Sometimes the need for a rebrand is obvious. Other times it builds slowly — years of small frustrations, confusing explanations, and branding limitations that start to drag on growth. This is one of those stories. And if you’re part of a small, scrappy healthcare organization, it’s worth paying attention to how this rebrand came together on a shoestring budget.

Jen Horonjeff, founder of Real Patients, shared why her organization rebranded from Savvy Cooperative, and how her team executed the transition with minimal resources. Her experience offers a practical playbook for organizations facing the same crossroads.

What This Conversation Revealed

Horonjeff didn’t rebrand from Savvy Cooperative to Real Patients for novelty. It was the result of a growing gap between what the organization actually did and what the name communicated.

“Our real core offering was getting patient insights directly from people with lived experience,” said Horonjeff.  “So we wanted to be a little bit more on-the-nose with [our brand] so you knew exactly what we did and who we are with just the name.”

There was also a more practical reason: “People were constantly misspelling the name ‘Savvy’ all the time. Many thought there were two a’s.”

Over time, those issues added up. The team found themselves repeatedly explaining their work instead of letting the brand do that job for them. In 2025, Horonjeff made the decision to change that.

Once the new name launched, the difference was immediate.

“Already we have people were stopping me and asking – tell me about this,” Horonjeff explained. “They see it and they want to know more about it, as opposed to Savvy Cooperative where they didn’t really know what it was. It’s important to us that we can entice new customers with just the name rather than having to have a big explainer that goes along with it.”

Horonjeff’s team leaned heavily on AI to prototype their visual identity and website.

“There was a lot of iterating and yes, a lot of AI was used to make this possible,” said Horonjeff.  “Being able to iterate with a lot of back and forth was super helpful. It was also helpful to be able to looking at other websites and say to AI – I like this and I like that.”

But automation wasn’t the whole story.

“AI can take you 80%, maybe 90% of the way, but you still need that external help for that last mile,”  shared Horonjeff. “We still needed to have developers, designers, et cetera, to  get us across the line.”

For Horonjeff, that final stretch mattered — especially when it came to security, stability, and execution details that couldn’t be left to automation alone.

Healthcare marketing teams often assume meaningful brand work requires large budgets, long timelines, or agency backing. Horonjeff’s experience suggests something simpler: clarity of purpose, combined with smart use of technology and people, matters far more than scale.

What Healthcare Marketing Leaders Are Asking

How do we know when our brand clarity problem is serious enough to justify a rebrand? If teams are spending more time explaining what the organization does than advancing conversations, that’s usually the signal. When the brand creates friction in sales, recruitment, or patient engagement, it stops being cosmetic and becomes operational.

Where does AI actually help in brand work — and where does it create risk? AI is proving useful for exploration, iteration, and early creative direction, especially for smaller teams. But execution, security, accessibility, and long-term maintainability still depend on human oversight, which is where most organizations underestimate the workload.

Can smaller healthcare organizations realistically rebrand without agency support? Yes, but only when the reason for the change is clear and leadership is aligned on the outcome. Without that foundation, a lower-budget rebrand just recreates the same confusion under a new name, which costs more in the long run.

Learn more about Real Patients at https://www.realpatients.com/