Rexanne Domico, CEO, and Steve Schildwachter, Chief People and Brand Officer at Interim HealthCare, sat down to chat about the company’s rebrand. Stick around for a teardown and peek behind the curtain to see how this rebrand went from concept to go-live.
About the brand: Interim HealthCare Inc. is a national network of locally owned and operated franchises that provide a comprehensive range of healthcare services and staffing solutions. Founded in 1966, Interim HealthCare is the only major franchise brand in its category to offer the full continuum of care and strives to improve the delivery of home healthcare and staffing services through more than 300 care centers across the U.S. Interim HealthCare franchisees employ nurses, therapists, aides, companions, and other healthcare professionals who deliver 25 million hours of home care each year. They serve 190,000 people across a variety of needs, including home health, senior care, hospice, palliative care, pediatric care, and medical staffing. For more information or to locate an Interim HealthCare office, visit www.InterimHealthcare.com.
Before going too deep into the weeds, let’s take a trip to the past and look at Interim HealthCare’s history.
Interim HealthCare was founded in 1966 as Medical Personnel Pool (a division of Labor Pool of America). The company was renamed in 1992 to offer multiple service lines under a single name.
Fast forward to 2025.
“We used the year before our 60th anniversary as a time to reflect and take stock of where we are. That way, we were able to use the new identity along with our anniversary in its full form,” Schildwachter added. “The brand hadn’t been updated since the 1990s. We were long overdue. The impetus for our rebrand, though, was not just graphic design. The core goal was to declare a brand positioning: something that differentiates us from our competitors. That's where we put the most energy into the project.”
“We needed a clear idea that differentiates Interim in the marketplace. That idea was built around the fact that we are a franchise system. With the exception of a handful of corporate-owned locations, all of Interim's locations around the country are franchise locations, locally owned and operated,” Schildwachter shared. “That gives us a competitive advantage, because of our involvement in the community, at the general level, and within the healthcare space.”
“The regional, localized focus benefits our patients, clients, and their families because all the decisions can be made locally by each location. For our employees, they’re much better supported by a boss that they see every day (or can see in the office), versus somebody at a large corporation who may be hundreds of miles away,” Schildwachter added.
“The real focus for us on the rebrand is that we keep healthcare local in communities, and we have local owners. At Interim, we provide the full continuum of care. We work on some of the corners of healthcare that some of the bigger companies don't,” Domico shared. “Our owners will get opportunities like pediatric cases, and people who have wound care needs or infusion needs: things that larger, big box home health, hospice, or personal care companies aren’t able to service.”
“In terms of audiences, we have patients, clients, their families, employees, and B2B targets: the referral sources that we work with locally in each community to ensure that everybody gets the care that they need. And, our franchisees, too, have to be on board with it,” Schildwachter added. “Rexanne participated in a number of meetings with us and provided input along the way. We also had franchisee involvement from start to finish. We have a franchisee advisory body: the Marketing and Advertising Committee, and we meet with them almost every month of the year, so they know what’s going on. They're like a focus group for us. We changed direction on some of the things we were going to do with this brand refresh based on their advice, and it came out better as a result.”
“We found that it all starts with two people working together. That was really foundational for us to get across. We didn't spend a lot of time on mission, vision, and values,” Domico added. “Instead (because we have those pieces), we moved to a manifesto, which is a story about how the brand developed, and what it means to us as a company. We created a lot of momentum around it, from videos to posters; we wanted to give our teams the tools to support our new narrative. It’s resonated well across the company.”
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What’s different about the Interim rebrand is that the brand still has bolts and elements of its heritage. The red was a unique differentiator, but beyond that, evolving their messaging made a big difference.
They went from “Pioneers in Personalized Home Healthcare” to “Always There When You Need Care.” This shift warmed up the message and got to the heart of what is going on. They also broke free of the limitations of personalized home healthcare services, which may have skewed what people reached out for.
“The new brand has really given us a new purpose; it's something for everyone to be excited about. It looks modern, fresh, and new. We also wanted to move away from Interim HealthCare and simplify to Interim. We also wanted to simplify the wording, but marry it up with a really nice tagline to tell our story,” Domico added. “In working across four business lines, we wanted that logo to stand on its own, whether it would be for healthcare staffing, personal care services, home health, or hospice services. We're all one big network, and we wanted that to pull through.”
