The rebranding of an iconic American company
Once known as International Harvester, the legacy brand had to navigate waves of name changes and impress its long-time employee audience.
There’s a good chance you’ve heard of International Harvester. It’s a brand whose roots stretch back to the McCormick reaper, a farm implement so significant it is painted inside the Capitol dome, through to the precursor to the famous International Scout truck, technology used in the moon landing and beyond.
“For many years it was either red or green. Either you had a John Deere or you had an (International Harvester),” said Megan Troppito, director and head of communications and brand for the company today known as International. “If you drive down many more rural roads, you will often still see our International Harvester products on the side of the road. Those red tractors still are identifiable today.”
But the brand itself has gone through twists and turns, with the agricultural portion of the company being sold in 1984. For the last 30 years, the company has focused on trucks and school buses under the Navistar name, though some brands are still known as International.
“Back when (Navistar) was the name, nobody really knew who that was,” Troppito recalled. “But if you said International Harvester, they’d be like, ‘Oh, yes, I know exactly.’”
Troppito found herself leading a multi-year, ongoing process to rebrand Navistar to the more familiar International – not quite restoring the International Harvester name but updating it with an identity that was at once recognizable but reflected the company’s new reality and products.
The process involved updating the media, dealers and other vital stakeholders. But key among the audiences were employees. Here’s how Troppito and her team gained the trust of the company’s 15,000 employees spread across North America – and how they’re continuing the change to this day.
A decision to change
In 2021, Navistar merge with Traton SE, a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG. At the time, they welcomed a new CEO and had an opportunity to look at the brand in a holistic way and determine what made sense moving forward.
“We started really evaluating, does this Navistar name really make sense? It was a holding company on top of a holding company with product brands, and it was a lot of layers that were unnecessary from a brand strategy perspective,” said Troppito.
Immediately, the name International seemed like a clear winner, based on employee conversations at the watercooler. But the organization wasn’t content with that gut feeling. Partnering with an agency, the company conducted employee focus groups, dealer focus groups, interviews with customers and a full market survey to better understand their brand perception.
“That input in the very beginning was super helpful to not only guide our decisions on the brand and the communications moving forward, but it also gave a pulse of our stakeholders, which was very valuable for the communications team,” Troppito said.
Co-creating the brand across the organization
The research phase took about a year to complete. After settling on the name International, it took about another year to prepare for the unveiling. But Troppito joked that the new name was one of the worst-kept secrets in the company because of how many people they brought in to give input and act as internal champions. These included representatives from across the company, ranging from people who worked in manufacturing who could give input on which boxes the new logo needed to appear on to IT who needed to consult on the new email address extensions to more obvious partners in marketing.
“I honestly think I would bring in even more (people),” Troppito said. “The earlier you can get people into the process and co-creating it together, the better off you are with the end result.”
To this day, those early champions remain vital internal brand advocates.
International’s organizational structure also allowed for communications to take a driving role in not only shaping the new brand, but helping to operationalize it across the organization and act as true change managers.
“Organizationally, our communications group sits underneath our chief strategy and transformation officer,” Troppito said. “And so our task as a team really is to be a catalyst for change. And we saw this new brand as an opportunity to define that new era for the company and really get people on board with us to do it. We were empowered in that way.”
That process involved plenty of anchoring meetings to assure buy-in from parts of the organization they thought might oppose the change, she recalled. But through careful cheerleading and meticulous work, they won them over.
The big reveal
The internal rollout was no small feat of planning. They needed to reach 15,000 employees across three countries ranging from blue-collar manufacturing workers to corporate white-collar employees. Whether those employees were in the company’s Lisle, Illinois headquarters or in Mexico, Troppito wanted everyone to have an equal experience.
While the announcement was made from HQ, each location had a special event set up, including livestreams and translation services. Plenty of advance notice was given to various facilities to empower them to make the event special.
“There was a lot of effort done to make sure that we this wasn’t just a headquarters event, but it was communicated to all of the employees,” Troppito said.
The comms team also created a comprehensive FAQ that was ready for employees on the day of launch, populated with questions received from those champions across the organization. Their partnership with IT also paid off when just after the announcement, new email addresses, website and intranet went live.
Immediately, Troppito said there was a sense of excitement and buzz among employees. On LinkedIn, employees couldn’t wait to share the news, excitedly changing the company names on their profiles.
The work continues
Since that rollout in 2024, the work isn’t fully done. Troppito showed off her own security badge, which still bears the name Navistar. Other major changes will be names on trucks and the impact on dealer networks.
“This is the beginning of a new chapter, not the end of it,” Troppito said. “This is not going to be a standard flip the switch and everything is brand new on launch day. It’s going to be a turning of the dial, and we will, slowly but surely, move into the new direction.”
Initial reviews are positive. The company has conducted surveys to gauge employee sentiment, but Troppito said it’s sometimes direct feedback that means the most.
“I went to present to our digital solutions team, and (an employee) was so passionate about what we were doing that she actually came up to me after the meeting and gave me a bracelet that her daughter had made with the new logo on it,” Troppito recalled. “She wanted me to have it because she was just so excited to be a part of it, so happy to work at International. I was so touched and I was so floored, because it just makes you realize how meaningful this was for employees, and especially those who have been here for a long time.”
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
