Strategy global rebrand

Renaming a 35-year-old enterprise software company isn’t a project most teams approach with a single in-house designer. The twelve-month programme that took MicroStrategy to Strategy ran with a small consultancy on the strategic frame and one in-house designer carrying most of the implementation.

How the work moved

The early phase ran with Siegel+Gale in New York, who handled positioning, audience, and the verbal architecture. The final direction came from Michael Saylor. Michael decided on the name itself, shortening MicroStrategy to Strategy, and on the structure of the brandmark.

I worked directly with Michael in Figma to finalise the mark, iterating in real time on letterforms, proportions, and the relationship between the wordmark and the Bitcoin symbol that anchors it. From there a broader internal team and I iterated on the wider system: type, colour discipline, photography direction, motion language.

Confidentiality

The whole programme ran under strict confidentiality requirements set by Michael directly. My McKinsey training was useful here. Years of client work on sensitive engagements taught me how to protect company interests, control distribution, and maintain confidentiality without slowing the work down. For Strategy this was non-negotiable from leadership, and the launch held its surprise because the discipline held.

What I built

Once the system was set, I built the documentation that would let it scale. The full brand guidelines covering logotype, type, colour, photography, motion, voice, and application. The internal brand site, alongside a small in-house team, where employees, partners, and contractors pull assets and reference the system directly. The application of the system across product UI, web, campaign, conference, social, and paid media.

The discipline everywhere was contrast over decoration. Confident sans-serif logotype. Orange (#FA660F) as a single, structural accent, never decorative. Cinematic, high-realism imagery rather than abstract gradients. Type-led layouts that read more like a financial publication than a software brochure.

Where it landed

Brand launch day was 5 February 2025. The rebrand reached audiences through the Wall Street Journal, the Nasdaq Times Square tower, and Google’s homepage. It also picked up significant attention on social media, with the new identity and Bitcoin-anchored mark generating broad commentary across X and LinkedIn in the days that followed.

Internally, it became the foundation for the campaigns that followed: STRC, Strategy World 2026, the AI platform launch, each one inheriting the discipline of the system rather than reinventing it.

Ongoing ownership

I’m still responsible for the Strategy brand. The system isn’t a deliverable that shipped and ended, it’s a living thing that gets extended and refined as the company moves. New campaigns, new product surfaces, new geographies all run through the same custodianship.

The thing I’m proudest of isn’t any one execution. It’s that work made by people who weren’t in the original room still looks like Strategy.