“All vendor websites look the same today.”
That was an observation volleyed by Andrew Kumar of Uniform at a recent Boye & Co CMS Experts session in Toronto.
Is he right?
Far be it from me to appear “critical” of the field, but it kinda comes with the territory – and a quick perusal would seem to validate the comment. Some of the sameness might be the product of predictable website structure (you know, the whole “yin and yang” layout effect), but I think the most overt similarities line up around the words.
I’ve said this time and again: if I had a dollar for every time a vendor’s messaging promised to “finally unite marketers and developers,” I’d have more than a few clams in my ledger. I think we’ve begun to evolve beyond that positioning, but it still permeates the ethos.
When Vojtech Boril first mentioned to me that a rebrand of Kontent.ai was on its way, I was – as you might expect – curious. He channeled the same sense of futility around common themes and, in some cases, an almost uncanny resemblance from site to site.
When Kontent.ai’s new website launched earlier today, I was delighted to see the results. And not just from a slick “look and feel” perspective, but from the all-too-critical messaging standpoint. It delivered on the goods, and done so by focusing on user case studies and elevating the voice of the customer. Something more sites could learn from.
As Kontent.ai’s VP of Growth and Marketing, Vojtech has a lot on the line with this relaunch. The CMS market has grown more competitive, yes – but far more confusing. As I’ve often mentioned, I hear from at least one new headless CMS vendor every single week (a new one just yesterday, in fact, wanting to be listed in our well-trafficked Product Directory).
They keep multiplying like rabbits.
Likewise, with traditional DXPs offering headless and “composable” solutions, the job of evaluating and differentiating betwixt solutions has become mired in complexity. It’s this lack of clarity that presents what Vojtech (and CEO Mark Ruddock) see as an inflection point for a new era in content management.
The new Kontent.ai homepage, launched today.
“We don’t position this release as a ‘rebrand’ only,” Vojtech said. “We believe we are entering the new era of content management and we’re ready to lead it. Kontent.ai is doing things differently. Differently than we ourselves did before, but most importantly, differently than all other CMS vendors out there.”
Along with the obvious visual changes, Kontent.ai is launching a new service called Mission Control, which aims to provide unprecedented visibility over all content operations. More than just another analytics tool, it has already presented some compelling results for customers, specifically in the way of ROI.
And of course, there’s the continued evolution of AI – an area that Kontent.ai has long pioneered (it is, after all, part of their name) and was early to introduce with native features. Calling themselves “the first AI-powered CMS,” they’re staking a bold claim.
In my opinion, being first isn’t what really matters. It’s whether you can deliver tangible value.
A rebrand is, of course, a “throat-clearing” moment for any business. It creates dissonance in the market, rippling with energy and signaling a change in strategy. When it’s done right, it can become a beachhead for growth, and that’s precisely what Kontent.ai is aiming to do: lead in this new era and strengthen its market position in a sea of sameness.
There’s a lot I can say about this new brand, but one thing that stood out for me was the stark visual style, crystallized by a “crystalline” treatment of text – from the new logo to the H1 on the website. The use of fragmented color within the lettering instantly evoked a kaleidoscopic sensibility, like a stained-glass window reflecting the diversity of content and experiences.
For me, it’s a subtle reference to the nature of omnichannel, and how Kontent.ai is delivering it. Juxtaposed against the stark black background of the template, it creates an undeniable contrast and simplicity that helps it rise above the noise.
Well done.
Let’s unpack more of the details.
Delivering insights and AI acceleration with Mission Control
As the company’s press release notes, content has become a strategic asset in a digital-first world. As such, organizations are putting more emphasis – and pressure – on the performance of their content operations. This includes the need to distribute hyper-relevant, targeted, and localized content to global audiences in real time across a multitude of channels and devices.
Speed is also a critical factor. Brands can’t afford to lose time to market, but trust is creating friction as regulatory and compliance requirements continue to reshape the data privacy landscape. These realities have presented an opportunity for Kontent.ai to project a new vision to the market, with a focus on how AI is having a transformative effect on content ops.
