What’s Brewing? with Jack Sundstrom, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Kevari

Bell­mont Part­ners has been work­ing with the com­pa­ny for­mer­ly known as ID Insight on-and-off since just a few years after it launched in 2003. The Min­neapo­lis-based leader in devel­op­ing plat­form-based fraud-pre­ven­tion solu­tions for finan­cial insti­tu­tions has nim­bly shift­ed over the years to nav­i­gate – and stay ahead of – the con­stant­ly chang­ing fraud envi­ron­ment. But 2022 saw its biggest evo­lu­tion yet: a full rebrand.

Today, ID Insight is Kevari, a name whose ini­tial inspi­ra­tion stemmed from a riv­er in India that flowed through areas of the coun­try where some of the great­est math­e­mati­cians of all time stud­ied and lived.

We sat down with Chief Prod­uct and Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer Jack Sund­strom to talk about the ups and downs of the rebrand process, how mar­ket­ing takes a vil­lage, and his long­time affin­i­ty for craft brews.

After being “ID Insight” since your incep­tion, what prompt­ed the rebrand?

A big part of it stemmed from a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that had the same name, and as its pro­file increased, it was cre­at­ing some brand con­fu­sion. We also had a bit of a prob­lem with not stand­ing out even with­in our own indus­try. Sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies in our space use “ID” as part of their names. Today, we’re not sole­ly focused on iden­ti­ty and “ID” is an old-school term that made sense 20 years ago when the com­pa­ny was found­ed, but less so today. We have a lot of pride in the old brand, but just rec­og­nized that with all of these things com­ing togeth­er, the tim­ing was right for us to make the big move.

What were some of the crit­i­cal ele­ments you need­ed to make sure to cov­er dur­ing the process?

Even though we’re a small com­pa­ny, we want­ed to go through a rig­or­ous process to make sure the brand made sense and aligned with what we’re all about. We went through a series of work­shops to make sure that the name would align with our company’s vision, val­ues and arche­type. And then of course, we went through the process of com­ing up with dif­fer­ent options and then assess­ing those options in the mar­ket­place before we actu­al­ly picked the name. We went through the whole dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion process to make sure that this wasn’t going to be the new Chevy Nova.

How has all the work you’ve done over the last year set you up for the future?

The process itself was enlight­en­ing for our employ­ees and our part­ners. As we went through that, it forced us to take a real­ly hard look at our­selves and say, “Who are we?” And through that process, it result­ed in us refin­ing our focus. Our team was excit­ed about it, which is impor­tant. We got buy-in there. The launch itself went well. We’ve been to sev­er­al con­fer­ences since then and our team has expe­ri­enced a pos­i­tive reac­tion with­in the mar­ket­place. I now feel that we’re set apart from the com­pe­ti­tion. The employ­ees have clear mes­sag­ing that they use when describ­ing the com­pa­ny. So right from the get-go we’re being very con­sis­tent with the way we talk about the new brand.

Have there been any major chal­lenges you had to over­come through this?

Not from a mar­ket­ing stand­point. Of course, when you think about your brand and where it resides in the whole ecosys­tem, there are places where the old brand resides, and it might not be some­body else’s pri­or­i­ty for them to update that. So we’re focus­ing on that between now and the end of the year. I would also say that our old brand is tied to our tech­ni­cal solu­tions and to our exist­ing cus­tomers. In a reseller rela­tion­ship, it takes work on your part­ners’ part in order to make those updates. But the major­i­ty of the chal­lenges real­ly are the inter­nal work­ings of just the sim­ple things like new email address­es, cus­tomer con­tracts and all sorts of cus­tomer-fac­ing documentation.

How about you per­son­al­ly? How has it felt for you and your role?

It has impact­ed me in a very pos­i­tive way. I’ve worked for very large orga­ni­za­tions, and I’ve expe­ri­enced rebrands where I’m at the receiv­ing end of it. And now I got to lead this whole thing. And even though we’re not a huge orga­ni­za­tion, we fol­lowed all the prop­er steps to make sure we did this right. So it was­n’t just some ama­teur-hour kind of thing, like, “Hey, let’s come up with a new name.” It was the real deal. I look at this as a suc­cess and some­thing I’m proud that I’ve led.

How impor­tant was your team through this process?

Obvi­ous­ly the rebrand process suc­ceed­ed with the help of great part­ners. Every­body played an impor­tant role, from our inter­nal team to Tra­cy Kei­th at TK Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Tra­cy Saathoff Con­sult­ing, Bell­mont Part­ners, Todd Spichke at River­brand Design, Smitty’s Work­shop and oth­ers. It felt very col­lab­o­ra­tive. I look at the end result and com­pare it to the end result of rebrand­ing at some very large orga­ni­za­tions and think, “Wow, that’s real­ly good.” Some of it I expect­ed, and some of it I was think­ing, “Holy cow, I can’t believe we did that.” Most of my con­tri­bu­tion to the result­ing Kevari brand was sim­ply pro­vid­ing words to describe how we want­ed our audi­ences to feel about us. Then to have part­ners make those words come to life in the brand was incred­i­ble. No, it was more than that—it was awesome.

To wrap up, what’s brew­ing in your glass these days?

I just got back from a trip to Asheville, North Car­oli­na, for vaca­tion, which has a fan­tas­tic craft brew­ing scene that I would rec­om­mend to any­body. Just with­in walk­ing dis­tance of where we were, there were excel­lent choic­es. And I don’t know I want to admit this, but over the course of a week, I sam­pled 34 dif­fer­ent beers. I used the Untapped app to keep track of them. The Twin Cities has a real­ly good craft beer scene, too. But clear­ly when you’re in vaca­tion mode, the abil­i­ty to enjoy a beer is maybe a lit­tle bit exaggerated.