Schildwachter had a positioning aha moment during the process, too. “Speaking personally, at the beginning of the project, I was very certain in my mind as to what the right positioning was. I'm glad I had input from everyone else because we came up with a different, better outcome. I try to run a very collaborative working environment; this was really about trusting that process. What did it for me was just going through and being willing to listen to other people, including our outside agency, OK Boomer.”
“We were looking for loyal opposition. If you have an agency that simply does what you say, there's no sense in it. You can just hire anybody off the street to do that. If they push back on you and say, ‘no, I'm hearing it this way,’ and you take the time to listen to that, the same as you listen to your franchisees and your internal stakeholders, you wind up with better results.”
Click the link to watch on YouTube.
In evaluating the landscape, they found solace in an anti-inspiration board.
“When this all started, I was really adamant with Steve. I told him that I don't want hearts, houses, lamps, chairs… because you see so much of it. We wanted to stand apart and tell a different story. Our current identity allows us to make that leap,” Domico added.
“There are many brands that exemplify what we don't want to do. I say this with utmost respect for our partners in the post-acute care world, but this category's marketing is a sea of sameness,” Schildwachter added. “Our idea was to distinguish ourselves not only with a message, but also with how the messages look. Most advertisements look nearly identical to one another.”
The sea of sameness has been something I’ve heard and seen for years, yet it wasn’t until recently that things began to change. I talked about this—and how some brands are solving it—including Best of Care, Private Home Care, and Villi.
“Our logo is two people who are looking at each other. Between the two I’s of our name, that can be patient to caregiver, it can be owner to employee, etc. There are a lot of different ways to look at that, patient to community, and more.”
Let’s compare their logos, before and after.
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“I was very concerned about the color red for healthcare. I didn't really want to be red, but I also didn't want to be too drastic in how we change things,” Domico added. “Through the research, we found that red was a differentiator for us. Our logo is a radiant red color wheel. We put a slightly different look on it, without leaving the red altogether. Instead, we embraced it.”
This shift was important, especially from the research I’ve been doing. TheKey (formerly Home Care Assistance) adopted a green, gold, and white color palette, moving away from its red-and-white/off-white palette.
Home Instead pivoted away from the maroon. Maxim at Home, rebranded as Villi, moved to a green and yellow palette, away from red and blue. Everyone was moving away from certain colors, while Interim doubled down on what made them different.
“From a cosmetic standpoint, we feel very good about how we look versus how we used to look. What's different is that the brand didn't change. How we presented the brand changed because our brand refresh tapped into what's made us great for 60 years, “ Schildwachter added. “We're able to channel that to each local community in a much clearer form now that we put our stake in the ground and said, ‘Yes, this is Interim; this is what we stand for.’”
“The reaction from our franchisees was very enthusiastic. They got it right away. We launched this at our annual franchise conference. I was surprised at how enthusiastic the response was,” Schildwachter added. “You never know it's going to go over. But we had done our homework on us, our customer bases, the competition, and our franchisees. As a result, we had something that everybody really rallied around.”
Click the link to watch on YouTube.
Schildwachter and Domico share some parting advice if you’re looking to rebrand.
“Don't settle. There were many times when we would look at concepts, and I wouldn’t get that ‘wow’ factor or the continuity we wanted. There were things I was nervous about,” Domico added.
“Look past the obvious,” Schildwachter adds. “You have to question yourself as you go through the process, and make sure this is the right move, and how it works. Introspection throughout the process is important.”
“Be bold. Don't be afraid to embrace change or embrace things. If you want your messaging to be different, then decide what makes you unique and go for it. The outcome of that has been really good for us. Even just using our color as an example, it's been good for us. If you look, there aren't many people who are bold and use the reds we use. We're excited about that, and it just plays really well into who we are and the message we're trying to get across,” Domico added.
To learn more about Interim HealthCare, check out their website: https://www.interimhealthcare.com/
Interested in seeing how a marketing partner can help you bring your healthcare company’s rebrand or brand vision to life? Get in touch with Jenn today.