An Inside Look at Building Consistent Brand Experience in the Digital Ecosystem

Adam Weeks:
Hey, this is Adam Weeks. I am here at Open Channels and we are joined by Jessica. Jessica has— you have just done an incredible work at Elementor, a big rebrand. Brand. And before we get into your background, I’m curious to hear more about who you are and your background. I’d love to jump into this question that I’m dying to ask Jessica. Why did Elementor do a rebrand? What, what, what was the need for that?

Jessica Malamud:
So it’s a really interesting time at Elementor. There is a lot going on behind the scenes. For the past number of years, we’ve been focused behind in the kitchen on innovation, working, innovating, developing new products, developing new things for web creators to help them in our mission. And that mission never changed. And we were working really hard at it behind the scenes. But in the meantime, over the last few years, I think we forgot telling that story that really, that told the story about why we’re here and how we show up for the web creator, why we’re here to empower them. So in this moment, in this really pivotal moment where web creation is changing every day, we wanted to make sure that we clearly communicated how we’re showing up during this transformative time, how we’re innovating for it, what is our unique position on how innovation supports the web creator. And it’s about telling them what we want to tell them about being, in a growth mindset to show up and, and how AI shows up for them, how Elementor develops the technology and innovation and the tools that they’ll need to enforce their capabilities in this new time, in this pivotal moment. Um, so it was time and we wanted to make sure that we’re building a brand that matches what we’ve built in that product, in that innovation, so that we’re, we’re all consistent in how we show up in product and marketing. In our story, in our DNA.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. Elementor is such an iconic brand. It’s that bright pink. And when it came to doing a, a rebrand, we’re gonna get into some of the discussions about pink and, and all of that. ‘Cause yeah, this, this brand means a lot to a lot of people and that job was placed on, on your plate. Wow. No pressure. Don’t, but don’t mess it up.

Jessica Malamud:
No pressure.

Adam Weeks:
No pressure. I’d love to hear a little bit more about you and your background and how come they felt that you were the person to lead Elementor through this massive change?

Jessica Malamud:
Well, funny enough, I was kind of a fan from the sidelines for a long time. Elementor was a brand that understood the power of branding, the power of creating emotional connections with their customers and their audiences. They caught my attention with their last big move in 2021. They did a branding awareness effort that they focused on everyone being a web creator, and it caught my attention and I was like, yeah, that is a brand brand that understands the power that they hold in telling and being distinctive and breaking through the clutter and, you know, the parity of any, you know, product comparison. It’s really about how do you make that emotional connection. I was really impressed and I thought, okay, one day, you know, they’re on my radar for somebody that gets it. And then about a little over a year ago, I had that opportunity to join and I saw behind the scenes of what What goes on at a company that is so important to the WordPress audience, I would say even the nation of WordPress, right? Like it’s a unique challenge to go into a company that needs to rebrand and it’s not like any other company. There is this nation called WordPress and they share, you know, they share values, they share habits, they share a language of their own. So it was very impressive, but also a great responsibility to me. Like, how do I make sure that I understand what this means? I’ve worked with teams that work on WordPress in my previous experiences, but I didn’t quite understand that this is, you know, this is a persona unlike another. So we had this highly engaged audience that you can see through the community, through commentary, through social media and other other platforms, people talk about us and they have high opinions and they’re really engaged. They have strong reactions, both positive and maybe not when, you know, when any little thing Elementor is released or changed or introduced. And that is, you know, that makes it feel like higher stakes as a brand person. You know, I’m not the only one who can control the brand sentiment, right? Or try to. Push it because they’re quite aware and they’re nobody’s fool, right? They’re very much a part of the conversation and that has to be taken into an account anytime you’re working on a brand like that.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, absolutely. I vividly remember in 2021 and there around there, I have an image in my mind of when Verdi Hines, he threw me a bright pink Frisbee a disc at one of the WordCamps. Like yesterday I was looking through and it’s, it has had a happy place in the bin for like when we go to the park, like all like the stuff that we take with my kids, the Elementor Frisbee is there because yeah, it’s a great Frisbee, but also yeah, it was that thing that I remember vividly when Elementor was doing that in 2021. So now we’re here in 2026, 5 years, and they’ve asked you.

