Cynthia White is the Brand Operations Manager at GE HealthCare where she led the rebrand migration as GE HealthCare spun off from GE, establishing itself as a separate publicly traded company. “When they first announced the spin off, it was unclear whether we were going to remain a GE branded business or be rebranding to an entirely new identity. When it was announced in July of 2022 that we would license the GE brand and remain named ‘GE Healthcare,’ we knew we’d benefit from existing brand equity, but we also realized that we’d need to clearly communicate what was changing and why,” said Cynthia. “It was decided that we would change the ‘C’ in ‘healthcare’ to a capital ‘C’, update the font and refresh our colors. From an implementation standpoint, this meant that we needed to change everything the brand touched to signal transformation.”
While Cynthia came into the project with a wealth of brand and marketing experience, having spent the last 16 years leading and managing initiatives across GE’s business, she admitted that the small shifts in the GE HealthCare identity posed more challenges than changing their name completely. The other two GE spin offs that were announced at the same time were making more obvious name changes. GE Aviation was changing to GE Aerospace and GE Power to GE Vernova. “We had to be very clear about the fact that we were a new company, and we had a new logo and visual identity to show for it,” said Cynthia.
Balancing brand transformation priorities with limited resources
With just seven months from the July 2022 announcement to the January 2023 brand launch, there was a lot to plan for. “At the same time that we were working through brand implementation, we were also planning our leadership event to roll out the brand purpose, and both required a significant amount of time and attention. The brand migration was just as imperative as bringing the senior leadership team along and gaining their support at the event,” said Cynthia.
“As you can imagine, staffing became an issue. Unfortunately, we didn’t have support from an internal brand team, so we had to lean on the support of agency partners to set up the strategic brand infrastructure, culture, purpose, brand identity, brand guidelines, activation plan and beyond. When it came to brand migration, there was so much to change to the new brand that it was a bit overwhelming. I had teams focus on the highest impact and highest visibility touchpoints as we prepared to launch in January,” said Cynthia. “I was hired to do brand governance, but quickly found myself leading brand migration, which was very consuming.”
Another challenge was budget. “As we were spinning out of the GE mothership, we were unsure who would be paying for the brand migration efforts and how much it would cost. We went through a strategic budgeting exercise with one of our agencies and presented our plan to GE corporate and our own leadership to try to secure the necessary funds. Since we didn’t have in-house staff to accomplish the required work, we had to factor in agency support in addition to the cost of migrating all of our touchpoints. We were standing up a new company, not just rebranding, and we had to account for highly regulated changes – and those were costly,” said Cynthia.
Proactively communicating to create positive experiences
Despite resourcing challenges, the rebrand successfully launched in January of 2023 and was well received internally and externally. “Kudos to corporate for paving the way and setting the stage early and preparing investors for the change. Corporate also worked hand and glove with us to release proactive communications and prepare us for big events. We hosted a lot of big events that became venues to communicate the brand transformation. People saw the change as a positive one, providing more opportunity to focus on healthcare and better serve the industry,” said Cynthia.
Cynthia concluded her reflection by noting that the GE HealthCare rebrand was a career highlight for her. “I've done a lot of marketing, communications, and brand work throughout my career, but there is nothing more exciting than launching a brand of this scale and this level of complexity, I think is super unique. It’s a once in a lifetime dream to be able to plug yourself into something, make it happen and continue to champion the brand,” she said.
What it takes to succeed
When asking Cynthia what advice she’d give to others leading a large-scale brand transformation, she offered:
We were excited to speak with Cynthia and learn from her experience as a part of our Tell Us About Your Rebrand series. If you’ve recently gone through a rebrand, no matter what industry, we’d love to hear about it. Reach out at hello@tentengroup.com to share your thoughts and stories.
