The anatomy of a Cornerstone rebrand: What’s in a name?

You might have noticed something different about Cornerstone in late 2021. Yep, we rolled out a new company logo and a bold new look and feel to the brand.

While makeovers are nice, the Cornerstone rebrand was about much more than that.

Great brands align to the purpose, strategy and culture of the organization they represent. And our Cornerstone brand is, and always has been, centered on the growth and potential of people.

We're here to help talent leaders create the workplace of the future — an environment that inspires growth, agility and success for all:

During times of rapid organizational growth and change — like new product offerings and exciting acquisitions — across geographies and segments, organizations have to decide how their brand identity will evolve and how their product names will match their transformation.

From a marketing perspective, the new Cornerstone brand strategy aligns under what's often called a "branded house" philosophy.

A "branded house" essentially means "Cornerstone" will become the brand umbrella under which all our products and solutions live, regardless of their origin or history. This is a fairly common practice when there's shared purpose and value across a brand's portfolio.

So that means we'll be making some changes to our product naming strategy as "phase 2" of our new brand rollout. We'll be using a pretty simple, flexible brand taxonomy to improve clarity and make it easy to understand.

In this new taxonomy, we will have three categories of names:

1) Differentiators — Evocative names for our most differentiating products. — Example: Cornerstone Xplor

2) Modules — Straightforward, intuitive names for core products. — Example: Cornerstone Learning

3) Platforms — Alphanumeric indicators for our underlying platforms. — Example: Cornerstone CSX

With the Cornerstone acquisition of Saba, our product library had gotten a little unwieldy. So now, our products fall into one of two platforms: Cornerstone CSX or Cornerstone SBX.

Cornerstone CSX contains all Cornerstone products, while Cornerstone SBX will be replacing Saba Cloud as the new name for the home of all Saba products.

Each Saba product is also getting a Cornerstone branded name change. Like if you have the product Saba Cloud Learning, this will become Cornerstone Learning SBX.

Make sense? It's a little different from car makes and models, but the concept is similar and easy to digest. Simplicity is key to our product branding strategy!

You won't see a big change to product names on our website. We build, market and sell solutions under one Cornerstone company brand and our website is the face of that brand.

We do it that way because when you're checking out solution info up there in our web navigation, you want it to be simple.

But the most important thing for you to understand is that these product name changes are simply that — name changes. A new product naming taxonomy in no way impacts how we develop and support the products in our portfolio. So no change to the products themselves or the roadmaps and innovations our customers rely on.

Every team at Cornerstone is committed to supporting, enhancing and innovating our product portfolio and delivering an experience that makes it easy to succeed — not just with our products but with our partnerships.

After all, we've got 20+ years of history and innovation behind these product brands and an incredible ecosystem that supports them surrounding our customers.

While these branding changes won't be applied overnight, and sometimes getting to simplicity isn't as easy as you'd think, we're excited about how changes like this will continue to fuel our brand vision and purpose. We hope you are too!