Chris Ziomek, CEO of Breezy Med, sat down to chat about the company’s latest rebrand. Stick around for a teardown and peek behind the curtain to see how this brand refresh went from concept to go-live.
About the company: Breezy Med, formerly Build With Robots, is a leading provider of automated disinfection technology designed to improve hygiene in healthcare and public environments. Leveraging smart automation and cloud data, Breezy Med enhances infection control processes, ensuring cleaner and safer spaces for all. Visit their website here.
Build With Robots, a leader in automated disinfection solutions, was trying to find its footing in terms of product-market fit, and landed on the healthcare space as a primary target. Their name, however, didn’t immediately click with healthcare stakeholders and sparked a need for the rebrand.
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Sanitation 101 “In our space, one way you can do things is by hand. It’s laborious and dangerous, and overall, it’s just not great. It’s also expensive because labor costs are high in hospitals. The other high-tech ways of doing things are:
We've made ours as easy as pushing a button, and it disinfects the whole room for you. It’s as simple as UV, but a whole lot better, and costs a lot less. There’s this aspect of it being a better mousetrap, but it's also more focused on end users, making it easier for them to operate without a lot of training and sophistication,” Ziomek shared. |
“We were shifting our target industry focus, and wanted to connect better with our target audience. We made the formal decision to rebrand back in October, and launched the new brand to the public in March. The rebrand was driven by circumstances of change, and refocusing, and we just did it,” Ziomek shared.
When moving from a horizontal (industry-agnostic) to vertical (industry-specific) solution, there’s a great opportunity to reevaluate your brand and speak specifically to your audience. Healthcare business leaders and administrators want solutions that are designed for their space.
“The pandemic gave us an opportunity to demonstrate our value proposition for helping to keep essential workspaces open, like airports, arenas, and hospitals, etc. From 2020 through 2024, we focused more broadly on janitorial markets,” Ziomek added. “We targeted businesses ranging from schools to arenas, to hotels and hospitals. We actually have some systems in food safety and food preparation; airports were a big one at first (during the pandemic).”
A screenshot from the Breezy Med website, sharing information about the evolving role of infection prevention in hospitals.
“Since then, we learned in a post-pandemic world, these types of services are not interesting to most industries. They view it as a cost-adder, rather than a value-adder. Whereas in healthcare, it's something that's part of their daily practices. Hospitals are measured and have to report to the federal government on infection rates, etc. We have a strong, compelling story within healthcare as opposed to other industries, and that led to the change,” Ziomek shared.
In terms of the brand name, Ziomek and team already had some ideas and thoughts in mind. “Our name prior to the rebranding was Build With Robots, and frankly, no one liked the name. It confused people when we talked about robots,” he shared.
“Our products all had the Breezy prefix, like Breezy One, a fully autonomous mobile disinfecting robot. Breezy Blue is the device that we sell the most. Bearing our products in mind, it was pretty easy to come up with a new brand, but it was really the start-up mentality that put things into motion. We got in a room; we hashed it out; we took a vote; we talked to outside people. We picked a name and moved quickly without agency involvement.”
Here is how the website’s above-the-fold section evolved, from before to after.
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Their website remains largely the same as it did before, but the key change for their website’s performance is the “WHY BREEZY” piece. In the previous brand, there was no mention of Breezy in the name, which caused confusion in their customer base. In the new brand, Breezy Med, it’s easier to see why someone might choose one of their products.
If you scroll down further on their site, you’ll notice a heading difference between the two websites. The old website says: “Leading the way in infection control.” The new website says: “Leading the way in infection prevention.” This small shift signals the new way of thinking that BreezyMed wants their customers to wrap their heads around.
Healthcare teams don’t have to wait for the next outbreak to take action and implement precautionary measures.
Here is a before-and-after comparison of the brand’s logos.
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Despite the name change, the brand’s visual identity remains pretty similar to the old brand—by design. With an existing customer base, the team wanted it to feel familiar and recognizable, but with a more modernized, healthcare-focused angle.
The previous brand font was Mustica Pro (in a semibold weight), a geometric sans serif. Whereas their new font is Hurme Geometric Sans 1, using a more playful appearance with the thinner weight and all lowercase wordmark.
“We're a start-up, so one of our advantages is that we can make decisions—pretty quickly—at that rate. We looked at the data, including the growth rates of each of the different markets we're in, analyzed everything, and made a decision fairly quickly. That was back in October of last year.”
“It was also an inflection point, when we were reflecting as a team, that despite being venture-backed, we're not going to scale it at the rates that other high-growth, venture-backed companies do—unless we figure this out. Namely, how to scale our go-to-market planning,” Ziomek added. “Once we decided on healthcare, we almost immediately started to figure out the brand that we want, our brand message, and how we would connect with our target customers.”
“We launched on day one and completed it slowly in a phased approach, over the subsequent months. And it keeps evolving. Our biggest strength as a start-up is our ability to move quickly, make decisions, and adapt,” Ziomek added.
After launching, “the feedback from new customers and people who didn’t know us, has been very positive. Everybody likes the Breezy name, and the Med part, it connects with our target audience. We actually just got back from a tradeshow, and had people come and say, ‘Oh, I really like the name,’ we didn’t have that dialogue with Build With Robots. Our current customers thought of us as Breezy anyway, and I don’t think they noticed the change (and that was by design),” Ziomek added.
“I was the biggest obstacle to rebranding; I think it’s one of the things you should avoid. No matter how bad your brand might be, that’s what people think of you. You’re starting over with a rebrand. And I still believe that (post-rebrand),” Ziomek shared. “Knowing this risk, we leveraged the product name, so it wasn’t as discontinuous or as dramatic as other rebrands might face.”
“You have to be very careful with a rebrand and make sure there’s a compelling need. And for us, there was, because the old name didn’t resonate with our target audience. It was actually a negative, and we came up with a new name that connects with people and ties our products together. Most people I’ve talked to, who have rebranded, have lost sales and momentum, and you have to be very careful,” Ziomek shared.
Rebranding isn’t an easy feat either, there’s a lot of boxes to check and consider as it relates to legacy, search visibility, and how people think of you and your brand. And then, you have to work on reconnecting with your audience and trying to maintain and improve the momentum that you had before rebranding.
“In hindsight, I wish we had rebranded earlier, our board was sharing the same sentiments about the name,” Ziomek added. If you’re considering rebranding, make sure that there’s a compelling reason driving the need and go all-in, once you’ve got the data and research to back it up.
To learn more about Breezy Med, check out their website: https://breezymed.com/
Interested in seeing how a marketing partner can help you bring your health tech company’s rebrand or brand vision to life? Get in touch with Jenn today.