Kennedy Copeland, Senior Director, Marketing at Shearwater Health, sat down to chat about the company’s 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: Shearwater Health provides teams of remote and onsite clinicians that expand the size and impact of clinical teams so that clients can focus on internal teams practicing at the peak of their license. From bedside to back-office, there are over 6,000 Shearwater clinicians and process experts solving medical and administrative problems every hour of every day all over the world. Shearwater combines clinical expertise with Six Sigma process excellence and RPA technology to improve healthcare outcomes. For more information, please visit www.shearwaterhealth.com.
“Shearwater Health originally started as a subsidiary of another, larger company 25 years ago. In 2016, the Shearwater brand became its own for the first time,” Copeland shared. “The brand was wholly embraced by the entire company, across different countries: India, the Philippines, and the US, where we’re headquartered.”
Before diving too deeply into the rebrand itself, it’s helpful to share the company’s story and namesake. “Shearwater provides both remote and onsite clinical services for U.S. healthcare organizations,” Copeland explained. “Our onsite work includes sponsoring internationally educated nurses to immigrate to the U.S. and deliver bedside care for our clients - but we also have more than 6,000 clinicians and process experts based in our Philippines and India offices who deliver care and clinical support remotely. Just like the Shearwater bird, a migratory species that crosses oceans to reach the U.S., it’s quite a long journey: a journey that our nurses take every single year,” Copeland added.
“It's a beautiful story and a poignant representation of the nursing journey. Having that bird stay a central part of our brand was really important to us,” she continued.
A screenshot showing custom, branded cookies for the Shearwater Health rebrand launch, by Cookies in the Kitchen.
Most companies tend to rebrand every 7-10 years, with refreshes and logo touch-ups in between those points.
“At this point in time, the brand hadn’t been touched in nearly a decade. Beyond that, Shearwater was following a more strategic approach for reaching healthcare clients in the US. They wanted to further relationships with American clients as an emerging leader in the space,” Copeland added. “When I came on board last June, there were already talks about a refresh or rebrand and the timing just worked out really well.”
“From idea to go-live, it probably took a full year,” she added. “At the heart of it, the rebrand was about growth. We had just expanded into India, our third country, but as our CEO liked to say, we were still ‘the best kept secret in Nashville.’ We didn’t want to be a secret anymore — we wanted to show up, to be seen, and to take our place on the global stage.”
The secret-based positioning—if you want to think about it like an English and marketing nerd—is actually an oxymoron. Positioning is “the place that a brand occupies in the minds of customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors.” If a company is a secret, it can’t have a space in the minds of prospects.
So what needs to happen to get the secret out? Oftentimes, there’s nuggets of gold or web copy between the lines waiting to be said. Sometimes, the best question is what aren’t we saying?
“We knew we had an incredible story to tell—but before we could talk about how awesome we are, we needed a brand that could actually hold that story,” Copeland explained. “Shearwater already had a strong foundation and reputation in the market — the refresh wasn’t about starting over, it was about building on that success. Our goal was to evolve the brand into something that stood out, made a statement, and clearly differentiated us from competitors. Once we had that, we could really show up externally in a more powerful way. As we were going through the refresh, we were also seeing incredible growth — it was the perfect alignment of timing and momentum.”
“What made this rebrand so special is how intentional it was,” she continued. “We really listened to our teams and grounded the work in who we are. We partnered with Major Studio, a woman-owned agency I’ve had the pleasure of working with before, and they approached every decision with such thoughtfulness. They wanted to truly understand Shearwater — where we’ve been, who we are today, and where we’re going — and capture that evolution in a way that felt both authentic and aspirational.”
“My goal with the rebrand was to give a nod to the heritage of where we've been while embracing this new era of where we are in this new phase of growth. In order to really represent how drastically we had evolved, it had to be a completely new, overhauled look,” Copeland shared. “That being said, we have been referring to it as a refresh, not a rebrand. There are several elements that stayed the same. When we were doing research across our team and our leadership, there were certain elements that resonated well and needed to stay the same.”
Speaking of things that were kept the same, notice how the Shearwater logo evolved alongside the rebrand.
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Despite the color changes and wordmark addition, the bird is in the same position. The new logo is also higher resolution and much more flexible across channels. As described in the brand guidelines, “[The logo helps] to amplify the brand ethos, presenting a clean, warm, and global brand. A gestural, single-line bird layered against a perfect circle, sits atop a stacked sans-serif wordmark—the perfect balance of heritage and modernity.”
“Blue is a central theme across what everyone would talk about at Shearwater. We were known for our Shearwater Blue. I think that represents the ocean and the migratory journey—and how we're all connected across oceans. Hearing those things really inspired where we ended up going. That's why we called it a refresh. It was just a retake of where we've been and where we're going,” Copeland added.
