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The idiom “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is applicable in many different instances throughout our personal and professional lives — but in the world of B2B SaaS, it’s a very dangerous proposition.
The industry is all about innovation. Products, marketing strategies, and even brands that seem to have staying power are, actually, constantly iterating and changing behind the scenes. Even a multi-billion-dollar corporate travel company, with thousands of high-profile enterprise clients like Zoom, Canva, and Patreon, might need to ditch its valuable brand name to unlock the next level of growth.
This is what we see with TripActions’s rebrand to Navan.
The company has dominated the corporate travel industry for years, even surviving the dark days of the pandemic that wreaked havoc on the key pillars of travel: airlines, hotels, and car rentals. But despite its perseverance and success, the company decided to ditch the billion-dollar brand name TripActions for the sleek alternative “Navan.”
In this article, we’ll dive into why a flourishing SaaS brand like TripActions decided to scrap its branding to unlock the next level of growth.
But before we dive into the specifics of the TripActions-Navan transition, let’s take a quick look at why a simple name change can make such a big impact.
The Importance of the Brand in Brand Equity
For all the attention we as marketers pay to metrics, processes, and analytics in the SaaS industry, it’s easy to forget about the importance of the creative element. Decisions about the company name, color scheme, brand story, and values — the foundation upon which you build the rest of your marketing strategy — are driven by highly creative exercises.
The right mix of brand elements, when channeled through your marketing efforts, is what separates a good brand from the truly great ones. Ross recently touched on this very topic in his recent interview with Chase Dimond:
This is the accrual of brand equity.
Brand equity is also a precursor to increased CLV and company profitability. Studies of the impact that marketing efforts have on brand equity have been around for decades. So too, has research on the impact that brand equity can have on customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. But it wasn’t until the last decade that marketing researchers started to differentiate between specific marketing efforts and improved customer lifetime value.
Essentially, “the soft marketing” approach of building a brand that customers relate to on a human level is invaluable for companies that want to increase customer lifetime value.
The real financial impact of brand marketing is something we’ve observed firsthand at Foundation during our research and analysis for our 2023 BRICK Report on SaaS branding excellence. Companies that come in near the top of their industry in terms of market cap, like Slack, Atlassian, and DocuSign, consistently outperform on the branding side as well.
Now, let’s take a look at the reason behind TripActions’s brand equity gamble.
Already a $2-Billion Company, Why Did TripActions Rebrand?
Since being founded in 2015, TripActions has raised $2.2 billion in capital over 15 funding rounds, culminating in a $9.2 billion valuation as of 2022. Over this period of time, the company has expanded its core offering beyond business travel to provide expense and corporate card management as well. This helped the company capture and retain a laundry list of high-profile enterprise clients, including Lyft, Okta, Snowflake, Axios, Yelp, and more.
This strategic product development and network of high-profile clients had given TripActions a massive edge over its competitors in the travel management niche, including products from major brands like SAP and Zoho.
So, this begs the question: Why would TripActions mess with its brand equity and risk letting the rest of the pack catch up?
Let’s take a look at three reasons why.
1) Freeing Itself From a Constraining Brand Name
For a company that wants to dominate a niche like business travel management, TripActions is an amazing name. It gives potential customers the gist of the product category in a straightforward way.
But this style of name is a double-edged sword. By including the industry niche in its brand name, TripActions was tying itself directly to the travel management industry — limiting its ability to effectively market new products and expand into other vertical markets.
While the travel management software market size does have a sizable TAM, with 2023 projections coming in at over $9 billion, the association between the TripActions name and the travel industry was limiting its ability to compete in other industries like expense management.
One of its main competitors in this new niche, Expensify, has a brand name that connects directly to the industry. Even though TripActions had its own popular expense product, TripActions Liquid, the core brand name made it an uphill climb.
Taking a look at the tight 325-brand race for the best expense management product, it’s clear that the switch to Navan was the right decision. The newly named Navan has a slim lead over Expensify and other established names in the niche, like SAP and Airbase.
Changing to Navan means potential customers are less likely to think of the company as “a business travel company that also offers expense management” and more likely to view it as a comprehensive platform that can address all travel and expense needs.
So, not only is Navan winning at corporate travel, but it’s also captured an adjacent industry to further extend its TAM by billions of dollars. This is particularly important considering the big plans it has on the horizon.
2) Using “Navan” as a Go-to-Market Launchpad
According to CEO Ariel Cohen, Navan is a portmanteau of “navigate” and “avant,” signifying the company’s dedication to addressing corporate travel and expense management in an innovative way. He also points out that it’s a palindrome — a word spelled the same whether read left to right or right to left — which signifies that the platform is accessible to its customers from every angle.
Is the explanation a bit cheesy? Yes. But research shows that this type of strategic introduction has an impact on how customers perceive the brand name.
The Journal of Marketing recently published a study on unconventionally SaaS-y brand names like Lyft or Kustomer, finding that customers have a negative reaction unless there’s a compelling story behind it or the customers want a memorable experience. Essentially, the rebrand needs to have meaning behind it, and that meaning needs to be tied to engaging experiences.
