Should you do a brand or web redesign?

Summary: In this episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer sits down with her friends Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon, Jenny Thai, Head of Content, Vanta, and special guest Kelsey Aroian, Former Senior Director Brand & Creative, Front and Former Co-founder, Paladar Studio. The four explore a highly debated topic in marketing: how to know when it's time to redesign your website, or your entire brand. This episode offers guidance on reasons for brand redesigns, the challenges that arise during these projects, and the complexities of working with agencies, studios, and freelancers.

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 5 is sponsored by Framer and 42 Agency.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks”. When not marketing “marketing”, you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Grace Erickson is a true marketing generalist with 10 years of experience in B2B startups, spanning functions like growth, brand, product marketing, and most things in between. She's currently the VP of Revenue at Cocoon, a Series A employee leave management platform. Prior to Cocoon, Grace led marketing programs at Asana, Carta, and Cleo in various roles, but always with a focus on an integrated customer journey. Besides being a marketing nerd, Grace spends her time coming up with (but not executing) elaborate schemes and browsing Zillow.

Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

Kelsey Aroian is a brand and creative leader with over a decade of experience building and leading high-performing creative teams and bringing multi-channel brand initiatives to life. Most recently, she led the Brand & Creative team at Front, and previously she led marketing programs at Asana and brand at Designer Fund. She also founded and ran Paladar, a multi-disciplinary design studio. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon and went to summer camp in NH with Emily Kramer for ~a decade as a kid.

We also hear from Kevin Branscum, Senior Director of Brand Marketing at Typeform, a form builder that helps you collect zero-party data while providing a stellar brand experience, who asks us “ When do you know it's time for a website or homepage redesign, and when do you know it's time for a full rebrand, if ever?”

Quotes

*“Rebrands are like therapy for your company sometimes.You want to choose a thought partner who is going to help you make decisions and be a forcing function for you to make decisions to move the work forward. That is a really important piece of criteria and is also going to help your project be set up for success in the long term and move a lot faster.” - Kelsey Aroian

*“ People also underestimate when you're building a company, repeated recognition of a brand is massively, massively important. So the risk of a redesign is you can take a step back in like the equity you've built with your existing brand. So, the reason for the redesign has to be significant enough to make up for some loss of equity. And that's why also doing redesign, very, very early is lower risk in that context, right? Because you've not built up very much equity with your brand.” – Grace Erickson

Time stamps

[00:00] Meet Jenny, Grace, and special guest Kelsey Royan

[03:30] Web redesign vs. full rebrand 

[07:15] Types of website redesigns

[12:40] When it doesn’t make sense to do a redesign

[17:25] Why brand strategy must come before a full rebrand

[28:45] Choosing the right partner: freelancer, studio, or agency 

[34:20] Design by committee and avoiding groupthink

[39:55] Celebrating rebrands the right way – the legendary Asana ball pit

[43:15] Best Marketer Game: Worst B2B website trends 

[48:00] What makes a rebrand “worth it” – and what to do instead of a full overhaul

[52:30] Final tips: stakeholder alignment, smart scoping, and getting more from your agency

Recommended products & agencies

Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan

Framer:  Use code “MKT1” to get 25% off 

42 Agency: Mention MKT1 to get a free 30-minute support call

Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer

Grace Erickson

Jenny Thai Kelsey Aroian

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