Dale Sperling, Chief Marketing Officer at Trust & Will, 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 brand: Founded in 2017, Trust & Will is the leading digital estate planning platform in the U.S., trusted by over one million families. Our simple, secure, and attorney-approved online solutions empower Americans to create wills, trusts, healthcare directives, and other essential estate planning documents tailored to state-specific laws. As a certified B Corporation, our mission to help every family leave a meaningful legacy is embedded into our business model, ensuring estate planning is accessible, affordable, and inclusive for all.
Trust & Will is advancing modern legacy planning with AI-driven innovation, helping families and professionals simplify complex decisions and accelerate collaborative workflows.
Our platform supports 26,000+ financial advisors and 145+ enterprise partners, including banks, financial institutions, attorneys, nonprofits, real estate agents, and technology platforms. Notable partners include AARP, Fifth Third Bank, UBS, USAA, LPL Financial, and Northwestern Mutual. With more than one million users and over $300 billion in self-reported estate assets, Trust & Will is redefining estate planning as a strategic pillar of modern financial wellness.
Trust & Will has been consistently recognized for innovation and leadership. In 2026 alone, the company was named to Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies, the Financial Times' Americas' Fastest-Growing Companies, the Inc. Regionals: Fastest-Growing Private Companies, Forbes' America's Best Startup Employers, and received the FinTech Breakthrough Award for Personal Finance Product of the Year. The company has also earned spots on the CNBC Disruptor 50, Inc. 5000, and Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ lists, and was named a winner at the 2025 Wealth Management ("Wealthies") and ThinkAdvisor Luminaries awards, and recognized as a "Rising Star in Estate Planning" in the 2025 Kitces Research on Advisor Technology report.
To learn more, visit trustandwill.com.
“When I joined Trust & Will in November of 2023, the brand hadn’t been touched since its launch in 2017. There was a lot of early lifestyle photography and design, which, to me, felt outdated. There were a lot of blue tones, and it had a cool, distant, predictable feeling,” Sperling shared. “Upon joining, I wanted to take a swing at rebranding, it was to both modernize the look and feel of the brand (visually), and to update our tone, voice, and language we're using to meet people where they are, to bring in more legacy language, to make people feel more official, welcoming, and warm.”
In preparatory research for the rebrand, Trust & Will also had to think about their positioning. Who are they here for? Who are their true competitors?
“Our biggest competitor is an offline attorney. We're not truly competing with all of the online digital estate planning companies. Everyone's (in some way) competing them (where 70% of people still go: their offline, local brick-and-mortar referral from a friend). We looked at that experience and how people might feel there,” Sperling added.
The overall goal in rebranding was to “be very customer-friendly, stand out, and have that distinct legal, warm feeling. Yet it also runs the risk of just being swallowed up in the fintech sort of colors, lights, and movement. It was the right decision, though, to follow the customer. And, so far, so good,” Sperling added.
“We ripped the whole brand off. We painted on the new one and just kept marching forward with it. We've been evolving it ever since as we build out new products and features.”
One of the main goals in the visual identity part of the rebrand was to switch to an “ecru kind of color, like legal paper. We flipped to a more nostalgic photography and illustration style, and went back to build a visual language that included real customers, real stories, and a strong brand expression of colors and shapes that suit modern estate planning in our view,” shared Sperling.
An example of the new illustration style
This also meant building a world-class team dedicated to the process. Alexa Zin joined Trust & Will as the Creative Director, and on Day One, “I was well aware of my first objective: pick up the rebrand torch and make something special happen. Breathing new life into the Trust & Will brand identity was a huge opportunity for the company. With an ever-growing audience and member community, we aim to communicate an ownable, identifiable point of view and a personality that connects with people,” Zin shared in a blog post detailing the rebrand.
From start to finish, the rebrand was live in three months. “I know it sounds short, but that’s because of Alexa’s talent. She is a beast. She dove in and came up with better-than-an-agency deliverables and creativity,” Sperling added.
This is a collage of the new brand featured in Zin’s article
With how common white is as a color, it’s refreshing to the eyes to see the ecru color. In fact, it’s more accessible to use off-white with black, reduces harsh glare, and reduces eye strain.
Lastly on the visual front, Trust & Will also updated their packaging, another customer touchpoint that needed to be repainted with the rebrand. “We have new, much more slick packaging that's aligned with the updated brand. I think there’s a much better customer experience in the unboxing with folders that open with little velcro instead of the way we used to have the open folders.”
Trust & Will’s color palette
As noted earlier, Sperling was going for a tone and voice that evoked familiarity and warmth. To demonstrate that, we can look at their old and new websites.
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In the new header, they share a similar message, but with a twist. The use of repetition with the word “make” helps people to remember things better. The body copy also takes a deeper look into what having these documents mean, and reassures users wills and trust will protect people today (while also looking forward at the future).
They tap into the nostalgic look with a calm, reassuring tone that feels familiar and home-like.
Brands are always looking for new ways to expand their influence in the minds of consumers. One way to do this is with sonic branding. It can be a song, a jingle, or as simple as an audio mark. “We finalized our brand identity with sonic branding, to lock in that awareness, repetition, and catchy little tune,” Sperling added.
Check out this ad, a collaboration between Trust & Will and the LA Rams. Right at the end, you’ll hear the sonic brand in the outro card.
This ties directly back to the goals that Trust & Will set up for the rebrand.
Each of these spots was an extension of the rebrand. “The goal with all those spots is to pick a moment that people can associate with, try to make it relevant to them and accessible and not feel like we're trying to sell a product that they don't think is right for them. How do you connect in a subliminal way without shoving it down their throats, so they think, ‘actually, me too.’”
Want to learn more about Trust and Will? Check out their website: https://trustandwill.com/