InEight Rebrand: Evidence-Backed Identity for Enterprise Software

Setting the Stage

The rebrand of InEight—a global capital-construction software company—illustrates a fundamental truth: rebranding is rarely just cosmetic. As the company expanded in scope and scale, internal leaders recognized a growing disconnect between the company’s evolving identity and its public presentation. What was once a modular set of tools had grown into a unified platform. What stakeholders saw in the marketplace no longer matched the company’s ambition and capabilities.

The challenge was two-fold: internally aligning a large and diverse group of stakeholders (22 in total) with differing priorities and perspectives, and externally articulating a clear, coherent value proposition for a complex, technical product.

Interview with CMO of InEight, Melissa Esbenshade

Inside the Rebrand 

By the time InEight reached its ten-year mark, the organization had evolved into a unified platform serving some of the most complex capital construction projects in the world. But its brand hadn’t kept pace. The visual identity no longer reflected its leadership position or the executive audiences it served. “It didn’t represent the leadership position that we hold,” said CMO Melissa Esbenshade. “We needed to look much more professional, executive—as we approached that audience.”

To navigate the rebrand, Esbenshade brought in Dark Square, the creative firm led by Joseph Fioramonti.

Before any creative direction was explored, the team conducted comprehensive research: stakeholder surveys, internal interviews, customer insight gathering, and competitive audits. That feedback directly informed the next step.

Instead of synthesizing all that input into a single direction and hoping for alignment, the team used Constellations to test assumptions directly. They created Audience Perception Maps (APMs): structured visual tests that reflected internal language, customer sentiment, and leadership tone.

Each APM presented a curated range of tonal directions—not polished concepts, but visual prompts designed to provoke authentic response.

The 4 Audience Perception Maps Created for InEight (with feedback)

The team made a strategic choice to distribute the APMs to the entire InEight organization (500+ employees). From executives to frontline staff, everyone was given the opportunity to weigh in. This wasn’t only about inclusion—it was about insight. Capital construction executives, InEight’s target buyers, are notoriously difficult to survey at scale. In contrast, InEight’s employees are deeply immersed in the product and customer experience. Many have been with the company for years, developing a nuanced understanding of its value and its audience. They’re thoughtful, invested, and passionate, making them an ideal proxy for gathering meaningful brand perception data.

The results came back with clarity. Heat maps, rankings, and response rates were overlaid directly on the visuals, offering immediate, visual evidence of what resonated and what didn’t. For those outside of marketing, it made strategy tangible. “People saw the time they took in the intake reflected in what the visual outcome was,” Esbenshade explained. “The process brought the brand to life in a way that worked for non-marketing professionals. It helped connect what we were articulating in words to what people could actually see.”

This approach also solved another common problem in rebrands: disengagement. Employees often feel blindsided by branding decisions, especially when the final product doesn’t reflect their reality. By bringing them into the process early—and making their input visible in the final outcome—the rebrand felt shared, not imposed. “The whole organization got a lift,” Esbenshade said. “Everyone felt a little more proud, stood up a little taller.”

The Positive Results From the APMs: Two Directions Emerged

The results did more than surface creative direction—they recalibrated internal expectations. While many anticipated that InEight would lean into themes of innovation, the visual testing revealed a different truth: what resonated most strongly was a position of confident leadership.

Two dominant ideas emerged from the testing—”Authority & Control” and “Wisdom & Counsel.” Both directions conveyed strength, but through distinct tones. From there, the creative team explored how each could be translated visually, tested their resonance, and made a final decision with shared clarity.

What followed was an unusually smooth creative process. Once the direction was chosen, there was no circling back—just forward momentum. Everyone involved had a clear, shared frame of reference to move from and there were zero reworks.

Insight Summary: A Rebrand Grounded in Evidence and Trust

InEight’s rebrand is not just a case study in updated aesthetics—it’s an example of how strategic alignment can be achieved across a large organization without sacrificing clarity, pace, or conviction. By using Constellations as a visual research method, the team avoided the common pitfalls of subjective decision-making and delivered a brand that feels confident, cohesive, and credible across every touchpoint.

More importantly, the process itself created buy-in. By structuring the rebrand around individual input, comparative testing, and clear visual feedback, InEight turned what is often a contentious process into a shared experience. Stakeholders didn’t just approve the outcome—they believed in it. As Melissa Esbenshade put it, “The trust that we were going in the right direction was built in through that process.”

That trust carried into the brand launch. Giving everyone in the company a sense of pride and new found confidence. “And that confidence was the thing I’m most proud of across the whole organization,” Esbenshade said.

Constellations didn’t replace creative instinct—it clarified it. By showing how different directions performed across a diverse set of internal perspectives, the methodology helped surface the right ideas sooner and establish a foundation of trust that carried through the entire brand development process.