Start with stakeholders: rebranding mental health.
When the Mental Health Association of New York City initiated a dramatic rebrand, its leaders didn’t see stakeholders as simple rubber stamps or obstacles to be overcome, but as partners to be engaged at every step.
Josephine Parr, Vice President of Marketing and Communications, takes us through the process.
First off, why pursue a rebrand?
When we started, the name made sense, but years later it no longer reflected our mission. Fifty years ago, the Mental Health Association of New York City was focused on local programming in New York. Over time, it grew into a national organization—we ran the main crisis hotline in the weeks and months after 9-11. Because of that experience, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration asked us to oversee the National Suicide Prevention Line in 2005, and we’ve added even more national programs since then. So we knew the name needed to change, but we also wanted it to reflect a more positive approach to mental health and emotional wellness, to really put a positive spin on that experience rather than focus on negative stereotypes. We saw it as an opportunity to steer the industry in a certain direction and reduce the stigma by using terms like “emotional health,” so including that in our name was really important. We believe the new name, Vibrant Emotional Health, communicates our positive vision for anyone who might be struggling with mental health or emotional challenges.
With such a long-standing brand, did you have any fears or concerns going into the process?
Absolutely. We’d built up 50 years of equity in that name, and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose that reputation or even hurt it with the new name. So we spent a lot of time talking to stakeholders—everyone from our partner organizations to our board members, our donors, and our staff. We wanted to make a dramatic change, but we needed to be sure it was a direction that people were comfortable with. Throughout that process, it was really interesting to hear how other people view us. There’s a personality and an ethos that’s deeply seated in the organization and it was really useful to have a third party like Good Stuff Partners come in and pull that out of us, creating a voice around those discoveries. It just reminded us of our incredible desire to change the world, to do good things for people struggling with mental health and emotional wellness challenges.
Words played a big role in the re-branding, from obvious things like the rename down to the ways you describe “mental health.” Talk about that a little….
When Good Stuff came up with the name “Vibrant,” it quickly became one of our favorites. Our board of directors was engaged in the process from the very beginning—asking some really tough questions before we even started thinking of actual names, pushing back when they needed to, and prompting some really tough conversations; in fact, it was a board member who came up with the idea of “emotional health” rather than “mental health.”
When we started sharing the new name, some board members immediately loved it, while others were very hesitant in the beginning. But as Kim Williams, our president, and CEO, pointed out, we needed to give them time to go through this process—it’s not only a big change for the organization, but it’s also a big change for people who are devoted to the organization. There’s an immediate emotional adjustment to the word itself, but along with it comes the recognition that our organization is moving in a different direction, which is why the name is so important. Our new tagline is “Hope Happens Here” and our Twitter handle is @VibrantForAll, and all of those little things add up to show people what we’re trying to do, to change the conversation around mental health.
What kind of feedback have you received as you started unveiling it to staff and the people you serve?
Throughout the process, we had a lot of one-on-one conversations with different people connected to the organization. Early on, I was discussing a variant on the word “Vibrant” with one of the adolescents we serve, and she said that if she were coming to our offices after school, she wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell people where she was going, and that was exactly the sort of response we’d been looking for.
The staff has really connected to it, too. At the party where we introduced the re-brand, we brought out a whiteboard and asked employees to write what Vibrant meant to them, and we included their responses in our most recent annual report—words like hope, trust, support, survival, dedication, fun, engagement, and resilience. It’s great to have a brand that truly expresses all of the thoughts and feelings that staff has always associated with the place where they work. And honestly, it’s hard to be sad when you tell someone “I work for Vibrant Emotional Health”—just saying it makes you smile.
See the full rebrand on our case study and learn more about our Naming and Identity process.
