Episode 101: PointClickCare Rebrand

Saige Carpenter is the Director of Brand Marketing at PointClickCare, where she leads brand strategy, enterprise positioning, and integrated marketing programs designed to build and protect brand equity, establish trust, and fuel buying consideration. She spearheaded the company’s enterprise-wide brand refresh and ensures the brand shows up clearly and credibly at every stage of the buyer journey.

With a background in sales across long-term post-acute care, Saige brings a future-focused, commercially grounded approach to brand—rooted in real buyer insight, market understanding, and purpose-led storytelling.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

Why PointClickCare embarked on a corporate rebrand after rapid growth, and why clarity mattered more than reinvention.
How to define branding in healthcare as a consistent, authentic experience and not just a visual identity.
What it takes to execute a large scale rebrand across products, teams, and customer touchpoints.
How PointClickCare aligned its brand to a clear mission: helping providers deliver exceptional care.
Ways a strong brand enables teams to better serve diverse healthcare audiences.
How to simplify complex healthcare offerings through focused brand storytelling.
Strategies for gaining executive buy-in during a high-stakes rebranding effort.
Common barriers to successful rebrands and how to overcome them with data and customer insight.
How to measure brand success and maintain momentum and consistency after a brand launch.

Additional resources:

Transcript

Josh Dougherty:

Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.

Hello and welcome to the show today. Today we're going to have the chance to dive into something that I love to do, which is to talk about a recent rebrand. And we're going to focus today on PointClickCare. They are a healthcare software company that integrates care, billing, and operations. They're at the heart of what they do. They are all about helping every provider deliver exceptional care.

And they launched an ambitious new rebrand back in October. And so, ever since that launched, I was really excited to bring them on and to talk about the process, what they were trying to achieve through it, et cetera. And so, today we have the pleasure of having Saige Carpenter, who is their director of brand marketing, join us to talk about all things around the branding process, from origins, what they're trying to achieve, all the thought that went into the process, what implementation looks like, and really give us a glimpse into their thinking and their approach. It's a really rich conversation and I can't wait to get started.

So, without further ado, I'll welcome Saige into the show. Hi, Saige. Welcome to the show.

Saige Carpenter:

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Josh Dougherty:

Awesome. Well, before we dive in, I'd love to have you share a little bit about your story and tell me about your career path and where it's taking you.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, absolutely. Would love to. So, actually, I started my career in B2B SaaS on the sales side and have been in the space ever since. I think it has, especially being oriented to sales, has very much shaped how I approach marketing and brand in particular. I think, quite quickly, I realized that building narratives is really fun and can be very powerful. And so, once that realization happened, I jumped into marketing and never looked back.

Josh Dougherty:

Awesome. Well, it's great to meet another person who's been in the same space for a long time. So, I'd love to hear some about your current role. You're obviously the director of brand marketing now at PointClickCare. And can you tell me about what PointClickCare is all about? I know we're going to go in depth as we go through this conversation and what your work is there.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I am lucky enough to be the director of brand marketing at PointClickCare. I've been with the company for about 10 years and have seen the company grow and iterate in many respects. I will say the biggest thing that we've been working on, and certainly the headline at the moment is our recent brand launch. It was a massive cross-functional effort. And right now, we're maybe in the most fun/challenging part of it where we're post-launch here. So, right now, my focus is a lot around maintaining that momentum, lots of focus on channel strategy and optimization. And maybe it sounds boring, but the governance piece as well is a really big focus for us.

But yeah, I mean, the brand launch specifically has been a highlight of my career.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, absolutely. And congratulations. It's also a massive accomplishment to get something-

Saige Carpenter:

Thank you.

Josh Dougherty:

... from ideation to real life. I'd love to, before we dive into talking about the brand launch because that's going to be almost the full focus of our conversation, just have you share a little bit about how you define branding. I think everyone has a slightly different definition, so it's interesting to hear how each person thinks about it.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, I like that question. I would say probably two parts. I think the first is branding is what people say and believe about your brand when you're not in the room. I think it's more than your logo. It's more than your tagline. It is that consistent experience that you create every single time a customer or a prospect interacts with you, whether that's on the phone or on your website or within a chatbot or even at a trade show. So, I think that's one part of it, is just the consistent expression. And the other is I think branding is really, if you do it right, is the most honest expression of your company. I think branding should always feel intuitive.

