How to Successfully Rebrand A Health-Tech Company with Alan Tam, Lena Chang, and Reed Perkins: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

How to Successfully Rebrand A Health-Tech Company with Alan Tam, Lena Chang, and Reed Perkins: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket, and I’m so glad you tuned in again. Today, I have some extraordinary guests and we’re doing a special podcast today about how to successfully rebrand a health tech company. You’re probably thinking, Oh my god, great timing for this or, Oh wow, I just did this. And today we’re going to talk through some really great examples. Real live example actually that was done. And so why don’t we get started? Our three guests today are Alan Tam. Alan Tam is the VP of Marketing at Actium Health. He’s a marketing leader with skill sets in product marketing, product management and new business strategy for growth oriented technology companies. He has experience identifying new market opportunities, bringing new products to market and building high performance marketing teams. Alan worked at notable companies such as Luma Health, Swerve, Monotype and Adobe, and he’s just doing an extraordinary job at Actium Health. We’re going to be talking about his rebrand here. We also have Lena Chang on the podcast. Dr Lena Cheng. She is Managing Director at Best Friend Jack, the company that helped Alan and team do the rebrand. And finally, we have Reed Perkins on with us. He’s the Creative Director at Best Friend Jack as well. He’s the health technology brand agency. They they really just focus on high potential health tech companies with a strategic narrative marketing and brand strategy and rebrands that that helps refresh them from web design, content and advertising. Their clients are backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Coastal Ventures, Insight Partners. All those big names that you guys know that back up those companies that have successful futures. So first of all, just want to park here and say thank you all for being part of today’s podcast.

Lena Cheng:
It’s great to be here.

Alan Tam:
Happy to be here. Thanks, Saul.

Saul Marquez:
Absolutely. And so we have like both coasts here. we have San Francisco Palo Alto area. So Lena and Alan, you guys are both here in the West Coast, right?

Alan Tam:
That’s correct.

Reed Perkins:
I’m representing Brooklyn on the East Coast.

Saul Marquez:
Love it. Love it. So Reed is covering the East Coast. So we’ve got you guys all covered coast to coast on this topic. And so let’s really dive into it. And before we do, actually what I want to do is is level set on on both Actium but also Best Friend Jack. So why don’t we start with Actium? Alan, can you tell us a little bit about Axiom and what you guys are up to in health care?

Alan Tam:
Sure. So Actium Health, we are a CRM intelligence company and I’ll cover more about what that means a little bit. But in a nutshell, we exist to help health care marketers and patient outreach teams proactively communicate to their patient population, to reactivate them and to bring them in to get the care that they need. And we do this through one to one dialogues where personalization isn’t enough, but true relevance in the communications that they deliver to their patients.

Saul Marquez:
Super cool. Excited to dig into that further. And Lena, Reed, tell us about Best Friend Jack.

Lena Cheng:
Yeah, so Best Friend Jack is a boutique marketing and branding agency, and we work solely with high potential, high growth health tech companies to take their branding and advertising and communications to the next level.

Saul Marquez:
Love it. I’ve had a chance to work with you in the past, Lena, and I think the work that you guys do is is extraordinary, so certainly excited to dig into this. So really, Alan, you started off by telling us how Actium is adding value to the health care company. But let’s dig deeper, you know? How exactly are you helping with this one on one communication, you know, helping engage patients to get back into the system care? Obviously, COVID is a big issue, and even on the tail end, the Delta variant is still creating challenges with care avoidance. Talk to us about that.

