Rebrand as a Product Development Process
Run a rebrand with sprint teams, owners, and transparency — not as a marketing reveal
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 95%
Gago's core rebrand insight is that marketing teams typically disappear, do their thing, and return with a finished rebrand — which fails the whole company. Instead she ran the Miro rebrand (RealtimeBoard → Miro) as a product development process: sprint teams, agile cadence, distributed ownership, transparent reporting, and continuous customer feedback. Marketing owns the process, not every artifact, because sales decks, product links, contracts, legal, and the website all have to change and every function must feel good about the outcome.
Origin
Barbra Gago's rebrand of RealtimeBoard to Miro, taken from naming kickoff in late October to a public launch with a three-dimensional booth at South by Southwest in March.
Core principles
- 01A rebrand is a cross-functional program, not a marketing deliverable.
- 02Marketing must delegate and let go — it cannot own every artifact a rebrand touches.
- 03Preserve the essence of the old brand so existing advocates aren't alienated.
- 04Involve customers in the process to the degree it doesn't slow you down.
- 05A name change is an order of magnitude harder than a visual refresh — legal, contracts, URLs, product links, everything.
- 06Something will go wrong. Blind faith and speed are part of the method.
How to run it
- 1
Confirm the trigger and the timing
Rebrand when the current name or identity caps the company you intend to build, and do it once you enter scale mode — after product-market fit, before you have too many people and before you've invested too much in the existing brand.
Pro tip The sooner the better. RealtimeBoard rebranded at roughly a million users, a couple million in revenue, and about a hundred people.
Watch out Don't rebrand before product-market fit — you'd be investing in a brand you may not scale.
- 2
Structure it like a product build
Set up sprint teams, agile ceremonies, and named owners for each workstream (naming, visual identity, website, product, sales collateral, legal, events), all reporting back into a central process.
- 3
Mobilize and align the whole company transparently
Set a very clear vision of the process and the steps, and be transparent about it throughout. Everyone at the company has thoughts and feelings about the brand — bringing them along is part of the deliverable.
Watch out Marketing teams that vanish and return with a finished rebrand generate internal resistance that undermines the launch.
- 4
Keep a thread back to the original brand
Deliberately retain some visual or emotional essence of the old identity so early advocates feel continuity. RealtimeBoard's logo was a yellow Post-it; the team rejected an initially proposed hot pink M for a yellow M that nodded to the original.
Pro tip This is the cheapest available insurance against alienating the customers who loved you first.
- 5
Run customer feedback loops throughout
Do case studies during the process and collect feedback on names, logos, brand, and designs from existing customers — including the ones who liked the old name — without letting it slow the timeline.
Pro tip Involving them means they feel good about the outcome, which converts potential detractors into launch advocates.
- 6
Launch on a hard external deadline
Anchor to a public moment. Miro kicked off naming in late October and launched at South by Southwest in March with a full 3D booth and event collateral — a compressed timeline that forced decisions.
Watch out Expect a near-miss. Miro's miro.com domain transferred roughly 48 hours before the event, after all materials had already been printed with the new URL — a leap of faith was required.
In the wild
Gago nearly declined the CMO role because 'RealtimeBoard' was so literal it seemed to cap the company; her condition for joining was permission to change the name. She ran the rebrand as a product process with sprint teams and owners across a ~100-person company, preserved the Post-it yellow in the new M, ran customer feedback and case studies throughout, and launched at SXSW.
→ Miro shipped a full brand system and 3D booth roughly five months after naming kickoff, with the domain secured only 48 hours before the event and printed materials already bearing the new URL. Early advocates felt good about the outcome.
Changing the name rather than just the aesthetic pulled in legal, every contract, the website, the product, all links, and every URL. Nothing was untouched.
→ Gago's takeaway: a visual rebrand is a marketing project; a name change is a company-wide mobilization requiring clear vision, delegated ownership, and total transparency.
Common mistakes
Marketing goes away and comes back with a rebrand
The classic failure. Sales decks, product, legal, and every touchpoint have to change, so ownership must be distributed. A surprise reveal leaves the company misaligned and unenthusiastic at the moment you need them most.
Cutting the cord with the old brand entirely
Existing advocates have equity in the current identity. Abandoning every visual and emotional cue (Miro's rejected hot-pink M) risks alienating the customers who made the rebrand possible.
Rebranding too late
Once you've invested heavily in a brand and grown a large headcount, the change cost climbs steeply. The window is on entry to scale mode.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and CMOs at post-PMF startups entering scale mode whose current name or identity caps the company's ambition
Not ideal for
Pre-product-market-fit companies, or established brands with deep equity where the cost of change exceeds the ceiling being removed
From the transcript
“so I think at some point it's common for companies to do a Rebrand like once they go into scale mode before you have too…”
“at Miro it was very much like Rebrand as a product approach it was a very much a product development process with Sprint teams and…”
“one of the things that was really important as we sort of transitioned was that we kept as much of the essence of the initial…”
“if you're changing the name it's way more complicated because everybody has to be involved legal all the contracts the website the product like all…”
“ultimately team process clear structure transparent for everybody getting feedback from customers and making sure stakeholders feel like they're involved”
From the episode
Category creation and brand building
Barbra Gago (Pando, Miro, Greenhouse, Culture Amp)