Jennifer Lemcke, CEO of Weed Man
When a brand undergoes a major creative refresh, the public sees the flashy campaigns, revamped messaging, and updated customer experiences. But what the public doesn’t see is all the groundwork behind the brand refresh. The teams that power a brand like Weed Man—our corporate team, our franchisees, and our frontline employees—are the heartbeat of our success, so before a new external campaign can enter the public view, it must be embraced enthusiastically at every level of the business internally.
The External Campaign
This year, as we’re entering our 55th lawn care season, Weed Man launched an exciting new external campaign: It’s Weed Man for the Win. The campaign includes a series of creative digital and print advertisements, as well as a cohesive content strategy for social media, customer resources, and more, highlighting the high stakes, steep competition, and storybook action of the lawn care game and emphasizing the confidence and success customers can expect from Weed Man as a coach and teammate.
We’re extremely proud of the work completed by our team and by our creative partners at Planet Propaganda to bring this new campaign to life. And it’s work that actually started a couple years ago, and it started inside the brand. Before we made any moves to revamp our public messaging, we had to make strategic changes to our internal messaging. This process, guided by our friends at Planet Propaganda, had a massive ripple effect on our internal culture and ultimately influenced the direction of our new brand refresh for the public.
The Internal Campaign
Long before the “It’s Weed Man for the Win” campaign landed in social media feeds and mailboxes across North America, we embarked on a journey with our creative agency Planet Propaganda to identify our “inherent truth.” Through a months-long process of comparative research, stakeholder interviews, and diving into the data, the team at Planet Propaganda aptly identified Weed Man’s culture of rigorous exceptionalism and brought us invaluable insights into our brand personality. In short, they told us what we already knew, but didn’t have the means to express: at Weed Man, we “Yard Harder.”
Yard Harder. That’s it. That’s our inherent truth. It’s our mission statement, our rallying cry, and our reason for franchisees, employees, and customers to believe in us. With Yard Harder in our arsenal, we had the key to unlock our company culture, our internal communications, and our external brand messaging. And that was just the beginning on our road to refreshing the brand.
Aligning Internally with Our New Inherent Truth
Once we identified Yard Harder as our inherent truth, our challenge was to make sure it permeated every level of our internal culture. I’m not someone who gets nervous easily, but as we prepared to unveil Yard Harder to the network at the closing session of the 2023 Weed Man Conference, I have to admit I was sweating a little. But all my anxiety melted away when the presentation was done and I saw the crowd of franchisees and employees—my Weed Man family—giving a standing ovation. The rallying cry had officially rallied the team for the first (but not the last) time.
From there, we were very intentional about how we brought Yard Harder to life. Enthusiasm works from the top down, so with franchisees Yarding Harder, our frontline employees are Yarding Harder too. We communicated the new truth relentlessly, at network-wide and regional meetings, and it’s a powerful thing to see a Zoom Room full of Yard Harder backgrounds. We launched a line of fun Yard Harder swag, like pennants, hats, and welcome kits, which franchisees can purchase for their teams. We’ve incorporated it into our employee training and welcome videos. At the 2024 Weed Man Conference, we gave everyone a Yard Harder jersey, and it was amazing to see a sea of Weed Man people all united in this shared identity. Now, so many of our franchisees’ and employees’ LinkedIn posts are enthusiastically tagged #YardHarder. I’ve even seen an employee with a “Yard Hard” manicure!
Why It Works
First came Yard Harder, then came “It’s Weed Man for the Win,” a natural extension of the Yard Harder spirit, this time aimed at our amazing customers. (Again, I must give props to the team at Planet Propaganda for getting to the heart of Weed Man and helping us shine.) When your external creative campaigns are rooted in strong alignment with your internal culture, some incredible things happen:
- Brand Cohesion: With strong cohesion between the brand internally and externally, it becomes easier to create creative, effective external campaigns that represent the brand and get results. It gives customers a reason to believe in us, because what we’re advertising is true, through-and-through.
- Mission Alignment: Our people are the bridge between the brand and our customers. With our inherent truth guiding the way, and with employees who are aligned with the refreshed vision, they become our most effective ambassadors. They deliver the brand experience through their interactions with customers, their adherence to company values, and their daily commitment to excellence. A cohesive internal campaign ensures everyone understands the “why” behind the rebrand and how they contribute to its success.
- Growth: Internal alignment is not just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for growth. Employees who feel connected to a company’s mission are more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay long-term. This alignment not only enhances day-to-day operations but also supports strategic growth by creating a scalable culture that can withstand expansion into new markets. And it positions us with a workforce that is ready to tackle new challenges in our ever-changing landscapes of marketing and technology.
I can attest that a rebrand or a brand refresh is about much more than changing how the world sees your company; it’s about redefining how your people see themselves within it. At Weed Man, our people know we Yard Harder, so our customers know It’s Weed Man for the Win.