Alan Tam:
Sure. And I think that as bad as the pandemic is, it’s been a great catalyst in regards to digital transformation in health care. So I think in a sense, it’s kind of help accelerate and propelled health care I.T. technologies and helping health systems adopt this capability. What we focus on and the opportunity that we see at Actium’s specifically is that oftentimes, unlike any other verticals that are out there, there is no proactive communication. There isn’t a relationship that’s being managed between the health system and the patient community, whereas other vertical industries you see marketing kind of owns the relationship. The brand owns the relationship with the consumer. It’s a little bit different, I think, in health care. And so what we do here at Actium, we help the health care brands essentially fulfill their brand promise, which is really providing the care that the community needs and to the patient population that they serve. And one of the key things that I’m sure all of you who are listening and Saul that you’ve seen are probably billboards, physicians and doctors as you’re driving down the interstate. And that’s kind of been the traditional marketing practice for health care systems for many years and continues to be. Unfortunately in today’s digital world, you know, oftentimes, you know, metrics success can’t be measured in that fashion. And it really doesn’t speak to what we, as health care consumers expect in today’s modern world. We expect all our communications to be extremely personalized and relevant to us. We’ve been spoiled, you can say, by the Amazons and the Netflix and travel and hospitality who understand exactly what we need when we need it and how to connect us with what we want. And I think health care has all that data to make it happen. It just hasn’t happened yet. So I’m at Actium because I’m super excited about our ability to leverage these data sets within our AI models to basically help health care systems deliver what we call next best actions for each and every single patient that they serve. If you think about your own personal health care journey, there’s lots of things we have to do. Right? I have to get my booster shot. Oh, I also have to get flu vaccine. And Alan, you’re going to be turning 50, so you need a colonoscopy, et cetera, et cetera. So the health care system has many things that they can talk to you about. But instead of overwhelming the patient with all these different things and where to start, what does that single next best thing that I can influence Alan to come in so that he can start his care journey, so that we can get him into our facility and start his treatment plan or to get him to to healthier outcomes. And so Actium I think for me enables these health care marketers to identify patients who are most at risk or most likely to be susceptible to a chronic condition to bring me in, right? And understanding that the cardiology billboard probably doesn’t apply to Alan, but you know what? Alan has a couple of kids, so I’m going to talk to him about peanut allergy for kids as an example. So really delivering that one to one relevant communication is a key thing that we’re enabling health care marketers to do.

Saul Marquez:
That’s interesting, Alan. And one would imagine it’s easy if you have a small practice, but when you’re talking about scaling these types of efforts across multiple hospitals, across multiple communities, that’s where what you guys do really brings it to, you know, provide a big service. And so it’s AI, it’s insights that help folks understand what the next best step is. Talk to us about why you decided to rebrand and rename the company.

Alan Tam:
Sure. It really started when we when I first joined the company trying to understand what is the direction that we want to focus in as an organization and trying to get alignment across the various teams and leaders of the company of where we want to go and what we want to do. When I joined the company about a year ago, the company is very focused on delivering much more of a CRM solution in health care. And CRM in health care funny enough means many different things to many different folks, and it’s not always your traditional sense of CRM as in, you know, a salesforce or a Microsoft dynamic. It’s when health care marketers, not all, but most health care marketers think about CRM, they’re thinking about not only the Patient 360, but also the outreach and the communication piece, which is much more around marketing automation. But one of the biggest gaps in key areas of value that we deliver at Actium was really around our AI models. And so we wanted to kind of shift the focus of the company and rebrand and re-message what we do to our clients and to the market on around this whole concept of CRM intelligence. There is no shortage of data in health care. In fact, there’s there’s a ton. There is, you know, there’s the electronic medical record, there’s CRM, there’s pop health databases, there’s data all over the place. And even if you put something like a traditional CRM in place, it’s a consolidation of all that data, and I think it presents an overwhelming view to a health care marketer or anyone who’s trying to communicate with the patient like, Oh my gosh, what do I do with all this data? Where do I even start? And how Actium works is we actually ingest that data and basically run it through our AI models. And the data set is specific to the health system itself. And we have propensity and predictive models that look at years of patient data to help identify what patients are most at risk for certain conditions and whether or not they’re going to need a medical encounter in the next 12 months and then assigning what we call it next best action for that particular patient and then powering the outreach. So it’s that level of intelligence. Building the campaign itself in marketing,it’s not a challenge. The biggest challenge in marketing, especially in health care marketing, is like, who do I talk to. If I’m building a colonoscopy campaign, if I’m building a breast health campaign, who’s the right audience? I don’t want to go out to everyone. I want to make sure that the message in the campaign goes out to the people where it’s relevant and I can impact them the most. Otherwise, it’s wasted time with the patient and it’s also wasted resources because I have limited capacity as a health system. And then what does that specific call to action that I want the campaign to drive the patient to do? Do I want them to come in for an appointment? Do I want them to fill a health risk assessment form? Do I want them to take a particular action within the mobile app? Like, for example, when the pandemic first broke out, there was a tremendous effort to collect people’s mobile phone numbers so that communications can quickly be sent out in regards to updates on COVID 19, vaccine availability, et cetera. You know, long way of answering your question Saul is that this has helped really accelerate the way that health system marketers have been able to quickly build up the relationship, as well as your communications with the audience that they serve. Really, in the past year and a half, two years almost now?