I think when you get to a point where you feel like it might be forced or fake, then more work needs to be done. I think very often people can tell from a mile away if your branding is rooted in jargon, it really does need to align with the way people experience you. So, I think both are important.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, I really resonate with that because I think especially in the SaaS world and in healthcare, trust is really, really important. And that's why I love branding as well, because it's like we get to dive and dig into maybe the DNA that actually exists at the core of an organization and say, this is who we really are—or ideally who we are and who we aspire to be and how we want to show up in the world. So, it's a fun, meaningful process, I think, every time.

Saige Carpenter:

I think so. And I mean, especially in healthcare in general, yes, it is one of the most complex and regulated industries but it's also just so deeply human. And so, from a branding perspective, that's always really fun because you are forced to be thoughtful and you're speaking to individuals who are in the business of care and who care deeply. And so, crafting narratives for that specific audience is fun.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, of course. I think that's why many of us get into it. My background is in that writing side of things as well. So, it's an interesting challenge and puzzle to put together. How do you create a narrative that's going to really connect with someone?

Saige Carpenter:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

Well, I'd love to dive in. The first part I like to talk about whenever we're showcasing someone who's done a recent rebrand is that origin story. How did this all start? Because a rebrand oftentimes is needed, but it is also a significant risk for an organization to undertake at the same time. So, can you share about your origin stories for your rebrand effort? Why did the organization decide to embark on the project?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, absolutely. So, PointClickCare has grown a lot over the past years, and that's great. Growth is a great problem to have, but I think with growth comes complexity. And I think if we're really honest, the reality and the consequence from that growth is multiple narratives, multiple identities, and frankly, probably too many ways to describe who we are and what we did. And I think that what had happened was our external expression didn't necessarily match the clarity or confidence that really does and did exist within the company. And so, the rebrand for us was about just reconnecting those dots and getting back to simplicity.

Josh Dougherty:

Mm-hmm. No, it makes a lot of sense. I remember talking, maybe about a year and a half ago, to your colleague Gabe about all the different product lines that you had added and saying, “How do we tell a cohesive story about those product lines?” because there was one, but it just wasn't expressed publicly.

Saige Carpenter:

Absolutely. And that was a huge goal for the rebrand to be able to get us to a place where we could succinctly and with confidence be able to articulate what that corporate story is.

Josh Dougherty:

And I think a lot of the challenge sometimes, and I won't assume this for you, is getting the executive team on board with an initiative like this. How did that process go for you?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, I think that's a safe assumption, and I think that's a challenge that all of us brand leaders have with a project like this. I think for us, key for executive engagement was just bringing them in early and bringing the receipts. I think those are the two most important things. I will say there wasn't a moment where we said, "Hey, look, here's a brand surprise." That definitely wasn't the approach. Our leaders and our executive team, they were definitely part of the process from the get go, from the strategy and planning level. And then I think the other thing that goes a long way with the executive team is just really anchoring your thinking and your decisions in data.

So, when we would come to the executive team with the updates, it was always in the context of, and this is how our customers have been reacting. So, I will say, I think one of the great things that we did was we had an advisory board plugged into the rebrand work from the beginning. So, all the way from our positioning to, yeah, we got colors in front of our customers and prospects. And bringing those anecdotes to the executive team go a long way because, really, they want to make sure that we're customer oriented just as much as we do.

So, when I say receipts, it's making sure you know exactly what the customers are saying, what the market's saying, being prepared to talk about how your branding decisions fit into the competitive landscape. That's when the brand work stops being subjective. And when you can get it to be more evidence-based, that alignment comes so much easier.

Josh Dougherty:

No doubt. And I think I love the concept of having a consistent drip to the executive team of like, here's what customers and prospects are saying, because at the end of the day, that's what they're concerned about. And that's what they're tasked with as executives to keep the growth rolling. So, that gives such a level of comfort through the process.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, absolutely.

Josh Dougherty:

Well, let's talk about how extensive the rebrand process was. Obviously, you alluded to this as we were talking earlier, like a brand is more than visuals. It's more than these other things. It's about leaving a specific memory in the mind of customers, prospects. So, you have the amazing refined visuals that look great. You have a great story that you're telling but what other areas of the organization did it touch? How deep did the project go?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, so it touched pretty much every single corner of our organization, and I think that's why it was so successful. This truly was a cross organizational effort that was actually tied to our broader corporate transformation strategy that was happening across the company. So, product engineering, HR, sales, operations, customer experience, you name it—they were engaged and they rallied around the mission. One of the things with the rebrand that we're really proud of is the mission that we have in place, not just because it's simple, but everybody can find a way to plug into it. We exist to help every provider deliver exceptional care.

