Five Takeaways from Mailchimp’s Outlandish Rebranding

Popular email marketing platform Mailchimp recently launched a redesigned brand identity as they evolve into a full-service marketing platform.

In a (font) world dominated by Helveticas and Sans serifs, Mailchimp picked Cooper Light as their new typeface. Something which started with it’s more famous cousin- Cooper Black.

This, however, wasn’t the only thing they changed. With the release of ‘Act Two’ as CEO Chestnut calls it, Mailchimp has partnered with Collins and R/GA and rebranded their marketing platform to unify the brand better, while allowing space for originality.

Mailchimp has been a brand close to my heart. Over the last 17 years, thanks to their savvy marketing clubbed with the power of word of mouth, they’ve been able to maintain their top rankings.

I loved this rebranding exercise. Let’s talk about what can we learn.

1. User benefits > Product features

What does a baker want? To bake. What does an actor desire? More interesting scripts.

Marketing is a way to reach more people out there. However, it would be unfair to expect an artist to leave their core job and A/B test Facebook ads.

What do they want? Find more time to do things they love: focus on their core job, spend time with their loved ones and lead a quality life.

Nobody cares what you offer unless you talk about how people can benefit from your product and achieve their goals.

Feature pages are one of the few real estate spaces where you’re allowed to boast about what you offer. These are also the pages where visitors want to (quickly) know what you offer and whether it makes sense for their business. Mailchimp understands this mentality.

Instead of talking about their product in technical flowery jargons, Mailchimp’s features page tells how you can:

1. Create campaigns
2. Connect your system with others
3. Automate your work.

In short, no fluff.

2. It’s all about ‘you’

“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” ― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

What’s the second best? YOU.

Here’s something intriguing about MailChimp’s web presence. They always talk from ‘your’ angle. What YOU can get, by using their product.

Example: Here’s their resources page with 16 you’s

3. Break the rules

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrmann has been one of my favorite songs. One of the lines says, ”Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.”

The same principle applies to website design and how it shapes the way people perceive your brand. If you know what you’re up to, it’s okay to break the rules.

After doing away with skeuomorphism in 2007, most of the tech biggies have stuck to the same flat design. All brands follow the same model, fonts, styles, codes, tropes, and cliches. Example:

Reasons for playing safe might vary. From leaving lesser chances for rejection by seniors; to finding it not worth the time, since these brands are already set in their domain. Mailchimp dares to be different. They changed everything.

We didn’t want to lose our heritage in the process, so we focused on capturing the essence of what Mailchimp has always been. ~ Gene Lee, VP of Design.

Mailchimp doesn’t go by the old school rules of website design like multiple headers, language change globe icon or placing the brand mascot all over the site. Their new design focuses only on the primary messaging.

First impressions are 94% design-related.

Time to say bye-bye to background noise.

4. Less = More

Look at their website’s headings, look at the first scroll real estate- that’s the place brands love to bombard you with how much content there is to look forward to and how you can very well spend the rest of your day reading their mind blowing website.

Contrastingly, it takes 50 milliseconds for a visitor to form an opinion about your site- browsing through the messaging, reading case studies, thinking if it helps their business. Either they click the CTA next, or leave it altogether.

Based on Ecoconsultancy’s 2018 survey, 84% of respondents felt that design-driven businesses are performing way better than their competitors. 73% of firms are spending money on design to make sure they have the competitive edge.

Mailchimp considers their visitors tech savvy, with limited time. They help you focus on the content. No extra bells and whistles. Heil minimalism!

5. Different is cool

MailChimp’s winking chimp- Freddie has been a great brand recall exercise since last two decades. With the revamp, it has been simplified to ensure it works at any size and can appear alongside the wordmark as part of a more unified system.

While the hat and cheeky wink stay firmly in place, he’s now a simplified single-color silhouette.

The new main color- Cavendish yellow represents their new visual identity, which, (as per Mailchimp) is the shade of sunshine and optimism alongside similar food-themed hues, right from bright pink Dragonfruit to the lilac Radish.

They’ve even gone ahead to make the c in Mailchimp lower case, to emphasize that they’re no longer just an email service.

Browsing through Mailchimp’s new website gives you the feels of experiencing the movie- Kungfu Panda where after a while, panda takes a side step, and you get to see the madness of the entire gang of outlandish-but-funny characters like Shifu, Tigress and Oogway. The elements work by themselves, and it’s way more fun!

On Mailchimp’s homepage, you see the GIF of a pair of hands mimicking bird wings that turns into a bird, and there’s a person with five legs symbolizing the automation features.

Nevertheless, you can’t help falling for the adorable Freddie with it’s consistently placed header image on the left, which moves with you as you scroll down without interrupting the page ethos. Hocus Pocus!

So these were my five takeaways from Mailchimp's rebranding. Great job with the act two. Respect.