Saul Marquez:
And so that rebrand, so what were you guys before and what are you now?

Alan Tam:
Yeah. So before we were a company known as SymphonyRM, and now we are Actium Health. SymphonyRM I think came about when the company first started. Our founder, Mike Lennert, wanted something that was harmonizing, and SymphonyRM was one of the first things that was generic enough and easy enough to brand and obtain and not worry about trademarks and all those other issues that come along with building up a brand. But when you do a search for symphony and health care, I think Google quickly returns like over a dozen symphony companies. So carving out that space and having something that’s, you know, much more specific is also one of the key reasons why we chose to rebrand.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s really interesting. So I mean, I think about SymphonyRM and then I think about Actium Man. Actium is like gets to the next best action, right? And it’s like, I don’t know, it just feels like it’s going to deliver me something. And so that’s fascinating. Thank you for walking us through that, Alan. And so you made the rebrand. And so what was the process and what time and resources were required? This could be a good chance for you to kind of give your perspective and also for the team here to share their perspectives as well. Talk to us about that.

Lena Cheng:
Yeah. So I’ll just weigh in to say that Actium is actually the type of company that we’re typically really excited to work with. And what we find in health tech is that we come across a lot of companies that are at a certain stage of growth. They have found that product market fit and they’re acquiring that first wave of customers. And maybe they have sort of this, you know, kind of certain stopgaps in place when it comes to marketing. You know, they have a corporate website, a basic sales deck, an overview brochure, kind of a basic marketing presence out there. And then they enter this growth phase. Once they found that product market fit, they enter that growth phase and all of a sudden they’re generating more revenue, they’re raising more capital, they’re acquiring more customers, they’re hiring more people. And they often find that they start to hit some roadblocks and they start to see that growth kind of plateau. And that’s usually when we’ll get that call. And oftentimes when we’re talking to perhaps a CEO or a head of marketing, as they talk to us about the things that they’ve been struggling with, it’s clear that some of those things, many of those things oftentimes are brand related. So I’m sure that Reed can sort of share a story from a client that we worked with that was sort of struggling with just that thing.

Reed Perkins:
Yeah, sure, I’d be happy to. And Alan, I’d love to get your perspective on whether this was one of the driving factors for you at Symphony. But one thing we come across a lot of times is that, you know, companies are mistaking features and functionality for positioning. And I’m sure that there are some of your listeners that are feeling right now that we’re doing so much great work, like how do we choose one thing to really stand for or like, what might we be leading off the table? And you know, I’m thinking of one past client in particular that was facing this. Like so many health care companies, they’re rapidly iterating, they’re evolving, they’re looking for that product market fit and this company was struggling with like, are we a messaging tool? Are we a scheduling tool? Are we an appointment reminder tool? Like all these things are so important. And so their solution was to just say everything all the time as often as possible. And it reminds me of we call it fire all of your guns at once. It reminds me of this great doc I watched about Bruce Springsteen making Darkness at the Edge of Town seminal album, and he was like obsessively listening to this album. And he was like, I want the drums to be louder. I want the guitar to be louder, and you’ve got to turn the vocals on. And finally, after like weeks and weeks and tons of money they spent on it, this audio engineer said, Bruce, there’s only so much audio spectrum in the human brain, the human ear, and you can’t turn everything up to 11. You have to find the right balance. So for this company in particular that I’m thinking of, we’re able to roll up all those features into a brand story that centered on how all these point solutions that everybody was out there offering were creating gaps and carem and patients risking falling through those gaps. And there was confusion internally about how to use them. So we were able to elevate that story into this kind of total solution. And so anyways, that’s just something that commonly comes up. It’s like, how do we narrow in on that brand story? And, you know, for Actium that was really like Alan was alluding to. There’s this data paralysis. There’s so much data. And then, you know, the work that we wound up doing for them, that brand story is really around turning that data confusion into clarity to act. Turning clouds of data into clear next step. So that’s just one thing, Alan. I don’t know if you want to say more about, in addition to sort of so many symphonies, there’s that need to sort of zero in on a strategic narrative.