Jessica Malamud:
To lead.

Adam Weeks:
This Um, I’m curious what types of things were, were on the table when it came to rebranding? How much of a refresh versus an everything is, is on the table and available? What was the kind of the thinking behind how big of a refresh or rebrand this is gonna be?

Jessica Malamud:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are things that we love about ourselves that are true to our DNA. Um, and those don’t change, right? Our mission didn’t change. We’re here to empower web creators. We’re here to make it pink. We, you know, this is kind of like a mindset for us. This is how, it’s our special magic. It’s a tool for us, but it also is, you know, something that you see in every experience, whether you’re at one of the WordCamps or you’re in our offices. You know, it is very much part of our DNA through our swag, through everything that we do. And also, you know, part of the brief is to make sure that we’re building a brand that represents the suit we fit today. 10 years ago when Elementor started, you know, and was known as a page builder, it was innovative and leading the charge and, you know, innovating with drag and drop, which was something that made us a leader. But in all the innovation that we’ve developed since then, now we’ve grown up and we’re wearing a bigger suit. So everything that we build from a brand and visual identity has to match what we deliver. We have to fit in a— we’ve outsized that suit. Suit. We’ve grown up to be, you know, awkward looking in that old suit. So we now have to find a suit that we can fit more comfortably in that represents who we are, what we deliver, and what we promise to our users. And that suit is reflecting, you know, what I think we’ve built here from a new brand perspective is much more in line with who we are today, what we serve, the kind of personas that we serve. We’re building them up. The audiences have matured in their sophistication, in their capabilities. We see that the products and innovation are now reflecting, you know, more maturity, more innovative, that focus on professional standards of website building and website creation. So that experience that we’ve built in the product, you know, needs to be recognized as early, as quickly as possible. So audiences and get us and get what we’re here to serve.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, that speed of which when someone sees a brand, how quickly they need to know, all right, well, how does this apply to me? What do they do? Like there’s a lot that that needs to convey. And Elementor has done that very well. When we look at the stats of WordPress and overall, it often like a big percentage of the growth is due to Elementor. And it is for many people, It is how they got into WordPress is they, and for some people, they got into Elementor, still not really even understanding what WordPress was. Because yeah, this is a tool that I, that I need and then opens the doors to a lot more things. How do you think about people who have come to Elementor, but are unaware of the larger WordPress ecosystem? How do you think about introducing those people into WordPress and using your brand recognition for that?

Jessica Malamud:
I think if, you know, if we can through our go-to-market and through the way that we try to make sure it’s, you know, as clear as possible, as attainable, as accessible as possible, that’s great. And at the same time, you know, professionals want a certain standard and even those who may not consider themselves professional, there is something to be said for the promise of that Creativity and control, the flexibility, all of the things that the tools give to deliver a final product that gives you all of those things that some others don’t. But that is the world of WordPress. So once you understand that flexibility and control and open, whether you enter from Elementor or you enter from another pathway into the WordPress world, the values are the same. Right? We fit so well into WordPress because we enable the creativity and the accessibility in a world that’s open and, and that needs the, that requires having that control.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. Yeah. For, for anybody who hasn’t visited the new, uh, Elementor website, uh, go do that right now because it’s beautiful. It’s an amazing website. And there’s the term of, you know, dogfooding. I don’t even remember where that term came from, where you’re using your product to make your own thing. And that is an interesting thing. How, how was your relationship with the developers, you know, saying, hey, this is what we want our new brand imaging to be and this is how we’re going to show it off. This is the first way we’re going to show it off. I talked to agencies who have a website. It’s like, all right, if your website isn’t good, how are they going to trust you to build someone else’s website?

