Concord Rebrand: Earned Media Success in 2026

The Concord Rebrand is a great example of how getting your brand identity straight can get you a ton more (and better) earned media. When you stop sending mixed signals, you get a clear story that people actually listen to. A recent eMarketer report even put a number on this, predicting the global value of earned media will hit $1.2 trillion by 2026, which shows just how much money is on the line with a good strategy. So how do you actually pull off what Concord did and unify your own brand?

Step 1: Conduct a Complete Brand and Messaging Audit

Before you even think about a PR push for a rebrand, you have to do a full audit of your current brand footprint. This means digging into every piece of content, every social post, and even scripts from customer service calls. I find most companies have no idea how many conflicting messages they’ve put out over the years. This first phase is all about finding the mess that your brand unification is supposed to clean up.

1.1 Accessing the “Brand Asset Manager” in Sprinklr

1. Log into your Sprinklr account.
2. From the main dashboard, navigate to the left-hand menu and select “Content”.
3. Within the Content section, click on “Brand Asset Manager”.
4. Here, you’ll see a complete library of all approved and unapproved brand assets. Use the filter options on the left sidebar to segment by asset type (e.g., logos, images, video), campaign, and publication date.
5. Pay particular attention to the “Usage History” tab for each asset, which shows where and when each asset has been deployed. This helps pinpoint rogue or outdated branding.

Pro Tip: Don’t just hunt for old logos. Look at the language. Are your sales and marketing teams using completely different words to describe the same feature? That kind of linguistic drift can confuse customers and reporters just as much as a visual screw-up.

Common Mistake: Only auditing your public-facing stuff. The real skeletons are often in internal documents, training manuals, sales decks, employee handbooks, that contain messaging that completely contradicts what you’re saying publicly, which causes chaos when employees talk to anyone outside the company.

Expected Outcome: You should end up with a detailed report that lists out all your current brand assets and pinpoints every single inconsistency in visuals, messaging, and tone. This report is your starting point.

Step 2: Develop a Unified Brand Narrative and Messaging Framework

Once the audit is done, you have to build one story. This goes way beyond a tagline. It’s the core narrative that explains who you are now, what you stand for, and what makes you different. According to the IAB’s 2026 Brand Storytelling Guide, this story has to be adaptable for different media channels and audiences but stay totally consistent at its core.

2.1 Using the “Brand Story Module” in CisionOne

1. Log into CisionOne.
2. From the main navigation, select “Content Creation”.
3. Click on “Brand Story Module”.
4. Within this module, you’ll find fields for your “Core Brand Message,” “Value Proposition,” “Target Audience Personas,” and “Key Messaging Pillars.” Populate these fields with the unified narrative you’ve developed.
5. Use the “Media Kit Builder” subsection to upload approved logos, headshots, and boilerplate text that reflect the new brand. This ensures that all media contacts receive consistent, accurate information.

Pro Tip: Get people from sales, product, and HR in a room when you’re writing this narrative. It builds buy-in and stops the story from sounding like it was written in a marketing vacuum. I’ve seen unification projects die because the narrative felt like it was handed down from on high instead of being built together.

Common Mistake: Writing a story that’s either so generic it’s meaningless or so niche it doesn’t apply to half your customers. A good narrative is specific enough to make you stand out but broad enough to work for different audience segments.

Expected Outcome: You walk away with a clearly defined brand narrative that everyone internally has signed off on, plus a messaging framework that will guide every piece of communication from this point forward.

Step 3: Implement Internal Communication and Training

A unified brand is useless if your own teams aren’t living it. Every employee is an ambassador, and if they can’t explain the new narrative, your earned media efforts will suffer. This step is all about training and communication to get everyone speaking the same language.

3.1 Setting up “Brand Guidelines & Training” in Workday Learning

1. Access your Workday portal and navigate to the “Learning” application.
2. Click on “Course Catalog” and then “Create New Course”.
3. Design a course titled “Unified Brand Messaging & Guidelines 2026” that includes modules on the new brand narrative, visual identity standards, and approved messaging for common scenarios (e.g., customer service interactions, sales pitches).
4. Upload all finalized brand guidelines documents and provide interactive quizzes to test comprehension.
5. Make this course mandatory for all employees, with a completion deadline of 30 days from launch.