And the help piece is really important because whether your product or your HR or your operations, if you're orienting to: I wake up every day to be helpful, how can I bring that through the product? How can I bring that through the website or whatever it is that you're accountable for? I think that's really where the magic happens. And that really is what causes the same PointClickCare to show up regardless of the interaction that a prospect or a customer might have with the brand. I will say just as far as your extensiveness question there, we had over 50 workstream leaders plugged in. So, they would be the leaders to represent a broader supporting committee that they owned.

So, hundreds of people backed by their teams. And I think it is that level of involvement that made all the difference.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, I think it's essential. It makes me smile as you're talking because so many people think we're going to do a marketing effort and it's called a rebrand. But it sounds like you took that effort of we are architecting how we're going to show up as a company across the board, which is so refreshing. What else are you doing? I'm going to go a little off script from our questions, but obviously you've given people the easy thing to grab on to like, we exist to be helpful, and that's something that someone can think about using every day in their work.

What else are you doing to continue the training or the touchpoints with folks within the organization as rollout goes on to make sure that they're living out the brand?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, we have a few things in place right now. For us, it was really important to make sure that our words match the beautiful visuals that we have. And so, there has been a lot of emphasis on making sure that everybody knows how to talk about the clear value that we offer to the care continuum. And for us, that was a very easy corporate story and then training and enablement to go along with that for our commercial teams. We worked very hard to identify what we call our brand pillars, which basically is we've defined how we want to be known in the market, which feels simple but it's not.

I mean, I think one of the things we had to come to a realization of is that we're okay to not be all things to all people, but what we do want to be known for is the company that's building an integrated ecosystem so that we're giving providers the full picture of care. We do want to be known as the company that delivers AI-informed healthcare. We do want to be known as the company that powers intelligent transitions and one that creates reimbursable outcomes. And it is that crisp clarity on just four things that meets our audience where they are, and you don't lose the plot.

And I think that a really important piece as we think about enablement post-rebrand is knowing how to speak very cleanly and confidently to our diverse audiences.

Josh Dougherty:

Totally. I think people always say when a brand is really well crafted, they're like, "Oh yeah, of course you do those things." But it is having the consistency so that you can say it the same way over and over again and start having people remember it, right?

Saige Carpenter:

Totally.

Josh Dougherty:

That's where we're at, at the end of the day.

Saige Carpenter:

And it is that a salesperson needs to be able to have the same confidence as somebody from engineering. And you should be able to tell the same story whether you're on a prospect call or, I don't know, your Uncle Paul asks you at a Christmas dinner, "Hey, what do you do for work?" The answer should be the same.

Josh Dougherty:

No doubt, no doubt.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

So, I was going to ask about essence, but I think you've already answered it as the core essence of the brand, this idea of helping providers provide that exceptional care. Is that at the center of everything?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah. I mean, I would go even one step further. The center of everything is our customers, I would say full stop.

Josh Dougherty:

Totally.

Saige Carpenter:

And the mission I think we worked very hard on was to not sound like marketing speak. That is authentic. We truly believe we exist to help. The other thing I think that pulls through and that we're really proud of is that the faces of our brand are our customers. So, if you go on our website, if you see a set of trade show pics, those aren't models. Those are real customers doing real work. And so, we're really proud of that. The other thing is that orientation to our mission and to be helpful pulls across in all the small details. One of the nice anecdotes I like using is our swag.

So, we swapped out our dress socks for compression socks. And it's a small thing but I think it signals something really important is that we know our audience. We're thinking about their day-to-day, and we exist to just make their lives a little bit easier. And so, if it's compression socks instead of just socks, that's what we'll do.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, so little details that matter for sure.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

Let's talk about how maybe the personality and the outward expression of the brand, it's evolved a lot with this launch, but are there ways that things have stayed the same as well? What are some things that you pulled from the past expression of the brand that still remain the same and constant?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, to your point, I think it's honestly less about change and just more about clarity. I think we didn't necessarily need to reinvent ourselves. PointClickCare has excellent brand equity and has been doing great things for a very long time. But I think what we finally did was just strip away the noise so that what's always been there could come through more clearly. We are simpler and more focused, and with that comes more confidence but the heart of our brand I don't think has changed. We've always been deeply committed to our customers into the healthcare industry, and finally that's pulling through.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And it allows you to serve, I think, all the diverse audiences you're serving better. So, I wonder if you could share a little bit about how this focus and how this clarity has allowed you to pivot and talk to the specific audiences that you're talking to every day in a brand market or a B2B marketing sense in a more effective way.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah. I think honestly, I would tie it back again to those four pillars. We decided that we're okay not being all things to all people, and we're very clear on the value that we want to deliver. And so, regardless of where you sit on the healthcare continuum, we know that we're going to talk about those four things, our four brand pillars. And then of course, you need to be able to talk to your audience where they are and customize from there. But I think this story has been more clear than we have ever been. And with that is just our folks feeling very comfortable expressing the story.