This is where Kontent.ai’s Mission Control lifts off. It’s a first-of-its-kind solution that provides organizations with total visibility over all their content operations. This is delivered through key insights into workflow efficiency, team performance, author workload, and other variables – all designed to help content teams take action to improve their processes and outcomes.
“We don’t position this release as a ‘rebrand’ only. We believe we are entering the new era of content management and we’re ready to lead it.”
Mission Control leverages Kontent.ai’s AI capabilities, helping to accelerate authoring, localization, translation, legal review, and ongoing maintenance and governance of content. As Vojtech shared, all of this functionality was piloted and proven around real-world use cases.
“Mission Control was developed in close collaboration with our customers over the last six months, and it has been a tremendous success,” he said. “All of the reports and insights were specifically designed based on the actual needs of our clients. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Our customers appreciate that Mission Control is not just another analytics tool. Instead, it provides unique insights that cannot be gained elsewhere, clearly demonstrating the ROI of their content operations. This tailored approach ensures that the tool is genuinely effective and valuable for our users.”
I was intrigued by the “legal review” capacity mentioned in the press release. I asked Vojtech how Mission Control’s tooling was able to automate and deliver on this with granular detail.
“Mission Control currently works as a tracker, so it will show timing of the legal review stage and identify potential blockers in the particular [workflow] stage or with a specific content writer,” he explained. “In future versions of Mission Control, the AI will surface intelligent suggestions for action. The idea is that we will combine our AI features with Mission Control capabilities, hence the platform will be able to catch errors at the edit/creation stage – and the impact will be fewer failures later at the legal or brand review stage.”
Solving gaps in content management
On its new website, Kontent.ai showcases some compelling metrics around customer success. This is being achieved by more centralized access to data insights, the introduction of AI accelerators across the content value chain, and tight governance.
The key metrics include streamlined processes that have resulted in an 80% decrease in content administration costs, a 286% increase in customer engagement, and an ROI of 320% or more.
Not too shabby – and even worthy of a “wow.”
In case you’re looking for validation, the ROI was calculated independently by Forrester in a study with Kontent.ai’s enterprise clients, taking multiple perspectives into account like net new business, reduced operating expenses, and increased productivity and efficiency.
The customer engagement figure reflects key results from one Kontent.ai’s customers, Australian Wine. The benefits honed in on publishing speed and flexibility around serving structured content to multiple websites.
Launching a new brand in a crowded market space
I’ve already covered some reaction to the messaging and visual components, but the company’s press release provides some additional context, describing it as “refreshingly plain-spoken” with a focus on real customer stories featuring quantifiable outcomes.
A review of the site definitely substantiates that, and the elevated focus on testimonials with real metrics is a welcome shift. As a judge at last year’s MACH Two Impact Awards, I recall the American Bath case study, which went on to win its category; this is just one example of the featured vignettes on the new homepage.
I asked Vojtech for some additional insight into the decision to rebrand at this moment – and what the goals are for the company. First and foremost, he zeroed in on the big market challenges that now exist in divining legacy DXPs from headless vendors.
“The positioning [and] messaging differences between traditional DXPs and modern cloud-based headless CMSs are disappearing,” he said. “[We’re witnessing] DXP players messaging their solutions around headless too, and vice versa some leading headless vendors are pushing the composable DXP message. We want to make it easier for the users – and without any industry jargon, we want to focus with clear and plain language on what we believe modern content management should look like.”
Vojtech also explained that the Kontent.ai rebrand was long overdue, harkening back to its spinoff from Kentico. Back then, they had only a few weeks to pull together a complete brand. Given the shift in messaging and the introduction of Mission Control, this seemed like a good time to “take it to the next level” and introduce a brand that is more ownable, unique, and strongly differentiated.
The new website experience is the central expression of the new brand. As Vojtech explained, it was an opportunity to tell their story through the customers’ stories.
“We believed that there is a better way to do an enterprise software website,” he added. “Almost all CMS vendors’ websites look the same these days, and ultimately, we wanted to help users self-discover our product on the web even before talking to us. With this new generation of buyers, we believe the way people buy enterprise software will change, too – and we want to be ready.”