Alan Tam:
Yeah, absolutely. And you bring up a good point there. I think, you know, for SymphonyRM, when we’re SymphonyRM, it’s maybe a little bit less about the features and functions that we offer, but really struggling with articulating in a clear and concise manner who we are. Because when you talk about CRM. Oh, so you compete with Salesforce? No, no, no. We don’t compete with Salesforce. We’re adjacent and we work with Salesforce. Ok, so how are you a CRM, right? And so I think there was a lot of confusion and we have our AI models. Oh, so you compete with Einstein from Salesforce? No, no, we don’t do that either. And so I think Reed and Lena helped us out tremendously when it came to distilling down what we do into basically kind of our tagline, which is clarity to act and distilling this all the clouds of data sets and clouds of information into a single action point. So I think a lot of startups deal with this. And even in large organizations, as large companies pivot, as companies change direction or go off in a different direction, I think messaging and positioning for me has always been the most important aspect for brand or reason for rebranding or building a new brand.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, super interesting. And you know, it’s not easy to do, especially when you’re in the details, when you’re in the trenches of providing amazing products and services to your customers, right? I mean, Alan, you guys are kicking butt at this space and you’re doing a great job. It’s hard to step back and really summarize it into one thing. So really great. And then Reed, you were talking about the Bruce Springsteen example. I loved it. You could only be so loud. And he was trying to turn up everything. I couldn’t help but think of that Saturday Night Live skit. A little more cowbell? Well, sometimes you just need some more cowbell, baby. And it’s figuring out, is it the cowbell? Is it the drums? What exactly do you need to tune up and focus on to be able to deliver this message? And so once you get to the message, which I love the name, by the way, and Alan, after you’ve you’ve kind of walked us through what you guys do, Actium is powerful. So how do you roll out a new name and brand to the employees, to customers, investors? There’s a lot of people here and then maybe let’s have Reed and Lena talk about do’s and don’ts here for all of us to learn something.

