NVA
2025
Testing assumptions before a rebrand
Research that overturned a stakeholder assumption and changed the brand strategy for 1,000+ locations.
Overview
How far to take a rebrand
NVA owns veterinary hospitals across the country, but stayed invisible to the public while each hospital kept its local branding. The company wanted to move hospitals to a new consumer brand called PetOne, with NVA remaining the entity that owns and manages them.
The open question was how far to take it: a full rebrand, or co-branding that kept the local name alongside PetOne. We tested the assumption driving that decision, found it didn't hold, and recommended a mixed strategy by market instead of one approach applied everywhere.
Problem
An untested belief driving a large decision
Internal stakeholders had a strong instinct that local names feel personable while a national brand might read as cold and corporate. That belief was driving a decision affecting hundreds of hospitals, and nobody had tested it.
Research
Asking pet owners what actually decides it
I worked with another researcher on stakeholder interviews with six people across marketing, talent acquisition, e-commerce, and digital to understand the reasoning behind the transition and the assumptions underneath it. We then interviewed ten pet owners about how they actually choose and use a veterinary practice, and presented both back together, where the gap between the two groups became the center of the conversation.
Almost no pet owner led with brand character. Price and distance came up in every conversation, and owners were frustrated that pricing was almost never published. Preference between local and national split rather than pointing one direction, which meant neither instinct was strong enough to justify a single nationwide strategy.
Direction
Setting direction from the evidence
The findings changed the shape of the decision, so the direction had to follow the evidence instead of the original brief. I ran a competitor analysis focused on the specific brands owners mentioned, looking at how they handled location finding, booking, and cost.
From there I set the design direction for the team: feature recommendations with examples, responsive views, priorities, and the tone the research supported. Two designers built out the hub site from that. It routes visitors to individual hospital locations and supports both fully branded and co-branded practices in the same system, which is what let the mixed strategy work.
Priority went to what owners asked for: finding a location nearby, booking without a phone call, and reaching someone quickly. Since so much veterinary traffic is urgent, someone arriving mid-emergency can find and contact a location without navigating a brand experience first.
Outcomes
Key outcomes
Reflection
Catching it before it scaled
The most useful thing we did was catch an assumption before it turned into a hundred-hospital decision. Six stakeholders across four departments all believed brand character would drive where people took their pets, and ten pet owners barely brought it up. Finding that gap early was worth more than anything we could have designed after the fact.
Setting direction for other designers instead of executing it myself was the other shift. I had to be explicit about the reasoning behind each recommendation, because direction that only carries the conclusions falls apart the first time someone hits a decision I hadn't thought of.
