New identity, same mission: What this Fintech wants to ‘achieve’ with its recent rebrand

At first glance, rebranding may seem like refreshing the touchpoints that make up a brand – the visuals, the name and its other identifiers.

But it is more than that. When you pull all the elements together, rebrand reveals itself as a tactical, coordinated effort to channel value, ethos and voice into a compelling narrative to reach and retain an audience.

In the case of the company formerly known as Freedom Financial Network, which launched in 2002 and ditched its decade-old moniker for a new, recently announced name, Achieve signals not only where the company is now, but where it wants to go.

“The new Achieve identity captures the ideas of empowerment, humanity and progress that are the foundation of what we do for our members,” said Tanya Peterson, VP of Brand and the leader spearheading the rebrand effort. “It expresses the empathy and partnership that have been at the heart of two decades of hard work and innovation on behalf of ordinary people, and which Achieve will continue to embrace. We are putting a lot of research, thought and effort into the development of our new brand, and we are already seeing positive effects on our business.”

“The name Achieve is a cry for us all. It’s ambitious in the way we want to be for ourselves and on behalf of our customers and our members,” said Carlyn Lamia, VP of Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff to the CEO. “We really want to help them get to a better place financially because we know that debt affects their whole life — and we care about their whole life. We’re focused on one part of it that we know has an impact on all.”

As Lamia, a 10-year company veteran, and her colleagues explained, the “ambitious” vision is to build a symbiotic relationship: To make good on the mission of helping individuals (as VP of Product Management Ed Park described as “the population that strives to strive” ) improve their financial health, the organization needed to better communicate how members could benefit from their services.

“We’ve been a very disciplined company in how we’ve grown up; our heart-plus-dollar-sign philosophy means we’ve balanced both caring for people and building a profitable business,” said Park. “We have a number of things that put us on a very good footing. I came because the raw materials for greatness are here, but we have not yet achieved the state we want to get to.”

The company has always offered various debt relief solutions, but according to team members, it was not always so clear. The new Achieve identity – developed by the world-renowned firm Pentagram to manage the rebrand – attempts to reflect the various separate solutions while conveying the digital properties that can link them together.

“We are still who we were. Our core values ​​did not change. The heart and dollar sign philosophy did not change. But what has changed is how a member can take advantage of all the solutions we have to offer, versus the one-at-a-time kind of silo, says Vice President and Head of Talent Acquisition Heather Marcom, who has been with the company. for five years.

“We are still who we were. Our core values ​​did not change. But what has changed is how a member can benefit from all the solutions we have to offer.”

Park said that, for the name ‘Achieve’: “We wanted something that wasn’t stiff and formulaic; something that was ambitious.” He also explained that, in addition to the name change, the company now aims to keep consumers engaged with other solutions they may find beneficial — a journey that includes typical debt relief solutions as well as apps and tools on the horizon that help people better manage their finances on a daily basis.

“What I was told by Rob Carpenter, our head of enterprise product and technology, was that we pre-achieved, gave people a graduation cap and wished them ‘good luck.’ Our goal now is to say, ‘Congratulations, you’ve completed this program, you’ve paid off this loan. Here are some other areas around your finances for perspective,” Park said. “Over time, we’ll anticipate those financial needs coming up based on tracking how they’re doing or when they’ve come to us in the past with needs, and we’ll be there to take care of them.”

And the new name-same-goal philosophy touches every part of the business—even seemingly unrelated endeavors like hiring remote workers help maximize growth potential by expanding the talent pool. At a high level, it is about excelling internally in order to best strengthen those they reach externally.

– We are a very ambitious group of people. We want to do great things. And our new Achieve brand is big: It enables us to grow and reach as many people as we can help, which is 123 million Americans, Lamia said. – We have a big goal. We can offer a lot of value.”

Below, Lamia, Marcom and Park gave a deep dive into what gave rise to Achieve – and what the way forward looks like.

To begin with, what prompted the rebrand?

VP of Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff to the CEO Carlyn Lamia: From a consumer perspective, we have developed three different business lines with successful consumer results. Over time, there are many consumers out there in the world who can benefit from more of our products. For example, they want our debt settlement product first. For many of them, we have ended up offering loans, but we also have other lending products. In the future, we want debt management products, an app with self-service and budgeting capabilities, banking features – things that will really enrich their financial lives and help them to a better financial future.

But if we remained in a world where consumers don’t understand that we, as a company they already trust, offer all these things, we make it difficult for consumers to get the value we want to offer them. So from a consumer heart perspective, it’s about getting more good results for more people. The people who already get good results from us get even better results by being offered, understanding and wanting a deeper relationship with us via our expanded set of products and services.

It’s not like, “We’re leaving you to a sister company.” We are one company. Having it more obvious and easy to understand for consumers will help them.

“From a heart-dollar-sign perspective, it gives extended — and even better — results to consumers. From a dollar-sign perspective, it makes our customer relations much more efficient.”

The reason it will help us as a business is because in the old world we would offer a service, develop a good relationship with someone and deliver a lot of value. But then they didn’t know about, or had an easy transition to, our other products and services. We ended up spending marketing dollars on the same person multiple times, and had to communicate, “It’s only one brand; it’s the same company.”

We don’t want to have to use that language. But actually it is true. We are one company, and we have the same culture within ourselves. We have the same drive to deliver good consumer results across all these products.

From a heart-dollar-sign perspective, it delivers expanded—and even better—results to consumers via more products and services. From a dollar sign perspective, it becomes much more efficient with our customer relationship.

What does it mean for you and the teams you lead to have this new identity?

Vice President and Head of Talent Acquisition Heather Marcom: My team is on the front lines trying to encourage talent to join our organization. I think the rebrand adds another element of being able to talk to talent about the real impact they can make here – being able to help a certain type of consumer that’s extremely underserved in the market – and uncovering the talent that’s really here for this and wants to be a part of this.

Lamia: We remain hungry, motivated and passionate as employees within this brand. There is a lot of room to grow. Ed is at the forefront of figuring out the additional experiences, products and services we need to offer to our consumers so that we can collectively realize this ambition, which is truly great.

VP of Product Management Ed Park: There are many areas and room for growth, and to me that is what makes us really compelling as a company. We’ve been at it for 20 years – optimizing and becoming really efficient at what we do. We have a foundation of profitable businesses with solutions that we know work and that customers really appreciate.

What is the importance of hiring remote workers? How does that fit with the rebrand?

Marcom: It opens the door to talent that we may not have had access to before. What we’ve really focused on in recent years is: how do we maximize that and leverage that as a competitive advantage? We are exploring what it might look like to expand our localization strategy to increase our technology, member service and sales people across the US, while maintaining the hub model we have evolved to at this stage.

Park: This has enabled us to get the best talent regardless of where they are located. I hired a principal who lives in Richmond, Virginia. We recently hired a phenomenal front-end engineer who lives in San Diego. That’s the number one thing: We want phenomenal people who are strong cultural fits and who are passionate about what we do.

Lamia: If you are a learner and you are a curious person, Achieve is the place for you, because we are constantly learning new things. We are constantly evaluating how we can make the best use of what we know. We want really smart and really curious people who can help us make more of what we have and learn the next best thing so we can make the next best decision.

What will define a successful rebrand?

Marcom: On the talent side, our hope is that people become more aware of who we are, who we help, how we do it, what the future looks like – and that we will continue to see an increase in talent interested in joining us.

Park: We will look for lifelong relationships with consumers so that we become their day-to-day trusted advisors and advocates. The proof will be in the pudding if we are the first brand that people think of when they need financial help or guidance.