Waymo identified that the first ride transformed anxiety into acceptance. Unable to offer rides at scale, they created a 360-degree VR video to virtually place people in the car, demystifying the technology and replicating the game-changing “demo” experience for a mass audience.
When presenting early rebrand concepts, non-creative stakeholders often fixate on minor flaws. The marketing lead's job is to coach them to evaluate the "potential" of a direction, not the "perfection" of a rough draft. This prevents the creative process from getting derailed by trivial details.
To market self-driving cars, Waymo focused on the problem: the 1.4 million annual traffic deaths from human error. This framed their technology not as a sci-fi novelty, but a necessary solution to a deadly status quo, making audiences more receptive to the radical new idea.
For Care.com's rebrand to succeed, it had to be more than a marketing campaign. The brand and product teams collaborated to redesign the user experience and launch new features, ensuring the product itself delivered on the new brand promise of being a trustworthy, less transactional ally.
A rebrand's foundation isn't visual; it's defining the company's "soul"—its purpose, voice, and personality. This creates brand principles (e.g., "be undaunted but thoughtful") that serve as the objective standard for evaluating all creative choices, from the name to the logo.
A powerful brand story serves as an internal rallying cry. By sharing marketing assets like brand videos internally, teams like product, engineering, and finance become inspired by the mission. This raises the internal bar and motivates them to build a product that lives up to the brand's promise.
Effective marketers speak the language of the C-suite. Instead of focusing only on customer empathy and brand resonance, they must translate those goals into concrete business metrics like a higher sales baseline or lower customer acquisition costs to gain internal alignment and budget.
The tagline "When it's not you, it's Care.com" acts as a behavioral hack. It's not just a memorable phrase; it's designed to build a specific mental trigger. In the moment a parent realizes they can't be present, the tagline aims to make Care.com the automatic, top-of-mind solution.