Pro Tip: Set up a dedicated Slack channel or Teams group just for brand questions. It creates a fast feedback loop and kills confusion before it spreads. Regular Q&A sessions with the leadership team also help hammer the key messages home.

Common Mistake: Just assuming employees will “get it” after one webinar. You have to keep training, use real-world examples, and have leaders who visibly use and support the new brand. A one-off session is never enough.

Expected Outcome: Your entire workforce actually understands and uses the unified brand message consistently. This minimizes the internal gaffes that can sabotage your external PR work.

Step 4: Execute a Targeted Earned Media Outreach Plan

Okay, your house is in order. Now it’s time to talk to the media. This means strategic, personalized outreach that explains why your unified brand is relevant. The Concord rebrand proved that a focused plan gets way better results than just blasting out a press release to a huge list.

4.1 Crafting Pitches in Muck Rack‘s “Pitch Builder”

1. Log into Muck Rack.
2. Go to the “Media Database” and use filters to identify journalists covering your industry, specifically those who have shown interest in brand strategy, corporate identity, or market consolidation.
3. Select your target journalists and click “Create Pitch” from the top menu.
4. Use the “Pitch Builder” interface. Personalize each pitch by mentioning a specific article they wrote. Then explain how your brand unification is a response to an industry trend or solves a problem for customers.
5. Attach your unified press kit (created in CisionOne) to ensure all media assets are consistent.

Pro Tip: Frame the rebrand as a story about solving a market problem, responding to customer needs, or making a big strategic play for growth. A 2026 HubSpot report found that pitches with unique data or a strong point of view were 3x more likely to get picked up. So what’s your angle?

Common Mistake: Sending the same exact pitch to a giant list. Personalization is everything. Reporters get hundreds of pitches a day, and a generic one gets deleted without a second thought.

Expected Outcome: You start getting more media coverage in the right publications, and the stories actually reflect the accurate, consistent messaging of your new brand. This is how you build a stronger perception in the market.

Step 5: Monitor and Measure Earned Media Impact

The work continues long after the announcement. You have to constantly monitor and measure to see if the strategy is actually working and to make adjustments on the fly. This means tracking your mentions, the sentiment around them, and your share of voice to prove the rebrand was a success.

5.1 Analyzing Data in Meltwater‘s “Impact Dashboard”

1. Log into Meltwater.
2. Navigate to the “Analyze” section and select “Impact Dashboard”.
3. Set up a new dashboard specifically for your rebrand. Create widgets to track “Brand Mentions (Unified Brand Name),” “Sentiment Analysis (Positive/Negative/Neutral),” and “Share of Voice (vs. key competitors).”
4. Use the “Topic Cloud” feature to identify keywords and themes associated with your brand’s coverage. Are journalists and the public using your new messaging consistently?
5. Compare these metrics to pre-rebrand data to quantify the uplift in earned media effectiveness.

Pro Tip: Don’t just celebrate the positive mentions. Dig into the negative and neutral coverage. That’s where you find out what’s still confusing people or where your message isn’t landing. That feedback is gold for tweaking your comms strategy.

Common Mistake: Getting obsessed with vanity metrics like the total number of mentions. The quality of the coverage is what really matters. Are they repeating your key messages? Is the tone right? A thousand mentions of the wrong story is a failure.

Expected Outcome: You get a clear, data-backed picture of how your earned media is performing after the unification. This allows you to keep refining your communications and prove the value of the project.

Getting your brand straight and using that to get earned media isn’t a one-and-done project. It’s a continuous effort that takes solid planning, consistent work, and constant analysis. By following a process like this, you can turn your brand identity into a real PR asset that builds visibility and market strength. For more on measuring what matters, check out PR Outreach: 2026 Metrics for Real Impact. It’s also smart to know how to handle things when they go wrong, with lessons from UrbanSprouts’ 2026 PR Crisis & Loyalty Lessons. And to make sure analysts get your story right, dig into Analyst Relations: 5 Keys to 2026 Earned Media Wins.