Sponsor Announcer:
Like, right.

Adam Weeks:
Do that first and make sure that’s amazing. And you have, like, in all authenticity, like, being authentic, like, that was built with Elementor? Wow, that’s amazing. Tell me a little bit about that work.

Jessica Malamud:
It was really interesting because, well, we were rebuilding the whole website. It wasn’t just the homepage. You know, if you think about it, it was the first time that our in-house Elementorists, we have a team of Elementorists, that’s what they do. They help maintain our marketing website. And with our designers, we evolved our website to make it a system and a group of systems, right? We had this, we had over the years amassed a lot of pages that weren’t always in the same theme, weren’t in the same look and feel. And this was a moment to like really hold on, we’ve got to clean things up. We have to rebuild in the identity that we see for ourselves. And we need to make sure that top to bottom, we’ve got a look that represents that strategy that we’ve built. About innovation, about forward thinking, about sophistication, about, you know, being here for those professional standards. And building for professional standards means not doing things without, uh, that just feels good. It means about thinking with systems. It means, um, thinking and designing for scale. We have a lot of products. We have a lot of product marketing managers. We have a lot of people who are building content all the time. And if we don’t build systems that enable them to move fast, and also look consistent, we won’t do any favors for a brand. A brand is all about consistency and building a user experience that is right on the money, but also a user expectation, right? The more you build systems, you build that expectation and it will give your audiences a much faster read on who you are, what you’re offering, what you’re trying to say. So everything will work. You know, better to resonate quickly and, and understood quickly. So the Elementorists were using, if I can step in for a second, I want to— this was the first time we internally used V4. All of the principles that our product was building for systems, for classes, for variables, for the atomic elements that we could design and control, um, you know, that’s exactly how we built it. So version 3 alongside with version 4, we were building in our new in our new language, and we were building not the language on a blank canvas, but building the atoms and the individual components to create this amazing library for us to scale any page. And it continues to serve and helps us to move much faster than we did before. I imagine the relationship that we had in-house between our designer who really thought about how We want to, um, build the system from a design standpoint and then having our Elementorists say, okay, this is how we’re going to do it. This is, um, you know, they worked hand in hand to make sure that everything that she imagined, that our designer imagined was built by the Elementorists team and brought it to life. So it was great.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, no, that’s very cool. Because for a lot of people, like we mentioned, Elementor was their first, like, hey, I want to build a website. And so they started with that. And I imagine it’s difficult to, as a brand grows, persuading people because they already have a, oh, that’s Elementor. I know that Elementor of yesterday and it’s what people get started on, but if they really want to be, you know, make an amazing website, they might look for other tools. And what I see your current website being able to do is saying, no, no, This is, this is enterprise ready. This is ready for the big leagues. And we are here to grow with you. Was that part of the thinking on we’re going to invest some time and energy into this website?

Jessica Malamud:
I think it’s this strategy that helps us decide this is how we want to show up. And when you know what you want to show up like, it’s sophisticated, it’s going to be more innovative than and have higher expectations than what we did in the past. So it is really just following through on what we feel is right for the brand, and then the work speaks for itself. It is enterprise-ready, and we’ve proven it because that’s how we built it. And I’ve seen it also with some feedback in the communities about our homepage. I’m really happy that people saw the homepage that was unique, you know, that was kind of like our pièce de résistance that This was a labor of love that we wanted to show just how innovative and slick and, you know, pull out a lot of tricks that we could to make it happen entirely with Elementor. And also tell a great story. How do we use interactions? You know, static is not the name of the game. We wanted to really show a lot of bells and whistles and really amplify some really good storytelling visually and with the copy that we, we put together to bring that story to life.

Adam Weeks:
I’d love to go in a little bit like into nerd out a little bit on the actual like branding part of this and some of the like physical attributes of even like into the color. Are there any interesting conversations internally that you had about like, all right, is pink still it? Is this the color that’s going to see us into the AI future and all this craziness? Yeah, tell me a little bit more about some of those actual branding decisions that were made in this rebrand. I’d love to hear that.