And I think when you know the value that you bring and you can express that clearly, that shows up as confidence, and then that confidence builds trust, and that's so important, of course, to a brand.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, absolutely. And confidence and trust also comes with simplicity, like you talked about. Let's talk about simplicity in services. You all have a lot of industries you serve, you have a lot of services you provide. What was the process like of trying to simplify the expression of how you explain how those things interconnect and work together?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, it's interesting because I will say our work is absolutely not done. I think at the brand level, we've done a very good job to articulate, here's who we are, what we do, and why we do it. The reality is we have a lot of products that solve a whole bunch of problems. And I will say post-launch, that is an area where we're definitely focusing—how do we take the specific products that we bring to market and bring that same level of simplicity? So, I wish I could say we have it all figured out. That's definitely iteration number two where we have to also make sure that, yes, we've crafted this great simple experience at the top of the funnel.

Now, let's just make sure that pulls through as we explain the many products and solutions that we offer to the industry. So, I will say our work is not done there. There's still a lot to be done.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah. And I think that's common and also the easiest thing in the world to say, let's just make sure everything pulls through nice and clearly. It's rarely easy to do. So, I do appreciate the willingness to say this is an iterative process, though, because it speaks to commitment whenever I'm talking to branders saying, "We're going to spend our time doing this over time. It's not just a 6-month or a 12-month effort to get the rebrand done."

Saige Carpenter:

Absolutely. I mean, the launch is the fun part, embedding it into the market and then making sure every interaction matches with the new expectation of the brand, that's, I think, where the real work starts.

Josh Dougherty:

No doubt, no doubt.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

So, we talked a little bit about things that have gone well in the process. I'd love to hear about barriers that you had to overcome. I feel like in every branding process, there are a couple things that you're like, "Wow, we didn't realize that was going to be a challenge that we were going to work through." So, what maybe surprising challenges or not surprising challenges did you come across and how did you work through them?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, I don't know. It was a perfect process. We didn't have any challenges. No, I wish, I wish. You know what? I think one of the biggest challenges is just knowing when to stop. I think you can iterate on a brand forever and at some point you have to commit. And, especially, we had a lot of stakeholders involved that were important, but that comes with a lot of opinions. I think most branding professionals will agree. Most people think that they know and can do branding, and so that's always a fun challenge. But I think one of the things that helped us with knowing when to stop was agreeing on a realistic shelf life. So, that helped us not get paralyzed.

We said, this is going to be our brand identity for the next three to five years, but we're not frozen in time. We can still grow and will iterate as a company, and our brand will need to match that over time. But I think what that did was give us the confidence to just lock in, launch, move forward, knowing that we are building evolution into the plan. That I think was probably the single hardest and biggest challenge we had was just the constant iterations and just needing to know when to lock in.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, I love that. I wonder, as someone who does a lot of design work on brands, there is a paralysis that comes from thinking, is this design-

Saige Carpenter:

Totally.

Josh Dougherty:

... approach going to become stale?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

And so, did that help you make bolder decisions about the design approach and how you wanted the visuals to look?

Saige Carpenter:

Absolutely, yeah. I think it gives you the confidence knowing this is only a three-to-five-year horizon. It is the best decision we can make for where we are as a company right now, but we are not frozen here. It gives you the confidence to be able to, yes, be bold and just pick a direction and go with it.

Josh Dougherty:

Yep. And be free from the worry of, can I read what design trends are going to be-

Saige Carpenter:

Exactly, exactly.

Josh Dougherty:

... and adapt it.

Saige Carpenter:

No one's got a crystal ball.

Josh Dougherty:

You cannot ... No one can.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

So, now that you're through launch, you're in implementation. You talked about the launch is the fun part. In some way, it's the easy part. Now you're rolling this thing out. And I know when we first talked, you were planning out, I think, customer conferences for next year, right? So, you're already looking far ahead. How are you maintaining momentum amidst all the rush of everything else that's going on? What's the plan for keeping momentum going?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, I think it really is now about those foundational things. It's repetition and governance and support. And that might sound boring, but those are the foundational things that allow us to make sure we land the brand and embed the narrative that we worked so hard on. And so, our focus is on, okay, now that we've defined how we want to be known in the market, let's just make sure that we show up consistently across online, offline, all of our channels to make sure that really does start to stick. And I think the other thing that we are making sure that we don't forget about is our employees.

