken us longer than we planned, but we never questioned ourselves. We know we do great work, and we never doubt our ability to bring people, identities, teams, and companies together. Our old branding left our story unfinished, and our new identity picks up right where it left off.
What makes us special isn’t what we do, but how we do it. First, we’re a small team capable of incredible breadth in an industry where specialization is becoming increasingly popular. Second, we’re true collaborators, confidants, cheerleaders, and coaches. Our team joins yours, and vice versa. Whether we partner on one project or collaborate for years, our most successful client relationships thrive on trust—in our skills, judgment, recommendations, and corny jokes. Our clients’ trust allows us to stand confidently upon our expertise to champion good ideas.
As you’ve probably gathered, we don’t take the decision to rebrand lightly. It’s a lot of work, and it’s not always glamorous. But we love to hustle, especially when it means using our rebranding journey to help others navigate theirs. B2B brands are our bread and butter––if something smells off, we’ll be the first to help you investigate.
