Erik Johnson, Vice President of Marketing, and Amy Holmes, Director of Marketing at Harmony Healthcare IT (Harmony) sat down with Swaay.Health  to discuss their brand refresh.

The company had grown fast, acquired a clinical product, and expanded beyond legacy data management. Their brand needed to catch up. However, instead of jumping straight into design, they pressed pause and asked better questions.

Key Takeaways

Start with why. Harmony’s refresh started with questions about their growth plans, current + future positioning, and market perception. The answers shaped everything that followed and helped avoid brand-by-committee chaos. Internal brand rollout shapes external success. The Harmony team treated employees like a core audience. They used teaser campaigns, swag, and had a step-by-step rollout plan. Getting internal champions on-board helped the refreshed brand gain traction quickly with customers, partners, and prospects. Brand is a journey not a destination. The Harmony brand refresh was a multi-phase rollout with clear checkpoints, follow-up campaigns, and a plan to keep the energy going long after the new brand went live. Start with Strategy, Not Style

Before a single pixel changed, the team at Harmony aligned around a core question: Why are we doing this? That clarity helped them scope the effort, rally internal support, and keep decisions grounded when the process got subjective.

“For me it always starts with just simply asking that simple question, why are you doing this?,” explained Johnson. “Because it is hard to measure the impact of brand refreshes. We asked this question so that the scope of that effort was understood from the beginning”

It’s easy to get swept up in the aesthetics. But Harmony’s team knew their “why” would be their anchor—especially when timelines stretched and opinions multiplied.

Your Brand Isn’t Real Until Staff Believe It

A brand refresh doesn’t work if your own team doesn’t recognize themselves in it. That’s why Harmony treated employees like a core audience. From teaser rollouts to “Swag Friday” launch kits, the marketing team made space for excitement. They also gave staff the tools to actually use the new brand.

“We have a lot of employees that have been here for a number of years,” said Holmes. “I think it’s good for them to kind of see this evolution [of our brand]. It shows we are investing in the company.”

By focusing as much on staff as much as customers and external stakeholders, the Holmes and Johnson create a peer group that didn’t just accept the new identity, they owned it.

The Launch is Just Chapter One

Even before the refreshed brand went live, the Harmony marketing team was already working on Phase 2…and Phase 3. They knew that sustaining momentum would take just as much planning as the rollout itself.

“Even when you go live, it doesn’t end there,” commented Johnson. “In fact, it just starts there. I think we celebrated for about a day and then we were onto phase two.”

The Right Reasons for A Brand Refresh

Some of the most meaningful brand refreshes are sparked by progress. As organizations grow, evolve, or expand their offerings, the original brand can start to feel out of step. That’s exactly what happened at Harmony.

They started with internal clarity and built employee ownership into every phase of the rollout. This approach ensured the success of the new brand without the marketing team having to push on the proverbial rope.

No grand unveil. No dramatic before-and-after. Just a brand that finally caught up to where the company had already arrived.

Learn more about Harmony Healthcare IT at https://www.harmonyhit.com/