Alan Tam:
Sure. First of all, I couldn’t have done it without Lena and Reed’s help. They were instrumental and tremendous in the entire process. As a startup, when we kicked off the project, I was a team of one and this is in addition to all the other marketing projects that one has to do within a startup, as well as all the other marketing functions. And so I think we kicked off this project in the December-January timeframe, and I think our initial launch goal was June. So we’ll talk more about timelines later. But I think the most important thing when it comes to brand rebrand messaging is really getting all the internal stakeholders involved. And that really starts with the leadership team and making sure that everyone is aligned. In fact, that’s kind of where it started even before I reached out to Lena and Reed, is getting alignment on who we are, what we do, where we want to go. But there’s also other departments and groups within a company like the product team, for example, our client services group, clients access group that also needs to be be involved. And so Lena and Reed really helped us kind of charter the waters here in terms of guiding us in the right direction, made sure that as part of the process, we included not only our existing clients, but also talk to some other prospects that we had in our pipeline. We spoke with some of our folks on our board. We talked to many of the advisors that we have within our organization, and it’s critical to involve everyone because the brand is not, this is not a marketing project by any means. Marketing may be driving it, but it involves everyone. A successful brand needs to be supported, needs to be, you know, it needs to be part of everyone’s job within their function, regardless of where they sit in the organization, because that’s how you build excitement for the brand and how how gain support. So we want to make sure that key stakeholders heard that they were aligned, that they were contributing and sharing their insights, what was important to them, what was important for us, both from an internal as well as an external perspective and through key milestones and check points working with Best Friend Jack, we incorporated a lot of that feedback, a lot of input from our clients, a lot of the input from our internal stakeholders. And that helped, I think, pave the way for a very smooth launch, both internally as well as externally. I think part of the greatest challenge as we embarked on this journey was really when we got to the creative piece, we had a list of candidate of names and not seeing anything as a whole, but really working through the motion of selecting the names and understanding why certain names were on the list and identifying and bucketing them in key categories, I think really helped people understand better, but was still challenging in terms of not having the creatives and the visuals. When you’re just looking at the names like and then you say it out loud and yes, I like it, I don’t like it. But because our part of that process and as things came together, people grew more excited. I grew more excited about it as you see things come together. And so we had weekly meetings with the leadership team checking in in terms of various key milestones tThat we hit. I made sure I brought the entire company along through all hands and luncheon learns and kind of show them and share with them kind of the progress that’s been made. Feedback from external, I think, was most important for for internal stakeholders because sometimes, as with any startup, we drink too much of our own Kool-Aid, and that’s a good thing. But also keep in mind that we are not our audience. Our audience are our health system clients. So that was important to keep in mind, understand their feedback and viewpoint. So all in all, we didn’t hit our June launch date, but we did hit our next launch date, which was in early September. And so we officially transitioned from SymphonyRM to Actium Health on September 10th.

Saul Marquez:
Congratulations.

Lena Cheng:
Thank you. I just want to reiterate what Alan was saying about the importance of internal alignment. I mean, we we couldn’t have done this if Allen had not sort of spearheaded that internal alignment because there really has to be this acceptance and this embracing this idea that brand can be an anchor of value creation, that it can do things like help you expand your total addressable market. It can really help you establish your customer loyalty, and it can also be that anchor for strategic growth, driving your decision making know the types of hires that you make all those things. And as Alan was saying, you know, brand is really much more. It goes well beyond marketing. Brand is the sum of every touch point that a customer has with your company, and so that that really affects the leadership, team sales and product and operations and customer success. So it’s so important to have that internal alignment. And then also, I think one key part of this was also that Alan was in a position where he was empowered by Mike, the CEO, to make decisions. We always make sure, like we know, that we can’t be set up for success unless we’re working with one point person that really is empowered to make those types of decisions. It’s very difficult to sort of establish a new brand if you’re really making every single decision by committee. So because all of those things were in place, it really helped this rebrand be successful.

Saul Marquez:
That’s excellent. Yeah, some great great points there, Lena, as well. Having that ownership, that flexibility to make decisions is a must. I heard a quote. There are no statues of committees, and I think there’s a reason for that. I think it was Ogilvy that said that. Yeah. So I mean, another testament to having that that buy in and so being able to do that really led to some great results. So let’s talk about impact. What type of impact has the strategic narrative and rebranding had to Actium so far?

Alan Tam:
Sure. I think the impact has been tremendous. It’s only been a couple of months, but I’ll start with the fact that just having more succinct messaging and narratives, you know, taking five 10 seconds to explain who we are and having those taglines versus you have five minutes for me to tell you about SymphonyRM. The messaging is clear. It’s easier for our target market to understand not only who we are and what we do, but where we fit within our stack or their ecosystem. For those of you that have been in marketing for a long time, the health care market stack is even more tremendous given that in health care, not only do you have the marketing technologies, but you also have all the clinical technologies that you have to intersect with and integrate with. So having that level of clarity, I think, is tremendous to help our audience understand exactly where we fit. We’ve had great anecdotal feedback from both clients, prospects. We launched our new brand as we enter the return of in-person events and conferences in Q4, so it was great to be able to see and interact with people who are capable of interacting with our brand beyond just the digital website and campaigns, come into our booth and understand why we do what we do and who we are. I think the another key area that I’ll credit to both Reed and Lena is actually the emotional aspect of a brand. I think oftentimes, me in particular, I may not focus on that that piece of it, but that was something that really resonated with with marketers because emotion is part of that brand. When you’re talking to health care marketers, the brand promise is having that emotional aspect of trust nad security when you’re working with with our health system. And so that became a really powerful differentiator for us as well, because it’s not something that we’ve seen within the health care IT space. In terms of engagement, we know that we’ve had 3x engagement on our website since we have launched a new brand. So super excited about that. Yeah.

