Constellations, patent pending

Case study · Enterprise software

The InEight Rebrand

Evidence-backed identity for enterprise software. How is it possible to rebrand a global company, with 22 stakeholders at the table, without a single rework?

Quick answer

InEight, a global capital construction software company, rebranded at its ten-year mark with 22 stakeholders and zero reworks. The sequence: research first, including stakeholder surveys, internal interviews, customer insight and competitive audits. Then, instead of synthesizing that input into one direction and hoping for alignment, four Audience Perception Maps of tonal directions went to the entire organization, more than 500 employees, as a proxy for capital construction executives who are hard to survey at scale. Many expected innovation to win. Confident leadership did, in two forms: Authority & Control and Wisdom & Counsel. Polished concepts shown for approval are not this. The direction was chosen once, with a shared frame of reference, and nobody circled back.

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 grew in scope and scale, its leaders saw a widening gap between the company’s evolving identity and its public presentation. What had been a modular set of tools had become a unified platform. What the market saw no longer matched the company’s ambition or its capabilities.

By its ten-year mark, InEight was serving some of the most complex capital construction projects in the world. Its brand had not kept pace. The visual identity no longer reflected its leadership position or the executive audience 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.”

The challenge was two-fold. Internally, align a large and diverse group of stakeholders, 22 in total, with differing priorities and perspectives. Externally, articulate a clear, coherent value proposition for a complex, technical product.

Research before direction

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

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

The usual next step is to synthesize all of that input into a single direction and hope the room aligns behind it. The team did something different. It used Constellations to test the assumptions directly, building Audience Perception Maps: structured visual tests that reflected internal language, customer sentiment and leadership tone.

Figure 1 · Two ways to use the same research

Comparison of the usual rebrand sequence, which loops through rework, with the InEight sequence, which tested directions and ended in one decision Two rows. The top row runs research, synthesize to one direction, present polished concepts, hope for alignment, with a dashed loop back labelled rework. The bottom row runs research, four Audience Perception Maps of tonal directions, 500+ employees respond, shared visual evidence, one direction, labelled zero reworks. THE USUAL SEQUENCE Research surveys, interviews, audits Synthesize to one direction, internally Present polished concepts Hope for alignment rework, and again INEIGHT Research surveys, interviews, audits 4 Audience Perception Maps of tonal directions 500+ employees respond Shared visual evidence One direction zero reworks Same research on both rows. The bottom row tests the assumptions instead of hoping they hold.
The research is identical on both rows. The difference is what happens to it. On the top row it becomes an argument for one direction, and the argument gets re-litigated every time a stakeholder sees the work. On the bottom row it becomes a set of questions the whole company answers once.

Each map presented a curated range of tonal directions. Not polished concepts, but visual prompts designed to provoke an authentic response. Four maps in all.

Why the whole company took the test

The team made a strategic choice to distribute the maps to the entire InEight organization, more than 500 employees. From executives to frontline staff, everyone had the chance to weigh in. This was not only about inclusion. It was about insight.

Capital construction executives, InEight’s target buyers, are notoriously difficult to survey at scale. InEight’s employees, by contrast, are deeply immersed in the product and the customer experience. Many have been with the company for years and hold a nuanced understanding of its value and its audience. They are thoughtful, invested and passionate, which makes them an ideal proxy for gathering meaningful brand perception data.

Figure 2 · The proxy audience

Capital construction executives are hard to survey at scale, so 500+ InEight employees served as the proxy audience Two panels. The left, outlined with a dashed border, holds a few scattered dots for capital construction executives, labelled hard to survey at scale. The right, a solid cyan panel, holds a dense grid of sixty dots for 500+ InEight employees. An arrow from right to left is labelled proxy. TARGET BUYERS Capital construction executives notoriously hard to survey at scale proxy immersed in the product and the customer, for years THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION 500+ InEight employees executives to frontline staff, every one asked
A proxy only works if the stand-in audience knows the real one. Tenured employees who talk to construction executives every day were not a convenient sample. They were the nearest thing to the buyer that could be reached at scale, and they came with a second benefit the executives never could: they would have to live with the brand.

The results came back with clarity. Heat maps, rankings and response rates were overlaid directly on the visuals, offering immediate evidence of what resonated and what did not. For people outside 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.”

