Airtasker is a Sydney-based Australian company founded in 2011. Their platform connects people in need of assistance with individuals willing to lend a hand. Over 1.5 million jobs and tasks are handled by the platform each year. Airtasker has established itself as a trusted name in Australia. Recently, the company rebranded as it set its sights on global expansion.
The rebranding strategy needed to reflect the company’s vision for the future and help it achieve its ambitions for growth. Angeline Lee, VP of Brand at Airtasker, comments, “For the next five years, we’re a scale-up organisation. We have a huge ambition to grow annual revenue by 10x. To achieve this, we need to compete and differentiate ourselves more effectively compared to our overseas competitors. So, we wanted a bold new look combined with a compelling story for our brand that would allow us to really stand out and create top-of-mind awareness.”
The need to stand-out and be distinctive
Airtasker understands that the heart of their business lies in the experiences of their users, so their branding needs to be very much connected to the needs and experiences of the people who use the platform. Lee comments, “The essence of our brand is ultimately about our community of T askers – the people who do the jobs posted on the platform. So how do we celebrate them? What’s the right tonality that we always want to land on in our marketing and communications? What are the right illustrative moments we really want to convey when we talk about the skills of our taskers. Our competitors talk about trust. We also need to promote trust, but we also wanted to stand out with personality and be very distinctive.”
On one hand, Airtasker wanted to totally reinvent its brand to compete overseas, but on the other hand it didn’t want to alienate those already loyal to the brand. Lee comments, “We have a huge number of loyalists. We didn’t want to transform too much and alienate those who were already loyal to the brand. We have seen a lot of great brands across the world fall off the cliff by getting this wrong”.
To ensure they got it right and to guide their thinking about the brand, Airtasker set up a program they refer to as Brand Health Tracker. Any prospective change would be subject to customer feedback and research. Airtasker’s Brand Tracker program was built using Qualtrics Brand XM technology and expertise, Lee comments, “The Brand Tracker program gives us the ability to do our own market research, and get detailed, actionable insight without the cost and time involved in using an external research agency. It meant we could repeatedly test, improve and ultimately deliver a result that achieved our goals.”
Airtasker’s goals: Intent and Memorability
At first Airtasker didn’t get it right. Lee reflects, “We changed our primary colour from blue to orange to bright green, because we just wanted to really stand out. But it really alienated our loyalists. We used a lot of customer research to help unpack that, because ultimately what we care about is usage intent and memorability. We learned, through the iteration of designs, that we were too far forward and stretched too far with our original designs”.
To get the rebranding correct, Airtasker went on an iterative journey that spanned three to six months. During that journey, Airtasker was able to hit the ‘sweet spot’ for their branding and achieve the results they wanted in terms of intent and memorability. Lee says, “From the research we learnt what were the main iconic moments for the brand we couldn’t lose, like the wing, some of the logo mark and some of the way we talk about our T askers. The orange and bright green didn’t resonate with the brand. The blue connected with our identity as a technology company.”
Due to the ability to perform rapid brand research and testing, Lee and her team have witnessed a significant improvement in usage intent among prospective and existing customers. The new logo and advertising campaigns are also far more memorable. “Ultimately, we got the sweet spot right. The new brand was vibrant and exciting yet retained the core iconic moments from our previous branding. Usage intent increased by 12% and our logo as well as our campaign ads were more memorable.”
Uniting behind a common objective
The rebranding project encouraged every team across the business to come together and work towards a common goal and vision for the brand. “It was probably the first time where there was such a cross-functional team of many coming together. It really unlocked the power of the internal teams towards a single-minded goal of driving usage intent. Solving problems together was such a great experience”.
Airtasker’s story is a testament to the power of customer insights and data in driving a successful rebranding strategy. By listening to their users and leveraging data-driven decision-making, they have set the stage for an exciting expansion beyond Australia’s shores.