Jessica Malamud:
Yeah, absolutely. So we knew that in the brief right from the get-go, we’re still a pink brand. We will never not be a pink brand, but, you know, what kind of shade of pink? What pink is really suitable to tell the story about innovation? We want to be bold. We want to, you know, stand out. So, you know, you’d be surprised how many shades of pink you can imagine to evaluate to see how do we tell the new chapter? How do we stand out and show that we are something different? Also in our logo, the E, our builder E is iconic. We would never think to change that. But the wordmark itself was, is that the right reflection of who we are today? And it brought together the story, the shade of the pink. And we were examining, what do we do with our wordmark? The story that came out of it was, how have we evolved the Pixel? The Pixel from 10 years ago, we honor it. But we also want to show this idea of the Pixel moving into the future. So if you take a good look at some locations on our— especially in our wordmark, but other marketing materials, we have a Pixel of the future that is amorphic, that shapes, that evolved with the web creators. And that’s kind of our reflection for innovation. We have this beautiful— swirl gradient that we built out of the pink. Uh, our wordmark has these little glyphs of pixel-sized moments out of the E and, and it all represents the, the pixel of the future that we are there to help build. Um, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like where we reinforce confidence into the web creators and, and the growth mindset that they are now in to, to build with the capabilities for the next chapter of web creation. In addition to that, you know, we have a whole design language. A brand is not built of, okay, here’s a new logo, here’s a couple of colors and go. The identity is really about the artistry that comes together with not just the colors, but also how do we, how do we position our audience in that story? How do we position the product in that story? How do we create an identity and different tools so that when we create We already know a very good baseline, a blueprint for how we show up when we talk about product and when we talk about the real-world outcomes of what the web creators build. So you can see now that we’ve created a world for our product, which is pink, and we’ve created a world for outcomes where we represent the websites that they build in a much more organic color palette. So when together this kind of beautiful connection between how our pink shows up, how does that show up when our products are making those websites more accessible or easier to build or, you know, optimized for, you know, image performance and things like that. Meeting those websites have a very different look, but together it’s this combination that have created the identity that you see in our brand guidelines when we pass it off to designers to work with. Outcome that we’re looking to deliver.

Adam Weeks:
I love that attention to detail. And it’s one of those things that the average person probably won’t get or pay attention to or whatnot. It may be evocative of an emotion that they have that they couldn’t probably put into words, but there’s such a, a like a detail-oriented nature that I imagine it also impacts the people who work at Elementor. How is the brand refresh gone internally? Everybody likes, yep, we love the new pink.

Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.

Jessica Malamud:
Yeah, you know, actually I got a lot of feedback that they were really happy with this new look. It felt like it gave some new life to what we were doing. It’s been a lot of work also with our product design team, right? We’re marketing, but we are very much connected to the product team, to how we show up in our store, how do we show up in the product. So that whole journey from the marketing website to to checkout and to actual the product, you know, going into the product also has to feel like one journey and everything has to look like it’s from one brand. So it was very much a joint effort across the company, across disciplines, and even to, you know, how our HR team works with that brand to create their employer branding. How do we show up from the moment, you know, we reach a potential applicant candidate at the company all the way to how do we show up in our events?, and how does that look like when we’re there to be with the community, whether online or in person. So it’s really important for everyone to understand the brand, understand why we’ve evolved the brand internally and externally. I’d love it for everyone to understand the story behind it.

Adam Weeks:
One of the things that can kind of shape some of the story behind it is sort of like a tagline or some of those different verbiage around the brand. Has any of that changed? Anything new on that front?