Saul Marquez:
3x?

Alan Tam:
3x. 3x engagement. And so we hope to continue to grow that. We’ve increased in the number of campaigns that we’ve had as well reaching out. And I think it also gives us, as a brand, an excuse to reach out more because we want to let people know that, hey, we’ve rebranded. Come check us out. And so I think that level of curiosity helped drive up that traffic as well. We did notice a small drop in followers in the first first month, but if you look at year over year, we’re still one hundred percent over then where we are a year ago. So as I tell the team internally, the rebrand is not a finish line, but it’s rather a starting point for many amazing things to come. And so now our job starts in terms of how can we make this grow this brand and increase its awareness, increase its traction in the market?

Reed Perkins:
We’re really excited about how the brand has been doing and how some of the campaigns launch campaigns have performed. Like Alan said, it’s a great chance to go out to prospects with a new story and the rationale behind why you chose to invest time and resources in doing this rebrand. And I would also just say another major reason why people want to embark on this process is to make sure that they’re being taken as seriously as they deserve. You know, another great quote to throw out there is that you only get one chance to make that first impression and by necessity, your customers, your buyers are just checking out tons and tons of companies, getting lots and lots of ads in front of them, and they are making superficial judgments based on what resonates with them or what appeals to them visually or messaging wise, very quickly. You know, and so that visual branding is really a signifier. Is it clear? Is it organized? Is the user experience smooth? You know, because if people go to your website and it’s not a good experience, that’s gonna affect their feeling about your company, your level of competence, your level of expertise, your attention to detail. So a lot of people want to really level that up and make sure it’s not a roadblock for them. You know, I’m thinking again of another company we work for in the past, and they’re doing such innovative work that we had to invent an entire category for them and they were trying to go out there and talk to large national health plans. But their website was like a Squarespace site with funky margins and really vague messaging. And it was really undercutting their credibility. So by putting that time and attention into the rebrand, we were able to make them look and sound like the company that they wanted to be. And you know, that I think was a major catalyst in securing a new round of funding. And actually, now they have several pilots and partnerships in place with those same health plans that before we’re just not taking them seriously. So that’s just another thing to consider. There’s the focus and the clarity, the messaging, but also just a level of sort of craftsmanship and quality that can level up your credibility in the market. That’s awesome.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and awesome. Great points, Reed. So it’s always great to hear a success story. It’s even better if we could walk away with some things that we could do ourselves. So why don’t we shift here to some decision making frameworks that you’d recommend other companies that are contemplating a rebrand like this? What can folks walk away with today?

