I recently concluded my first year at iCIMS, marking the longest period of my career where I was embedded in a single brand. As someone who cut their teeth riding the external agency high of parachuting into several clients at once, the idea of getting to know every nook and cranny of just one company from the inside was as bewildering as it was exciting.

I joined iCIMS to help shape the 20-year talent acquisition software giant. With a global reach of more than 4,000 customers including 40 percent of the Fortune 100, I gladly accepted the position to oversee the in-house creative agency, iCIMS Studio, despite my uncertainty of what to expect when I arrived.

My first few weeks turned out to be the most pivotal as I tried to learn the iCIMS brand. I felt this incessant need to break the brand apart so I could piece it back together. Who did we love? What did we believe? What were we driven to do?

As I was poring over documents that pre-dated me, trying to answer those questions, I started to tear and tape pieces of old decks onto my walls alongside sticky notes of my own. Hours later, I found myself in an office that resembled a scene from A Beautiful Mind, consumed by the realization I had fallen in love with the heart of iCIMS.

That heart is what we’ve continued to cast a light on with countless creative assets and integrated campaigns throughout my tenure. Serendipitously, the culmination came a day after my one year anniversary, when we unveiled our reimagined brand identity and positioning to the world: iCIMS is the talent cloud company that empowers organizations to attract, engage, hire, and advance the right talent that builds a diverse, winning workforce.

Diversity, equity and inclusion have been at the helm of our brand for quite some time and will remain there as we continue to evolve as a company and find even more ways to reduce hiring bias. At our core, iCIMS helps transform businesses and the world because when the right people join the right teams, amazing things can happen. Our new anthemic spot produced by the iCIMS Studio helps to bring this truth to life.

And, because a brand refresh is more than a logo treatment, we found inspiration in our wordmark. We purposely put emphasis on the circle of the “i” because circles represent inclusivity—there’s no head at a round table.

In much of our creative, we’ve continued to build on the concept of circles to demonstrate connectivity as well as movement, as this video about the iCIMS Talent Cloud illustrates.

No brand refresh is complete without a new website and refreshed office space. Our team delivered on all fronts, despite COVID-19. We even replaced the well-known flag outside our company headquarters.

365 days of one brand have marked an important professional chapter for me. One where I went in-house, yes, but also one where I joined a passionate team that’s laser-focused on helping companies build their own diverse, winning teams. Given our world today, I’m not sure there could be a more meaningful purpose.

Agatha "Aggie" Asch is Senior Director of Creative & Digital Experience at iCIMS, the Talent Cloud company. There she oversees their in-house agency, iCIMS Studio. Known for her brand strategy work for global creative agencies including Wieden+Kennedy and Swift, Aggie cut her teeth developing creative campaigns for global brands including Target, P&G, Starbucks and Google, among others.