Jessica Malamud:
Well, you know, it’s not an official tagline, but we did work to evolve our storytelling a lot. You know, we have fantastic ways in which we talk about our features and products and details, and all of that is delivered with a lot of attention to detail, to specifics, so that people can understand how it works and what what, uh, what it delivers them in really concrete ways. But at the same time, it’s our goal to talk more, uh, about outcomes because it’s not just about, hey, here’s this feature and here’s this feature, but we also want to tell them what is this ultimately going to deliver for you, for your clients, for your business, for your livelihood? How does that all ladder up to a larger mission that is to empower the web creator? Um, so we talk a lot more about, you know, connecting the dots, not just to here, this is how feature X works, but also what does that mean to deliver scale so that your clients can have more flexibility so they can understand how this is going to work or show up or be built in the future. There’s a lot more that goes till the story’s told. And in terms of a tagline, there’s a lot of what we want to convey in the capabilities. That we’re delivering to our audience. You know, we also unified the way our products come together in the WordPress admin. And that in itself, that experience is, you know, what we want to help them to build what’s next. This line started coming up organically across the team to help people build what’s next. And if it started to ring a note in us and I’m like, you know what, this is, there’s something there. We are always thinking about these web creators. We want them, they’re constantly building. They need to know that we’re with them to build the next website that they’re building. So that kind of came up organically and you’ll see that in a lot of our communications that we’re here to help them build what’s next.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, I love that intentionality. There’s so much there to get into and to do to feel like you want to do it right because there’s people that are, that are paying attention. Just how would you compare— how would you describe the different colors of pink? I love that you’ve kept the pink. There was some— there’s thought that went into that. How would you describe the differences from.

Jessica Malamud:
The old brand to the current brand? Yeah. Wow. I think, you know, right now the new, the new pink is— it’s, it’s an interesting color. It’s called Neon Loop. It’s a beautiful shade. I think it’s, you know, just much more striking. We use it with intention. We don’t want everything to be, you know, a large bright pink aura, but it is our power color and it’s a power color that we use to represent the innovation and to grab attention. But again, balanced with a lot of other shades that we have going on in the creator world. Compared to the old pink, the previous pink, it’s just much more striking. It’s forward-facing, it’s future-facing. I think it represents us being really clear in what our intention is and how we show up in this moment of innovation, of AI that will adapt us all, right? We’re here to lead that adaptation. Show what we bring to the table for these purpose-built tools. And, you know, this is where we lead our audiences.

Adam Weeks:
That’s great. I’m sure you have swag decisions still to make. I’m curious if I’ll be getting a new Frisbee disc and I’ll be able to compare the colors. Do you guys, as events are on your radar, what kind of, what ways might people expect to experience Elementor branding in new ways?

Jessica Malamud:
That’s a really exciting time for us because we’re building out our event plan now. We’ve briefed the team. They’re going to be sharing us some ideas. We’re all very excited to dig in and see how we can do this from a fresh start because I think we’ve been to so many WordCamps already. And every time, I’m so impressed with how our design team find ways to think of something new and a different way to tell what we want to say at that particular event or that particular city. You know, there are things that we are committed to doing. We try to make sure that we show up intentionally in each WordCamp wherever it is. So when we’re going to Mumbai this year, we have our intention to do something special and unique for Mumbai. But at the same time, as we go to all the WordCamps, we also want to make sure that we’re doing something that represents us in our focus and delivering our story regardless of which city we go to. So we’ll be there this year at all the flagship events, Mumbai and in Arizona and in Europe. So we’ll be there. I haven’t seen it yet, but we have a great brief and I’ll be seeing what kind of ideas they want to deliver in the next week or two. But we will be, we know we’re always pink, we always show up. We’re really intentional about making sure our brand makes an impact at those events. And we’ve got another couple of events on the docket that will, We’ll be at CloudFest next month and maybe some new ones in the fall.

Adam Weeks:
Very, very cool. Yeah, I’ll be at CloudFest as well.

Jessica Malamud:
So that’ll be a fun one. Fantastic. So you’ll see Miriam and the rest of our team there. So you’ll have to stop by and say hi.

Adam Weeks:
That’s a fun one.

Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.