In the case of TripActions, it’s not just a move for the sake of a move. The Navan name is part of a strategic play to advance the company’s position as the top travel and expense option for enterprises and SMBs. Here’s what Cohen had to say about the reason behind the change in a rebrand announcement post:
“We are rebranding as part of our expanded go-to-market strategy — we are also introducing a loyalty club for our users, where they can earn points for personal trips on our platform. This is just one of the many ways we are taking the company to the next level and gaining more reach.
We are confident that our new branding, design, messaging, and loyalty club will help us lead this new category of software that is focused on not just the business side, but also the people side. We believe that by balancing these two aspects, we are creating a unique and magical experience for all of our users.”
So, Navan is the vessel for delivering a better experience to the two sides of the company’s product offering: the business side and the employee side.
3) Providing the Brand Boost for Its Suspected IPO
The buzz around a potential TripActions/Navan IPO is almost a year old at this point, in part due to the fact that IPOs have been few and far between since the heyday of 2021. That hype ramped up after the Navan rebrand earlier this year, when the company’s designs on going public were all but confirmed by Cohen.
But does a sleek new name, updated color scheme, and new brand ethos really provide the added boost a solid SaaS brand needs to reach the escape velocity for a successful IPO?
In the right setting, the answer, apparently, is yes.
In Ernst & Young’s Guide to going public, the consulting experts state that the “intangibles” of brand strength and company story actually play a large role in the decision-making process for institutional investors. In fact, according to EY, the equity story pitched by the founder is the second most important IPO success factor to investors, coming in just behind the strength of the management team themselves. The guide also states that approximately 40% of IPO investment decisions are based on non-financial factors, including brand strength.
Considering the general hesitancy from VCs and founders to take SaaS companies public amid market uncertainties, the decision to rebrand to Navan in the lead-up to the IPO seems to be a smart play by the travel and expense company.
How Navan Compares to Other Tech Rebrand Gambles
Some SaaS rebrands, like Airbnb or Instagram, are as simple as revamping a logo to keep the brand fresh and generate some hype. But for others, this process is extensive, involving an entirely new name, brand ethos, and market orientation. Both can be beneficial, but the latter carries a lot more risk.
There are countless examples of software brands undergoing a rebrand to prepare for IPOs, expand market share, or take over adjacent verticals. Let’s take a look at a few prominent examples:
eShares → Carta
Carta’s decision in 2017 to ditch its original name, eShares, in many ways mirrors the switch from TripActions to Navan.
For one thing, the initial name had the company pigeonholed to a niche segment within an expanding market. In eShares’s case, it was helping founders issue stock within the private equity space, while for TripActions, it was assisting with corporate travel within the expense management space. By switching to Carta and Navan, both companies opened themselves up to an increase in market share by transitioning away from restrictive feature-specific names.
Since the rebrand, Carta has also built up its presence with a substantial SEO moat. It will be interesting to see what opportunities Navan can capitalize on with its new name.
ChubbyBrain → CB Insights
Say you’re a founder, investor, or market analyst interested in gathering data about private companies and VCs from a reputable source. Which analytics platform are you going to invest in: ChubbyBrain or CB Insights?
Yeah…not a difficult decision.
Well, it just so happens that this is exactly what happened to the growing ChubbyBrain brand. In an old blog post, the team explains how they lost out on a potential client who “[loved] the product and the data” but simply couldn’t buy the product because of the name.
But that’s what rebrands are for — smoothing over any cracks (or chasms) that emerge between a company’s product or service offering and its appearance in the market. The simple name change is a big reason why CB Insights is able to rake in an estimated $100 million in annual revenue.
Realtime Board → Miro
Miro’s masterclass in product-led growth is something I’ve touched on before, but it’s important to note that its explosion in popularity was precipitated by a brand overhaul as well. Like Carta and Navan, Miro first launched with a straightforward brand name that served primarily to define a new category for visual collaboration tools: Realtime Board.
In the first quarter of 2019, Realtime Board became Miro — a brand name that CEO Andrey Khusid says “symbolizes visual expression, experimentation, and work that transcended borders and impacts many.” Khusid says the objective for the rebrand was finding a name that was:
- Memorable
- Easy to pronounce and spell
- Reflective of the brand story and values
The Navan team can be optimistic about the success of its rebrand, given that the name meets these three key objectives. And considering Miro is now number 4 on the Forbes Cloud 100, I’m willing to take this as a recipe for brand-name success.
Brand Names are Delicate But Powerful: Use Them Wisely
It’s still too early to tell whether TripActions’s rebrand to Navan will be a success, especially given the uncertainty around IPOs. Still, all signs seem to point in a positive direction. The company has followed in the footsteps of prominent brands like Carta and Miro, ensuring that the new brand name is memorable and easy to pronounce and spell.
The Navan rebrand also checks all the important strategic boxes for a successful transformation:
- It opens the company up to new verticals and customer segments
- There is a compelling reason behind the decision for the new name
- It doesn’t rely on SaaS-y gimmicks like incorrect spelling or the “ify” suffix
- The rebrand is timed with a new product rollout and upcoming IPO
Successfully navigating a rebrand isn’t easy, and the process requires lots of creative and strategic thinking. But if you follow in the footsteps of Navan, you may be able to 10x that brand equity.