Alan Tam:
Yeah. So I think Lena brought up some good points earlier, and I’ll let her recap that. But from my perspective, the most important thing I come up through product marketing, so truly understanding the why of rebrand, don’t rebrand for the sake of rebrand. I know that’s something that’s easy to say, but what are you trying to accomplish? There’s also the opportunity to do a brand refresh which is just a refresh of the brand. But when you’re thinking about true rebrand, understanding why you want to do it and what do you want to accomplish, I think is important, keeping in mind who your audience is. And this is something that’s as you engage with internal stakeholders, everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a viewpoint. Oh, this doesn’t work for me. This doesn’t resonate with me. It’s like, I don’t really care. That doesn’t resonate with you. I want to make sure it cares that resonates with our target audience and what they want and what they’re looking for. I think it’s also important that the messaging, the category really plays into the initiatives and problems that you’re trying to solve. Do they understand how does this correspond to the brands of our clients? And I think Reed made talked about it a little bit, and I share it the emotional aspect of it, which I think is something that I hadn’t realized going into it. But as we went through the process, that made a huge impact in terms of acceptance and support from a lot of our clients and prospects as well understanding. Is this a shifting category or shifting direction? Are we going to new segments? I think clarity and organization of products, and I think that there’s a lot has changed. I think that there’s a lot of great examples out there. We’re not the definitely not the first and even this year with Facebook is doing with their rebrand what Google did a few years ago with Alphabet. There’s a lot of different factors to consider. But if there’s one thing I’ll kind of hammer in again, it’s again right level of involvement and alignment from key stakeholders. I think that’s probably the thing to make sure you have before you ever start a rebrand is that alignment and make sure that all these key stakeholders are part of the process.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, Alan, that’s awesome. And I’ll invite some comments from Lena and Reed with the kind of tag on question of if folks are thinking about doing this for themselves and their companies, rebranding the difference between working in-house and working with an external agency. Things to consider. So we’d love to hear perspective from everyone here.

Lena Cheng:
Yeah, we come across this with with a few of the companies that we that we talk with, you know, they’re debating, you know, should we hire that expertise inhouse? Should we work with an agency? And whichever way you’re going to go, I think it can work well both ways. Both Reid and I were actually in-house at when we did that rebrand and of course, as best friend Jack as an agency, we’ve helped a number of companies rebrand as sort of this external agency. I think whatever way you’re going to go, you’ll want to work with experts in your space. Meaning are they experts in health, tech or digital health? Do they understand the science and technology? Do they have the ability, the skills, the background to really dig into those things to help make sure that those things are captured in the brand that they develop for you? And what I think is also important are the things that Alan was referencing, which, you know, it’s one thing to understand sort of the science of the technology. And the rational drivers behind why your customers are going to make certain decisions. But I think what takes your brand to a different level are understanding those emotional drivers and making sure that the brand that you establish is relatable, that it resonates with your customers. Those are all things that can really ladder up to a really powerful brand and help you establish brand equity in the longer term.

Saul Marquez:
Some really great takeaways there, Athena. Thank you. This has been a really interesting episode. I hope that everybody listening today has taken away some really great notes in your story, Alan, and how you were able to kind of turn the switch on how the company is viewed and some of the early impacts is really inspiring. And also some of the work that you did with Best Friend Jack with Lena and Reed is also a great testament to, hey, it helps to get help sometimes. What would you want to leave the listeners with here as we conclude the podcast today?

Alan Tam:
I think a rebrand is kind of like a wedding and an extent of you plan for everything, but just expect things not to, all the milestones to go exactly as you plan them to be, but you’re going to have an amazing wedding, you’re going to have an amazing brand launch. And so just having that expectation up front, I think, is important.

Reed Perkins:
Beautiful. I’m not sure which which role we play in that analogy, but it was a joy to go through that experience with you.

Lena Cheng:
Yeah, it really was. And for us, we’ll leave your audience with this. We know that there are probably folks out there who are thinking about, do we need to rebrand? Is it the right time, what things should be considering? And so they can go to BestFriendJack.com/rocket to get access to a checklist on whether your health tech company needs a rebrand.

Alan Tam:
That’s awesome. Thanks for offering that up. Guys this is really great. So it’s besfriendjack.com/rocket.

Lena Cheng:
Yeah.

Saul Marquez:
Awesome. Awesome. We’ll put that in the show notes. You know, we’ll put the Show notes to Actium’s website there, too, so you guys could check out the work that Allen and his team are up to. Big thank you. Really appreciate this episode today, and listeners hope you took a lot out of this. Don’t stop at just listening. Take action with what Lena just offered up. They’ll have a checklist there for you, so you could get a little more guided approach to your brand. Thank you all. Hope you have a great day!

Alan Tam:
Thank you, Saul.

Lena Cheng:
Thanks, Saul.

Reed Perkins:
Thanks.

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