This shift in the buying motion is something the press release mentioned, but I wanted to go a little deeper. To that end, I asked Vojtech if we could expect changes that simplify and streamline the Kontent.ai buy flow. As it turns out, that’s precisely the goal: to ease the experience for prospects and minify the complex and lengthy sales process. They’re taking organizational measures to deliver on this.
“We just established a new product and content team – merging product marketing, customer education, and content team into one department – to make sure everyone is 100% aligned, and we produce all the content with a focus on our prospects and users.”
They’re also working on a new concept called “FastPath” that’s in the prototyping phase. The feature will enable users to go from content ideation to a basic production-ready website in minutes, and significantly accelerate user adoption by reducing the learning curve with its headless CMS.
Why it matters
A rebrand – particularly for tech companies – is a bit like walking a tightrope. Without the right balance of messaging and visual expression, the whole act can take a spill. And at these moments, there’s a big audience watching below.
Regardless of preparation, the market will draw its own conclusions on the “why.” Sometimes, a rebrand seems like a panacea for other challenges that a company might be experiencing – or even a badly drawn veil obscuring a lack of strategy (we tried everything else… let’s make a new logo!).
I think Kontent.ai has done yeoman’s work of staging the scaffolding for what’s next. By offering a blend of positioning, new product innovation, and visual stimuli, it has laid a solid foundation to build on.
In terms of its AI messaging, I think they’ve hit a home run. We’re well past the phase of novel content generation, and most platforms have achieved parity with their capabilities or introduced third-party tools to make up ground. As I (and others) have always maintained, creators make content in different places. That said, when the editing experience in a CMS is exceptional, it becomes a more attractive starting point – and that’s where native gen AI capabilities like those in Kontent.ai have proven beneficial.
Still, when editors like TinyMCE baked ChatGPT into its WYSIWYG for CMSs (and other tools), it really graduated to table stakes. With Mission Control demonstrating value beyond those basic features, Kontent.ai is stepping up in the value category and injecting automation and acceleration at an operational level. That’s the kind of evolution the market is looking for, and I’m anxious to give it a test drive.
Another key point related to Mission Control is the focus on governance. I mentioned earlier that I talk to new headless CMSs every week – and that’s not an exaggeration. While each tool might offer something unique in the way of UX, functionality, or industry focus, nascent platforms often fall short when it comes to the shifting landscape of security and compliance. It’s one thing to have consent management as part of your dashboard, but enterprises are looking for robust offerings that help ensure secure and trusted experiences.
Since its spinoff from Kentico in 2022, Kontent.ai has had an elevated advantage as a more mature startup, coming from a company that was already addressing deeper regulatory challenges. Couple that knowledge and experience with Mission Control’s accelerated legal review features, and it feels like a potentially significant differentiator.
Finally, a note on the rebrand: we’ve all seen them done successfully and abysmally. Sure, some of the esoteric aspects are open to subjective opinion, and when it comes to visual web design, everyone’s a critic (myself included). There will be those who love and detest certain choices, but you can’t deny the elegance of this new gestalt. It embraces minimalism while delivering a kinetic and dynamic punch of typography and imagery that helps punctuate the customer stories.
If there’s a con, I’m personally not big on that much orange, but it’s certainly a striking choice.
From a UX perspective, I’ve always been a fan of “less is more” with regard to page design. Not just because we tend to read less, but because it reflects a more mobile-conscious mentality. A good test is to see how it behaves on mobile first – then drive it on the desktop. This one works well in both places.
Kontent.ai certainly has a challenging fight ahead. Its headless competitors are hustling to compete in a burgeoning “composable DXP” category, where accouterments like hosting, DAMs, and other resources are becoming part of the loosely coupled puzzle. At the same time, the battle lines are being drawn around AI, and proving the next wave of value is going to be a decisive factor. This is where clarity, brevity, and real-world successes will be instrumental.
A rebrand is worth nothing if it doesn’t stand for something.
Kontent.ai delivered that “something” in abundance.
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