Bringing the new Optimizely brand to life at Camp Opticon

A great customer experience rarely begins with certainty.

It begins with someone noticing a possibility. A message that could resonate more deeply. A journey that could feel more useful. An interaction that could make a customer’s next decision easier. It begins with believing that there is always a better way.

Optimizely was built on the belief that there is always a better way, offering tools to implement change and proving its impact. Experimentation. Form a hypothesis, test it, learn, and improve. That belief still sits at the center of who we are. But Optimizely had evolved—and our brand had not yet caught up. We had evolved into a platform that helps teams create, manage, personalize, test, learn from, and improve the digital experiences that shape customer decisions. The AI Platform for Marketing is how we named that truth. But not everyone has embraced it, and I understand why. Marketing earned its reputation.

Marketing became a factory

It is an interesting time to be a marketer. For some people, “marketing” is not a title they say proudly out loud. For others, it is a label they actively reject — even when their work shapes digital experiences, influences buyer behavior, and combines human judgment with rigorous learning. Also known as marketing.

I understand why. We are a long way from the mythology of David Ogilvy or, if you prefer the fictional version, Don Draper. And no, I’m not just referring to the 2 p.m. cocktails. It is about the passion, bold ideas, risk-taking, and fun that marketing was supposed to make possible. I keep reminding marketers if we’re not having fun, we’re doing something wrong.

We let marketing become an assembly line. More content, more campaigns, more approvals, more dashboards, more pressure to produce. Volume and vanity metrics became the measure of success. Safe, familiar work is what results.

The category does not need more activity for its own sake. It doesn’t need safe. It needs brave ideas that create meaning for customers and learning that tells us whether those ideas worked.

The belief beneath the brand

Joining Optimizely presented me the chance to help change the perception of marketing. An opportunity to help transform a company with a proud history, a large customer base, and genuinely remarkable technology into something people could love for the brand as much as the products. To lead by example of what marketing can be.

Rebrands have many parts. There is the visible transformation: the identity, the visual world, the voice, and the way a company shows up. That work is never the achievement of one person. It takes agency partners, internal creative teams, stakeholders across the organization, and people willing to be brave.

The logo is always the part that gets attention. But it is the belief that holds every choice together.

Optimizely’s founding belief is proof. Not simply a product claim, but a human truth. Evidence gives people permission to question the familiar, challenge stale assumptions, and make a case for a better way forward. It replaces some of the fear that shows up as process, delay, and a default to the safest possible choice.

The new brand strategy had a bigger ambition: bring together a broader portfolio, expand what people understood Optimizely could do beyond A/B testing, and do it without losing the experimentation equity that made the company trusted in the first place. We called it ‘proof-powered bravery’.

The paradox of proof and bravery

There is often a paradox at the heart of good ideas.

Proof can give people confidence to make the next move. It can reduce uncertainty. It can show what is working and what is not. But proof cannot exist before the first bold choice. If certainty came first, there would be no bravery required.

Bravery is not acting because fear is absent. It is acting in spite of fear, while committing to learn from what happens next.

That is what the rebrand required. We had evidence that the old category patterns were not enough. We knew Optimizely needed a more unified story. We knew our community and our ambitions had expanded. We had a strong strategic hypothesis. But we did not have a guaranteed outcome.

No dashboard could tell us whether a radically different visual world would make people feel something. No analysis could guarantee that a micro-drama comedy series would earn more attention than a conventional software story. No spreadsheet could promise that changing breakout sessions from product pitches into participatory conversations would work.

So we made choices before proof was possible. We chose to work with Andrey Kasay, a renowned artist specializing in surrealism, instead of relying on familiar B2B visual conventions. We chose unexpected storytelling. We chose an event experience designed to invite people to think, react, and participate.

We had to trust judgment, taste, and conviction. We had to be brave.

And every experimentation professional understands that feeling. You do not run a test because you already have proof. You run it because you have a question worth answering. You have a hypothesis worth giving a chance. And you have enough humility to let customers prove you wrong.

A brave idea is not the opposite of experimentation. It is often where experimentation begins.

A bigger tribe

In the new brand, Optimizely is positioned as the “AI Platform for Marketing.” That phrase has prompted a lot of questions, both within the company and our broader community of partners and customers. Optimizely serves experimenters, product teams, developers, analysts, digital leaders, growth teams, and customer-experience professionals. All these roles bring different expertise, but they all shape the same customer journey.

The phrase is not an ownership claim—that marketing owns every other craft. It is an attempt to name the field of work that connects us: understanding people, shaping experiences, testing ideas, making promises, and earning customer choice.

The customer does not experience our organizational chart. They do not distinguish between the message that made a promise, the site that explained it, the personalized journey that made it relevant, the product that delivered it, and the experiment that made it better. They experience one brand, one journey, and one reason to trust—or not trust—what they encounter.

When marketing creates a promise without evidence, it risks becoming disconnected from customer reality. When experimentation produces a meaningful insight that stays isolated, the business misses the opportunity to improve its message, product, and experience. Neither outcome serves the customer.

Marketing creates the promise. Experimentation proves and improves it. They are not competing identities. They are two movements in the same work: helping customers make better choices and helping organizations deserve those choices.

Seth Godin’s idea of a tribe is helpful here. A tribe is not a group of people who share a job title. It is a group connected by a shared belief and a desire to create change.

Optimizely’s original tribe was built around a powerful belief: customers, not opinions, should decide what works. That belief has not changed. What has changed is the number of people—and the number of moments across the customer journey—where it can make a difference.

Our tribe did not change. It got bigger.

Camp Opticon: the brand comes to life

A rebrand does not become real when the new identity is revealed. It becomes real in the choices a company makes, the stories it tells, the experiences it creates, and the standards it holds itself accountable to afterward.

Camp Opticon is the first place the new Optimizely brand comes to life as an experience.

It is not simply where attendees will see a new logo in person or hear a new platform narrative. It is where they will feel the belief underneath the brand. The surreal visual world, the micro-drama, and the redesigned breakout sessions are not decorative additions. They are choices intended to interrupt the familiar rhythm of B2B events and make room for curiosity, participation, and possibility.

The goal is not for people to leave with a longer list of product claims. It is for them to leave believing they can be braver. To follow a creative instinct, challenge the familiar, learn from customers, and make the next experience better than the last.

Of course, Camp Opticon is not proof simply because it is bold. The proof comes afterward in what people feel, remember, and share. It comes from what they choose to do next, and what that teaches us to improve. That is the discipline we have always valued. The belief we carry forward.

Join the tribe

Fortunately, a tribe is not defined by who was in the room. It is defined by the people who choose to carry a belief forward: that there is always a better way—and that customers, not opinions, should help us find it.

Opticon Online is how you can join the conversation. On October 21, you’ll get every keynote presentation from Camp Opticon in New York, including Seth Godin’s closing keynote, plus bonus content and behind-the-scenes interviews that bring the ideas—and the people behind them—to life.

Join experience-makers across marketing, experimentation, product, digital, analytics, engineering, growth, and customer experience as we explore how brave ideas, creativity, and proof can make every customer experience better.

Bring your curiosity. Bring your next hypothesis. Join the tribe. And let’s make the next customer experience better, together.