I mean, there's so much excitement and buzz around a new brand and there's new swag and everybody is really excited, but I think it's important to make sure that our employees are continuing to feel equipped to be able to bring the brand to life. And so, we do have an ongoing brand stewardship program that provides our employees with tools and resources that they need to stay on brand because I think we'd all agree that brand only works if people believe in it internally first, before you take it to market.

Josh Dougherty:

Totally. And I always joke, you talked about governance being boring. Yeah, repetition is boring, but it's the only thing that works at the end of the day to get people to remember. What are you doing? So, you talked about one of the ways is equipping your team to believe in the brand, but from a governance perspective, I think it's harder to force people to do something and it's better to give them motivation about why living out the brand is great and why expressing it. So, how are you building that positive versus a rules-based approach into the governance to make sure it can be successful? Sounds like you've thought a little bit about that already.

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah. I mean, we're very lucky in that our leadership team lead by example, and anytime we interact with them, they do live out the brand, the PointClickCare brand. And so, I think, I mean, it always starts from the top down. And so, I think our executive leadership team does a great job in that respect. We also just really do index on tools that are easy for employees to use and almost fun to use so that the adoption stays. So, I will say one of the things I think all employees hate doing is building PowerPoints. Nobody likes doing it, but it does take up for many people a large part of their day.

And so, that's just one example of a tool that we're investing in to be able to make us be able to stay on brand and easily leveraging AI. And so, it really is just finding those pain points in an employee's day and trying to automate and equip them to be able to stay on brand without having to do too much policing or rule defining.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah. It doesn't really work anyways to just police at the end of the day.

Saige Carpenter:

Right.

Josh Dougherty:

So, the final question I have, I guess I have two more questions and we'll wrap up, but I think something that people often struggle with in a brand is how do we measure and prove success after we've made this big investment? And so, I don't know that anyone's a hundred percent cracked the code on how to do this. There's obviously certain repeating longitudinal survey work you can do to see how well the brand is getting recognized, et cetera. But what's your approach for measuring success and capturing quantifiable outcomes for the branding effort?

Saige Carpenter:

I will say if you are thinking about measuring and quantifying impact post-launch, you're already in trouble. I mean, I think you need to be thinking about how you're going to be measuring impact before you even start strategizing around a rebrand. So, I mean, you touched on it, but one of the things that we do have is long-term metrics defined that we want to see gains across from a brand perspective. Just at a high level, we want to impact recall, we want to build associations relative to specific brand attributes in the market, and we want to fuel consideration. And those are goals for us for the next one to two years. It's a pretty long horizon.

But I will say, short term, it's important to get some indicators as well short term. And I think that varies across companies, but maybe it's brand search traffic for you or it's the traffic quality for you or it's inbound demand. But I think a strong strategy, brand strategy needs both. Otherwise, you are either guessing or you're waiting too long to learn. So, I would say, yeah, measurement, the measurement plan needs to happen well before you ever bring anything to market.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, I 100% agree with that because it's all about building something to meet the goals you're trying to achieve, right?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah.

Josh Dougherty:

So, you can't really do that if you don't know what you're trying to accomplish.

Saige Carpenter:

Absolutely.

Josh Dougherty:

So, thinking about that from a goal perspective, if you look forward 12 months from now, you'll be, I don't know, 14 months into the implementation phase of the brand. What does success look like for you in the brand rollout at that point?

Saige Carpenter:

Yeah, I mean, I think there are some very clinical answers I could give you. I could tell you looking for a 4% increase on percentage point relative to recall among the senior living audience. But I think honestly, when it really comes down to it, if our customers can experience PointClickCare the same way we designed it consistently, intentionally across every touchpoint, that's success. I think brand only matters if people feel it. And so, if our customers feel the brand the way we designed it, that's a win.

Josh Dougherty:

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking some time today to talk me through the nuts and bolts of the process and what you work through. It's been a pleasure to have the conversation. I'd love as we wrap up to ask you, how can people connect with you, and what's the best way for them to follow along with the work that you're doing?

Saige Carpenter:

I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place that you can find me. And while you're there, maybe give PointClickCare a follow too.

Josh Dougherty:

Yeah, awesome. We'll include links to both PointClickCare's LinkedIn and website and your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can easily find them.

Saige Carpenter:

Awesome.

Josh Dougherty:

Thanks so much for the conversation today. Really appreciate it, Saige.

Saige Carpenter:

Thanks, Josh.

Josh Dougherty:

Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.