Evolving a brand to create space for what’s to come
Sector(s):
Service(s):
The Change
8,866 new users
during the first week of the website launch
52 countries
represented in the new user base
33% open rate
for the launch newsletter, surpassing year-to-date averages
The Challenge
In 2020, AlignMNH identified a gap nobody had filled: people working in maternal health and people working in newborn health were often working on similar problems, but operating in silos. Over the next six years, the organization built a platform that brought more than 60,000 people together across 100 countries, to bring the dyad of maternal and newborn health communities together.
That gap is now closed. And that success created a new problem.
The global health ecosystem continues to grow in complexity. Global gains in maternal and newborn health are stalling. Progress towards the health-related 2030 Sustainable Development Goals is off track. AlignMNH’s historically cautious public voice, used to protect its neutrality, was starting to work against it as more assertively positioned (but less knowledgeable) actors entered the playing field.
The global community was asking AlignMNH to do more: provide services, broker more relationships, and convene more parties to foster innovation and rapid adoption of evidence-driven solutions. To accomplish this, they needed to introduce a brand identity that encouraged expansion into new communities instead of fragmentation.
Broadening did carry a real risk and there were concerns about if a wider mandate would dilute six years of hard-won trust in maternal and newborn health. AlignMNH had to establish a new identity and a new voice, without losing what made the original community trust it in the first place.
The Solution
Be the Change Group partnered with AlignMNH to lead its rebrand and website rebuild and create a 3-year strategy.
We started with research to inform the overall project approach. This research included a SWOT analysis and a detailed mapping of AlignMNH’s audiences to understand the landscape they operate in and the various stakeholders involved.
The research insights became the foundation for a confident (yet still neutral) voice, built on six pillars: bold, credible, community-centered, optimistic, clear, and inclusive.
The organization's new name, Align:, also reflects the shift towards a wider remit.
Dropping “MNH” from the name was a deliberate signal that the community’s work now extends to the factors that lead to and follow birth, including family planning and immunization. The colon is intentional. It points forward and creates space for something bigger.
We worked with the client team to write Align:'s new key messages and strapline
and developed the launch positioning piece, “Our community asked us to do more,” which grounds the rebrand in a real story about the 2023 E-MOTIVE trial, and the seven months it took the global community to turn that evidence into practice, against an industry norm of ten to seventeen years.
All of this fed into a 3-year communications strategy
moving the organization from launch and brand-building in year one, through deeper community engagement in year two, to a fully embedded communications approach by year three.
The Outcome
Align: launched its new brand, name, and website at IMNHC 2026 in Nairobi, introducing the global maternal and newborn health community to its next chapter.
Upon the launch of the new website, there were...
8,866 new users
during the first week
52 countries
represented in the new user base
The launch gave Align:
a clear answer to the question its own community had been asking: a wider mandate, grounded in the same six years of trust, with a communications strategy built to carry it through the next three.
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