Adam Weeks:
9,000 nerds all descending onto Europa-Park, Germany’s largest theme park. It’s a good time. Yeah, for sure. Very, very cool. Well, as we’re Starting to wrap up, I want to make sure that our listeners, you know, their brains, I’m sure, are taking all this in like, wow, Elementor has done this big thing. They’re looking at the future. Elementor in some ways is kind of growing up a little bit, if you could describe it that way, and going upmarket with their capabilities beyond what has been in the past. If someone is on a marketing team and they are thinking about rebranding through this experience, this is a huge work that you have, have done, have, have not fully completed. It’s ongoing. It’s, uh, it’s not, uh, it’s not done.

Jessica Malamud:
It’s like a marriage, right? You get married and you think, oh, the day of the wedding, that’s it. No, it’s actually, that’s the first day of the rest of, of that existence. So you need to work at it. There’s continuous work to, to stay, um, to make it work. Yeah.

Adam Weeks:
You gotta, gotta keep it going because, and, and so, so with that, Any advice, anything that you have learned when it comes to doing a rebrand of a beloved brand?

Jessica Malamud:
Yeah. Wow. There’s a couple of things I would say from a, from the standpoint of the brief and the strategy, you know, it’s really important to understand where you sit, where the brand sits within the ecosystem, within the other players in the ecosystem. How do you stand out? What is your unique value? How do you also show up when there are, you know, audiences that are very invested and have an opinion? How do you make sure that you recognize their position in, in playing a role of who you are? Because a brand is not what you make of it. It’s also what people say when you’re not in the room, right? That’s Jeff Bezos’s famous line that the brand is what you are when you’re not in the room and the way they speak about you. So from that insight and thought perspective, have that baked in, have that going into your thinking and your development. But even more so from a practical standpoint, this project, this endeavor really reminded me that the planning is important to develop systems. When you have a strategy and then you have a story, it will unlock the systems you need to build. Having that web team, having that developer or Elementorist in my case in the room helping us identify the design systems was a game changer because your life will be a lot easier if you already know how it will impact your digital ecosystem. All your digital tools can, you can make it easier and you can just kind of throw the rebrand rules at the web developer or the Elementorist, or you can have that person play a role actively upfront and it will make it so much easier. And then all of these things seem to unlock for us when we had, when we had them at the table from the beginning, those design systems almost created themselves. Wow.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, that, I think that those are the things that, yeah, if you’re start with the why, I think, you know, is, you know, is it really be clear on, on your why you’re, why you’re doing this. And I think those, those other things. Kind of will come in, in place. But yeah, what a, what a big job you’ve taken on and it’s turned out beautiful. Like I said, the website is fantastic. If anybody is, as you’re listening to this, go check out the new Elementor website. And if someone wants to share their feedback or get in touch with you or the Elementor team, what are some of the ways that they can interact with, with you or with Elementor?

Jessica Malamud:
Yeah, well, definitely, if you haven’t already joined our community, we’re on Facebook, Discord, and a lot of great discussions happen there. They can follow us on social, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, wherever their preferred social channel is. They can also reach out to me at media@elementor.com. We’re always listening. We are very close to every platform and hearing what people say about us, and we take it we take it to heart.

Adam Weeks:
Jessica, what an absolute pleasure it has been to have you here on the Open Channels podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to reveal this, this big thing that Elementor has done. And I’m sure people will be excited to see more from Elementor in the near future. It’s a big part of our community and our ecosystem. And we are glad that you guys are showing up. As we wrap up, any last things.

Jessica Malamud:
You want to share? Yeah, I think now’s the time to take a look at Elementor again. We’ve been working really hard on innovating, delivering more and more capabilities. We’ve got some wonderful products that would, you know, if you’ve considered Elementor in the past or used it before, I think you’d be really surprised at what you’d see today. So encourage those who haven’t been around us for a while to come back and check it out.

Adam Weeks:
All right. Thank you so much. That sounds great.

Jessica Malamud:
All right. Bye-bye.