How long does it take to completely rebrand a company from the ground up? I’m not just talking about changing basics like the name and logo. I mean rebranding right from the very foundations of the company: mission, values, customer base, customer journeys – everything.

Well, we at Whafty managed it in just 40 days..

Why the rebrand?

Before we were Whatify, we were Firefly. As Firefly, we spent years developing this amazing AI engine (the one that’s now behind the scenes at Whatify). It’s an auto machine-learning platform which – the way we initially envisioned it – would let data scientists automate the entire process of building machine-learning models.

It’s a fantastic engine and we’re really proud of it. But, when we started to market it to data companies, we quickly realised that we were targeting the wrong audience.

Think of it like this: if you invent an innovative new car engine, you might think that the next step is to market it to auto brands. But how many viable auto brands are there which could take your engine? 4? Maybe 5?

Compare that to the number of customers out there who might want a car with your engine and…well the numbers speak for themselves.

Rather than selling the engine to auto brands, why not cut out the middle man? Build the car around your engine, and sell directly to drivers.

That’s what we decided to do with our AI engine.

Rather than selling our predictive model creator to scientists, we pivoted towards the end users themselves: the marketers who will be using those predictions . We built this ‘crystal ball’ infrastructure around our AI so that marketers could interact directly with our AI. You can now access the power of predictions and recommended actions without the need to go through data scientists.

That pivot was what launched our rebrand. We had a new vision, a new product, a new target audience, a new market. Rebranding was an obvious next step.

So what is Whatify?

Whatify is a crystal ball for marketers. Imagine looking at your analytics dashboards – but instead of only seeing your present KPIs, you can also see your future ones, and even recommendations on how to boost them. That’s what our platform offers.

For example, Whatify will not only show you next week’s conversion rate per segment, but also give you actionable suggestions on how to improve it.
The flow is as simple as asking a business question, connecting your data with a single click, and acting on the recommendations presented. This simplicity makes Whatify an accessible and actionable tool for every marketer. These days, that’s one of our major USPs. But that wasn’t always the case.

It took us a lot of development to get to this point. Which is where that rebrand comes in.

From Firefly to Whatify

We started with the name. Firefly was a great name, but we wanted a name that was relevant to what we did. We went with Whatify because it speaks to that ‘What if I..?’ impulse in marketing – the questions and the curiosity which Whatify’s AI can help with.

Then we tailored the logo. That was an interesting process, with a lot of brainstorming and back and forth. That’s the thing about rebranding – it has an impact on everyone in the company, so everyone naturally has something to say about it.

Anyone who’s ever been involved in a rebrand has experienced the challenges of moderating between fears of people who are wary of too much change, and of holding back others who get swept up in the moment. Change on the level that we were anticipating is never easy – but the challenges it presented were also quite fulfilling in their way.

We’re a company full of scientists and developers and computer people. We’re great for things which work using fixed, inarguable data points. If you want to know about the right algorithm, the right technology and so on, our scientists are absolutely fantastic. Nobody will argue with the answers they give, because they really know their stuff.

But when it comes to things like visuals – things which everyone can see and everyone’s opinion is valid on…well, suddenly things aren’t so clear cut. There’s no clear resolution, and that’s something that scientifically minded people can find frustrating.

It’s a challenge but, honestly, it’s also quite inspiring to see people leave their comfort zones, embrace change, and start playing around with creative ideas.

The logo we ultimately came up with is simple and powerful – everything a logo should be – as a result of this collaborative effort. Our logo is now a lightning exclamation mark. It shows that we are giving you answers. Strong answers.

A brand new website in just 4 weeks

Having got a new name and a new logo, the next step was to create a new website. Once we finalized a great design, we needed a team who could develop that design in a quick and dynamic way. This is where Airfleet came in.

Our website is the hub of our operation. It’s the ‘face’ we present to potential customers, it’s the interface by which we interact with our clients. So we knew it had to be at the heart of the rebrand – and we knew that it had to be perfect.

We’ve been working with Airfleet to build the new FireFly website. So we knew how good they are at what they do, and how easy it is to communicate with them. They were the obvious choice for developing Whatify’s new website.

Working with the previous website built by Airfleet, we were able to quickly come up with a flexible and scalable design which suited us brilliantly. Airfleet developed that design beautifully, with remarkably little back-and-forth.

The way they worked was to develop the site as a modular project, with a strong infrastructure. This meant that the team could quickly and easily adjust the design of each component without needing to pour too much time and resources on development. This strong, modular infrastructure made the rebranding process very flexible, and very easy for us.

Liad, our Airfleet contact, always asked exactly the right questions and could pinpoint what we needed with amazing speed and accuracy.

Honestly, working with Liad has been like working with an in-house developer. Only better, because I don’t know how to speak ‘Developer’ but Liad is fluent in both ‘Developer’ and ‘Marketer’.

With Airfleet and Liad on board, the process of developing our new website was frictionless. It all happened very fast.

Airfleet are fantastic at communication and gave us complete transparency at every stage. We could monitor what was going on with the website development and, if anything ever needed changing, the change would happen in a matter of minutes.

What we wanted was a lean, smooth website through which we could engage with prospects, attract investors, and grab the interest of potential new employees. And that’s exactly what Airfleet gave us.

In fact, we had so much faith in Airfleet’s work that we actually developed the brand book while Airfleet were working on the website. We had no problem at all leaving them to work their magic.

Into the future

We’re very pleased with what we’ve accomplished so far with Airfleet. But it’s not the end of the story.

In the near future, we’re hoping to integrate our product and our website even further. We want to add more interactions, to sync up our site and our AI to
an even greater extent.

We’re working with Airfleet on an ongoing basis to scale our brand and develop our website into the future. It’s been a great working relationship so far – and we’re confident that there are great things to come.

Gaston Rendelstein, Head of Marketing @ Whatify