It also solved another common problem in rebrands: disengagement. Employees often feel blindsided by branding decisions, especially when the final product does not reflect their reality. Bringing them in early, and making their input visible in the outcome, made the rebrand feel shared rather than imposed. “The whole organization got a lift,” Esbenshade said. “Everyone felt a little more proud, stood up a little taller.”

Two directions, zero reworks

The results did more than surface a creative direction. They recalibrated internal expectations. Many anticipated that InEight would lean into themes of innovation. The visual testing showed something else: what resonated most strongly was a position of confident leadership.

Two dominant ideas emerged: “Authority & Control” and “Wisdom & Counsel.” Both conveyed strength, 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.

Figure 3 · Expected versus found

Innovation was the expected direction; testing found confident leadership, in two tones, and one decision followed On the left, a dashed box labelled Innovation, what many expected, with a short faint bar beneath it. On the right, a cyan box labelled confident leadership, the position that resonated most strongly, with a long cyan bar, branching into Authority and Control and Wisdom and Counsel, which converge on a single box: one direction, chosen together. WHAT MANY EXPECTED Innovation did not resonate WHAT THE TESTING FOUND Confident leadership the position that resonated most strongly Authority & Control strength, one tone Wisdom & Counsel strength, another tone One direction, chosen together Both directions conveyed strength. The choice between them was made with a shared frame of reference, once.
This is the finding that would have been argued about for months in a conventional process. Innovation is the safe assumption for a software company, and it was wrong for this one. The test did not just pick a direction; it removed the one most people were about to defend.

What followed was an unusually smooth creative process. Once the direction was chosen there was no circling back, only forward momentum. Everyone involved had a clear, shared frame of reference to move from, and there were zero reworks. Compare that with what a rebrand revision cycle usually costs.

A rebrand grounded in evidence and trust

InEight’s rebrand is not a case study in updated aesthetics. It is an example of strategic alignment achieved across a large organization without sacrificing clarity, pace or conviction. Using Constellations as a visual research method, the team avoided the usual pitfalls of subjective decision-making and delivered a brand that reads as confident, cohesive and credible across every touchpoint.

More importantly, the process created buy-in. Structuring the rebrand around individual input, comparative testing and clear visual feedback turned what is often a contentious process into a shared one. Stakeholders did not just approve the outcome. They believed in it. “The trust that we were going in the right direction was built in through that process,” Esbenshade said.

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

Constellations did not replace creative instinct. It clarified it. Showing how different directions performed across a diverse set of internal perspectives surfaced the right ideas sooner, and built a foundation of trust that held through the entire brand development process.

Both sides of the engagement told the story on camera. The creative lead first, then the client.

Video 1 · Part 1, the creative lead

Joseph Fioramonti on why the research went to the whole company instead of a conference room, and what changed in the client meetings once it did.

Video 2 · Part 2, the client CMO

Melissa Esbenshade on taking two tested directions to a 22-person stakeholder group and walking out with one, in a single meeting.

Frequently asked questions

How did InEight rebrand with 22 stakeholders and no reworks?

By testing before designing. Research fed four Audience Perception Maps of tonal directions, which went to the whole organization. The results gave every stakeholder the same visual evidence, so the direction was chosen once with a shared frame of reference. There was nothing left to re-argue when the polished work arrived.

Why survey employees instead of the executives InEight sells to?

Capital construction executives are notoriously difficult to survey at scale. InEight’s 500+ employees are immersed in the product and the customer, many for years, and understand both in detail. That made them an ideal proxy, with the added benefit that involving them early turned the rebrand into something shared rather than imposed.

What did the testing find?

Not what most people expected. Many assumed innovation would carry the brand. The maps showed that a position of confident leadership resonated most strongly, in two tones: Authority & Control and Wisdom & Counsel. Both conveyed strength. The creative team translated each visually, tested again, and decided together.

What went on the Audience Perception Maps?

Curated ranges of tonal directions, not polished concepts. The maps were built to reflect internal language, customer sentiment and leadership tone drawn from the research phase, so that responses tested the strategy’s assumptions rather than a designer’s execution of them. Four maps in total went to the organization.

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