CASE STUDY · HUBSPOT
HubSpot 2022 Global Rebrand
Making growth human again.
ROLE
Head of Brand Development & Enablement, brand leadership team
SCOPE
Brand positioning, verbal and visual identity, product brand architecture, rollout, enablement, and first ever global brand campaign
PARTNERS
VP of Brand, Brand Strategy, Design, Video, Web Development, Product, Brand Marketing, 72andSunny
LAUNCHED
2022
01 · THE CHALLENGE
A bigger company needed a braver brand.
HubSpot had grown from a single-product startup into a global, multi-product CRM platform. But it was competing in a category Salesforce defined. Salesforce owned scale and enterprise authority, and with it, a reputation for complexity, corporate sameness and an impersonal customer experience.
The whole category followed its lead: a cold, sterile sea of blue that put numbers ahead of people. Looking like them would have been safe. It also would have been invisible.
As HubSpot moved upmarket, it needed a position it could credibly own. Not a smaller Salesforce, but a real alternative to it. And it had to get there without losing the warmth that made people love HubSpot in the first place.
02 · THE BIG IDEA
Grow Better.
Most growth stories reward the ruthless. Ours argued the opposite: companies that align their success with their customers' success grow better. Succeeding with a soul.
It gave the whole company one idea to build from, and a clear point of difference against the legacy players: crafted, not cobbled.
As Head of Brand Development and Enablement, I led the team that delivered the rebrand, from positioning to company-wide rollout in under six months.
03 · MY ROLE
What I Owned
The Program
I owned the roadmap, timeline and rollout plan, and kept marketing and creative moving on one schedule.
Positioning
I partnered with Brand Marketing to define the positioning the identity was built on: in a category that turned growth into a machine, HubSpot is the CRM that makes it human again.
Creative Direction
I set the creative bar and held final approval across the identity, shaping the work through direction and feedback from first concepts to launch.
Enablement
I led the strategy and system that let 7,000+ employees create on-brand work: 700+ Canva templates, 250+ website components, 100+ motion templates, a new slide system, and shared photo and video libraries.
Led a team of 17 across design, motion, and brand ops.
The brand on a page: one reference for mission, positioning and proof, from the exec team to the newest hire.
04 · PERSONALITY & VOICE
The smart, supportive friend.
Enterprise software talks down or talks in jargon. HubSpot would sound like the friend who makes you feel smarter for asking the question: human, helpful, humble and humorous. Playful, never cheesy. Friendly, never sloppy.
Four voice principles
Tone guardrails, so anyone could tell on-brand from off
05 · VISUAL IDENTITY
Mid-century modern, with a joyful twist.
Mid-century design was a clean, optimistic answer to a noisy world. HubSpot would be the same answer to messy tech: timeless principles, vibrant color, real people.
Logo. Refreshed to the new palette without disrupting recognition.
Type. Lexend Deca for clarity, Queens for big moments of personality.
Color. Solaris orange as the thread, warm neutrals for breathing room, and nine secondary families with room to flex.
Shapes. Simple circles, squares and arches that combine into bold patterns.
Iconography. Built from the same shapes, so every icon feels ownable.
Photography. Stylized, energetic and diverse by default, with people as the hero.
Mixed media. Photos, shapes and icons layered into one signature look.
Motion. Four principles: intentional, delightful, dynamic, connected.
06 · PRODUCT BRAND ARCHITECTURE
Many hubs. One platform.
A multi-product platform needs to read as one company. Each hub got a mark built from the shared shape language and its own color family pulled from the secondary palette. Distinct enough to navigate, unmistakably HubSpot.
Standardized graphics like the Connected Customer Platform locked the platform story in place, so every team told it the same way.
The system in motion. HubSpot's customer platform video, still built on the 2022 product brand architecture years after launch.
07 · THE CAMPAIGN
The brand's first time on the big stage.
The rebrand launched alongside HubSpot's first global brand campaign and first TV advertising, created with 72andSunny. "Success Stories" turned the most predictable B2B format, the customer testimonial, into cinematic comedy, with Kathryn Hahn as the CEO of a pirate business learning a better way to grow.
For a company built on search, social and inbound, it was a real departure: national TV, New York ferries and buses wrapped as pirate ships, and murals in San Francisco and Chicago.
My role: 72andSunny built the campaign's look from our rebrand, a simplified version made for TV and out-of-home. My team then used that campaign identity to create the assets for the launch, so the campaign and the new brand showed up as one.
TV spot: 72andSunny New York.
In the wild. Out-of-home by 72andSunny New York.
The system carries it. Web, social, and sales materials in the new identity.
Beyond the spots. Typographic out-of-home in the new identity, carrying the brand where the pirate story didn't.
08 · MAKING IT STICK
Make on-brand the easy option.
A brand this expressive is hard to reproduce if you don't live in design tools. So we removed the guesswork. Every asset lived in one DAM, with a vendor kit for outside partners. More than 1,000 Canva, animation and Google templates let anyone make something on-brand in minutes.
The Content First Playbook went a step further, pairing specific brand assets with specific content subjects so storytelling stayed consistent across every channel.
09 · THE RESULTS
Double-digit
Brand lift, alongside the global brand campaign, with gains across web and demand gen
1,500+
Brand assets redesigned across marketing, product, events, and sales
30+
Global teams adopted the new identity
6 months
From inception to company-wide rollout
AS COVERED IN
Adweek
Fast Company
The Boston Globe
Marketing Brew
Personality only scales if anyone can use it. The templates did as much for this brand as the logo did.
WHAT I’D DO AGAIN
Three years later, HubSpot outgrew this brand too. See the 2025 rebrand.