“So much of healthcare branding today looks like it belongs to a tech company — sleek, sterile, and disconnected from the human side of care,” Copeland shared. “But Shearwater is, at its core, a people solution. Our work is powered by clinicians, not code. We wanted a brand that reflected that — something that felt human, approachable, and true to the people who make our impact possible. When you look across the industry, so many competitors lean into a tech aesthetic. We wanted to stand out by leading with humanity.”
“In terms of process, we did research to understand how our old colors were being perceived. There were a lot of blues and reds. While blue consistently tested well, red tended to evoke feelings of urgency and anxiety — the opposite of what we wanted our brand to represent,” Copeland explained. “We wanted our palette to feel calm and confident — the way we want our clients to feel when they work with us. But we also had to think globally. Red is an incredibly meaningful and beloved color in both the Philippines and India, where more than 6,000 of our team members live and work. So, we found ways to honor that significance without letting it overpower the sense of calm we wanted to create.”
“Our primary palette leans into navies, blues, and yellows, meant to be calming. Our secondary color palette really represents the diversity of our teams, as a result of the global listening and research we did.”
“We have nurses from 35+ countries around the world who come to the US to work for us. We wanted to represent that diversity of thought in the rebrand as well,” Copeland shared.
“We did change a little bit of our strategic positioning. We moved away from a laundry list of services and really refined how we were telling our story. We started pushing outcomes for each line of business,” Copeland shared. “For payers, what are our outcomes, and how do we help? For providers, what are the outcomes, how do we help? And so on for workers’ comp and disability.”
“Instead of beating around the bush, we refined our message and made it more focused on our why. Why do we exist, why are we here, and how can we help solve one of the biggest crises in US healthcare?”
It’s not just “one of the biggest crises” in American healthcare. It IS the biggest crisis. Here are the receipts:
When you think about Shearwater’s work, the technical term is clinical process outsourcing. An awfully cold-sounding concept. The better positioning that Shearwater is personifying is: “You're selling people, you're selling a true life change. One is for nurses who already work bedside in the US with better staffing conditions, and the second, for nurses who are changing their whole lives and immigrating to the US to solve our nursing crisis,” Copeland added. “Because this is so big and important, we wanted to make sure it was people—not tech—at the center. Our competitors’ brands could not be more different than how we ended up.”
Let’s compare Shearwater’s website, before and after rebranding.
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Their old brand had a colder feel in terms of messaging and positioning, sounding like some SaaS solutions out there. “Less Administration. More Patient Care,” is likely plastered on the home pages of many healthcare SaaS company websites. Their new brand—on the other hand—is uniquely ownable and human-sounding.
The above-the-fold copy on the new website rotates, so you can see other headlines, like:
With multiple brand refreshes and rebrands under her belt, Copeland shares some wisdom from the other side of Shearwater Health’s new chapter.
“Take yourself out of it. That's my biggest piece of advice. It's not about you. It's totally about the people of your company. It's about the story, the hard work, and the grit that's gone into building the company that you work for. Listen to them. Their voice matters way more than yours,” Copeland added. “You have the expertise to help guide the conversation, but let the conversation happen without you in it. At the end of the day, you help to make their dreams happen. That's your goal. Don't just put your favorite colors in. When done right, it ends up being a representation of the hard work and dedication that people have had before you.”
What’s the payoff for doing a rebrand in this way? “We've had people who’ve worked here for decades. One of our team members, who has been here for 25 years, came in with the biggest smile on his face and said ‘Clients love it. And I love it.’ He was wearing the polo already. He saw himself, his journey, and all his hard work in it. That's what makes it all worth it.”
It’s not every day that you hear about a global rebrand, especially not to the granular depth that you’re talking about cross-cultural color theory and timing rebrand launches across multiple continents and time zones.
“This is my first global rebrand refresh. It was really eye-opening to see how important the cultural differences are when you're doing a rebrand. A lot of times, you're thinking, we're X company, and we really are only looking for U.S.-based clients. Your team members who operate and believe in your brand because they're your biggest brand ambassadors? They're the people who need to believe in your brand more than anybody else. If they're not willing to share it and jump from the rooftops and scream it out and wear it every day, then you missed the mark,” Copeland added.
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A snippet of Copeland’s rebrand moodboard.
One unique way that the Shearwater Health team was translating their global team into their rebrand moodboard. “The mood board I had is actually represented in our secondary color palette. The main thing to take away from it is that it wasn't focused on brands,” Copeland added. “It was focused on people. It has a lot of smiling faces and real people. It's a lot of women in healthcare who are genuinely in a moment of joy, because that’s our team.”
Ready to make your team your company’s biggest cheerleaders? Get them engaged and invested in your brand.
To learn more about Shearwater Health, check out their website: https://shearwaterhealth.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.