When marketing agility becomes urgency: what the industry can learn from an 11-day rebrand

Sarah Dawson, EVP and Managing Director, Brands & Properties UK and Alan Palmer, Executive Vice President, Creative + Content

When speed becomes non-negotiable in an agency branding exercise, what’s essential and what can be left behind?

Most rebranding exercises take around a year. Some even longer. For sports, music and entertainment powerhouse The Team (formerly known as Wasserman), with 4,000 employees across the globe and more than two decades of work across the industry, it took eleven days.

The company was required to establish a new identity rapidly after founder Casey Wasserman announced he would be divesting his stake in the business. But even though no marketer would recommend a brand overhaul in such a dizzying timeframe, the business has held fast, and continued to serve clients such as Adidas, Lego, NBA, Unilever and more.

1. Clarity, not time, drives change

Pressure has a way of stripping everything back to what matters. For The Team, that meant homing in on one of its core operational principles: clarity unlocks speed. Because when speed becomes non-negotiable, it exposes a truth most organizations struggle with: it’s not time that holds brands back – it’s alignment, complexity and a lack of clarity. And in a world where agility is often discussed but rarely achieved, that distinction matters.

“Speed didn’t come from rushing,” says Palmer: “It came from knowing exactly who we are, what we do and where we win.”

Years of working at the intersection of sport, music and entertainment – for global brands and global rights holders – had already defined the business. So the rebrand was more of an articulation than a reinvention.

The key lesson for the market? The brands that move fastest aren’t those with the most time. They’re the ones with the clearest sense of direction.

2. Alignment is the real bottleneck

If clarity unlocks speed, alignment sustains it. In most organizations, stakeholder management is where momentum slows. Competing priorities, differing perspectives and internal politics can turn even simple decisions into long, drawn-out processes.

Here, it was already in place. “Executive alignment and clarity was the biggest unlock… not just alignment to doing a rebrand, but alignment to a singular brand purpose,” Palmer explains.

That purpose – the unifying power of sport, music and entertainment – became the North Star for the process. And it’s where The Team increasingly focuses its offering: helping organizations cut through complexity, align around a clear direction and move with confidence.

For clients, this is often the hardest part. As Palmer says, “most rebrands don’t fail because of time. They fail because no one agrees what the brand actually is.”

3. Ditch the internal silos

The rebrand also highlighted a broader challenge in the industry: marketing has become too fragmented. Strategy sits in one place. Creative in another. Content somewhere else. The result is that good ideas are slowed down and can be delivered too late.

The Team’s model is built to remove that friction, combining intelligence, ideas and influence into a cohesive system that connects strategy, creative and execution. That integration is what enables brands to move at pace, not just in moments of urgency, but as a standard way of operating.

4. Communicate constantly and make expectations clear

Daily updates, even when there was no new news to share, meant everyone felt informed, involved and confident, says Dawson. Making space for feedback was equally important, she adds: “Temperature-check the water constantly – people have strong views and you want to make sure they’re heard and feel they have a voice.”

Having that consistency built trust and kept momentum going. And the relentless focus on the client meant that delivery never slipped.

The result? Stability when many businesses would falter, meaning clients didn’t just stay, they continued to move forward.

“That ability to operate under pressure isn’t accidental. It’s built over time, working alongside some of the world’s most demanding brands and rights holders, where timelines are tight, expectations are high and execution must be flawless,” says Dawson.

It’s also why The Team places such emphasis on craft, Palmer adds: “Because in high-speed environments, creative precision is what separates good from great.”

5. Leave undue process and complexity behind

One of the biggest lessons from the rebrand is what didn’t make the cut: lengthy committees, over-engineered processes, endless iterations.

Instead, a focused group of experts – including creative, legal and technology – worked in parallel, solving challenges upfront rather than retrofitting later.

That simplicity was deliberate, Dawson says: “Marketing and branding can become very complicated… how do you keep it as simple as possible? And that’s our approach: reduce friction, maintain standards and focus on what drives impact.”

6. Don’t rush strategy and craft

While the execution moved quickly, the foundations did not. For more than two decades, the agency had already refined and defined its strategic position, expertise and a well-known, integrated capability set across sport, music and entertainment.

That long-term investment is what made short-term pace possible. And it’s what underpins the agency offering today, Dawson explains: “combining cultural intelligence, creative excellence and global influence to help brands show up with relevance and impact.”

The lesson here is that the conditions for speed – clarity, alignment and integration – need to be built in advance, before they’re needed. Because in today’s market, the brands that succeed are the ones designed to move fast consistently – with the clarity to decide, the alignment to act and the capability to execute at scale.

So, what’s next for the newly named industry stalwart? The rebrand itself was only the starting point. The focus now is on continuing to prove it in the market – through the work, partnerships and results delivered for clients.

As Palmer says: “We need to keep demonstrating what that actually means across passion points, across geographies and across everything we do.”