Introducing Business Builders: The Sage Brand Refresh (2016)

“We are missing what connects us all (colleagues, customers, partners) to the Sage brand and the vision of where we need to go together.”

-Stephen Kelly, CEO Sage, Spring 2016

In 2016, we were tasked with launching a new Sage brand that would unify the disparate identities and products of a sprawling global accounting software company, clarify and differentiate us from the competition, and restore the “beating heart”  to our brand, rallying colleagues, partners, and customers. We knew that to build true, everlasting brand love, we needed to cease positioning our brand around what our products did and start positioning our brand around why we make those products: for our customers. To do this, we would need to thread the strings of our business narrative (vision, mission, positioning, etc,) to an emotional narrative, one of brand love. But what was that narrative?

This narrative would have to lift a lot: 23 regional business units, a new and more modern product portfolio, an expanded user base of entrepreneurs big and small. We poured through more than 125 corporate documents, going back 20 years, we conducted over 50 interviews with internal stakeholders, partners, analysts, and customers. We looked at the competition and took note of where they sat in the marketplace in relation to us.

From all this effort, one brand positioning resonated most true: We Enable Business Makers To Make Their Own Future. With a quick rewrite, this came to read “Business Builders, Build On!” It was a mantra, a call to arms, and it invigorated employees, partners, and customers alike. With our upcoming more modern software solutions rolling out around the world, we would enable tomorrow’s business builders. Launch activities included a new messaging architecture, a refreshed visual ID system, a wesbite refresh, a brand-to-demand program to activate customers around the world and global roadshow to educate all 10,000+ colleagues. And like that, we were off and running. Be Sage. Build on.

 

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