Building a brand at global scale
At a glance
- Theme
- Brand strategy and governance
- Scope
- 80,000 employees, 32 countries
- Role
- Led brand from launch through 10+ rebrands, 2007 to 2025
The challenge
Two weeks after I joined TELUS, I was on a plane to the Philippines. TELUS had recently acquired a business process outsourcing (BPO) company called Ambergris Solutions. The master brand was TELUS, the Canadian parent company, so the job was to adopt the TELUS brand while keeping the new operation distinct as its own business unit. A 3,000-person, single-country BPO needed a name, an identity and a way of presenting itself to global customers. That was the start of TELUS International.
It was a long way from the typical first few weeks, and I loved it.
What I did
I built the visual identity, the brand governance, the first website and the marketing collateral. Then I did it again. Over the next two decades, as the company grew through acquisitions and new markets, I led more than 10 global rebrands, most recently to TELUS Digital.
The discipline that made it work was governance. Consistency creates brand champions, so I focused on making the brand easy to use correctly: clear standards, real guidance for teams in every country, and a strong reason behind every rule. In more recent years, I helped create Humanity-in-the-Loop (opens in a new tab), a platform that gave the whole company a shared, ownable way to talk about AI and technology.
Humanity-in-the-Loop (opens in a new tab) replaced an earlier platform I'm just as proud of: the Culture Value Chain, which I created and named. Developed in partnership with Frost & Sullivan and launched in 2014, it linked a caring corporate culture to higher team member engagement, superior customer service and stronger business outcomes. It stayed a key pillar of TELUS International's story through the 2021 IPO, and it was eventually replaced as the company's guiding principle by a more AI- and technology-forward idea.
The hardest part was never the logo. It's not easy for any company, especially its founders, to give up a brand they built, and many people were very proud of theirs before being acquired. So I made sure each acquired brand's values were reflected in the TELUS International brand, and that every rebrand happened collectively, as a shared process with the people it affected. People adopt a brand they can see themselves in.
The results
global rebrands through M&A and geographic expansion
employees in 32 countries, represented by one consistent brand
from a 3,000-person, single-country operation to a global company
company awards won over the years for technology, people and corporate culture, with my team responsible for most of the applications (see the awards (opens in a new tab))
What I'd tell you
Build the brand like you'll acquire three companies next year, because eventually you will. Make the system flexible enough to absorb new teams, and clear enough that nobody needs to ask permission to use it well. Above all, make sure each acquired brand feels connected to its new one. The point is to create brand value from an acquisition, not destroy it.