BC Business
The social media management platform is ushering in a new era.
In 2008, Hootsuite created the social media management space. Some 14 years later, things have changed. A lot. And the company that started it all (and gave cred to Vancouver’s status as a tech hub) is changing with them.
The company’s new logo and brand identity can be found plastered on the wall outside its head offices on Quebec Street and 5th Avenue, and it comes with a new way of looking at a social media landscape that has come a long way since the days of 2008.
“Our new voice represents the best moments we have in our content and doing it all the time…it gives people permission to go further and be more conversational, more personal,” says Hootsuite chief marketing officer Maggie Lower, who was hired by the company a year ago and has been working on the rebrand for most of that time.
Lower, who is based in Chicago, maintains that a big part of that strategy is going to be centred around how the company uses its voice. “One of our tenets in that is ‘level them up with love’…I think you’re going to see us emerging back into the conversation and being at the centre of how people think about social. As the people that created the category, we’re always the first mover—we have to have an idea of where the puck is going, to use a Canadian metaphor. I think you’re going to see us really leaning into that.”
A large amount of thought has also gone into the logo choice itself, with Lower asserting that “we didn’t pick electric blue or electric yellow, we picked colours you can actually find in nature. The green is for the mountains around Vancouver, and the saffron is for the warmth we have in our internal culture that we want to take to the outside world. It was thoughtfully puled together to drive more joy.”
For Hootsuite CEO Tom Keiser, more joy can also be applied to the internal culture. “We’ve invested significant dollars and effort in focusing on our Owls, our employees,” says Keiser, who is based in San Francisco but visits the Vancouver HQ every two weeks or so. “We’ve been in startup mode for a decade, now we’re looking to grow up into a teenager. So we’re looking at compensation, benefits, looking at the things that are important to our employees and measuring them. We’ve seen a continual improvement in overall engagement from our employees and a belief in what we’re doing.”
On the external side, if you’ve been following the platform that Hootsuite originally started scheduling for, then you know joy has been at a premium lately.
“To be determined,” says Keiser with a chuckle when asked what adulthood might look like for the company that has around 1,500 employees currently.
“You think about what’s happening in social right now with the implosion of Twitter—what’s going to happen there? And with the rise of TikTok, how big it’s become and how important it is for businesses to reach the younger generations. There’s more coming, it’s going to get more complicated for businesses. There’s not really any organization out there that doesn’t need to be on social, and not just marketing on social, selling on social, recruiting on social, trying to bring it all together on social. And we have to be on the front row helping those businesses navigate it.”