If you think the start of a new year is the perfect time for a “rebirth”, you haven’t met Texas-based entrepreneur and NAWBO Houston member Tanika Vital-Pringle. Her business helps other women business owners to rebirth their brands in exciting, strategic ways all year long.
“For me, rebirth is about change,” says this founder and chief brand strategist of Brand Rebirth, a purpose-driven brand consulting and virtual learning agency. “It’s important that people embrace change. It drives improvement and leads to a new period of growth for their brand.”
And she would know—because she’s done it again and again during her years in business. Tanika launched her first company Vital Creative International, Inc. in 2005 and successfully ran it for three years before a consulting opportunity with global energy and petrochemical leader Royal Dutch Shell turned into a 10-year corporate career in global brand management, marketing and communications.
“I always knew I would return here,” she says. “When I started working with them, I was a single person who spoke three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese) and promised myself I would leave the country every year for the rest of my life. I loved to travel and wanted to continue globe-trotting for a multi-national top brand. I taught marketing at the University of Houston in the evenings as an adjunct professor in this era too because I enjoyed teaching. I also wanted to learn from the best and then come back and share those learnings to organizations who are in greater need.”
One of the things Tanika discovered about herself along the way is a passion for working with other entrepreneurs, particularly women since she saw that 99 percent of the world’s top brands are owned by men. When Tanika became pregnant with her first child after years of trying to conceive and was still traveling the world as she worked to launch a new brand for a Royal Dutch Shell start-up company/line of business, she knew it was time to follow this passion.
“I felt like I had achieved everything in the corporate space (as an employee) after successfully developing and executing the brand strategy as head of brand, Shell Polymers and leading my team to receive the ‘Best B2B Brand Campaign’ award for Royal Dutch Shell on a global scale, which was recognized by the CEO. Hence, I wanted to have more work-life balance and control of the people who came into my path,” Tanika explains. “The biggest challenge was leaving the security of a salary with a growing toddler.”
Tanika came full circle in 2019 when she returned to entrepreneurship and defined her company purpose—“to boldly unleash authenticity in individuals and companies”—and hasn’t looked back. While she didn’t realize it at the time, the name she chose for her boutique consulting agency, Brand Rebirth, speaks volumes about Tanika too. “It was a rebirth of facing my fears and redefining success for me in my life so that I could live and work on purpose in a Christian environment,” she says.
Today, Tanika is loving consulting with companies and organizations on building “Brand Rebirth Brand Pyramids”—including everything from their purpose, core values, value proposition, prevision, brand personality and brand promise—and then achieving total actualization of their brands.
Additionally, she is launching two digital ventures this month: an e-book called Four Hacks to Rebirth Your Brand: Preparing Femmepreneurs and Female Intrapreneurs Around the World to Thrive in the 4th Industrial Revolution (click for complimentary e-book download) and Rebirth U. Rebirth U is Brand Rebirth’s digital learning university of brand and professional development with eight masterclasses that focus on helping femmepreneurs (and women within companies) who want to level up on their brand knowledge and impact. These are based on Tanika’s experiences and trials over the course of her 20-year career as well as knowledge gained from Columbia Business School’s Executive Education program on Brand Leadership, a Global MBA in International Brand Management from Thunderbird, The Global School of Management and B.B.A. in International Management from Howard University.
“Many times, when you take branding or marketing courses, the focus is solely on enterprises developed by men, but I’ll be also talking about the ‘23 and Mes’, ‘Farmgirl Flowers’ and ‘Yswaras’ of the world,” she says. “I’ve been intentional in making sure that female successes are included, analyzed and benchmarked.”
Tanika is surrounding herself with successful women in other ways, too. She came across NAWBO while launching Brand Rebirth and researching certification since her previous agency was a certified women’s business enterprise. “NAWBO came up and I was so refreshed to see it was a community,” shares Tanika, who attended her first in-person event prior to the pandemic. “I just liked the vibe in the room,” she says. “I was a little intimidated but everyone I sat with engaged with me and seemed sincere and authentic. I didn’t want to walk away.”
And for Tanika, NAWBO is no doubt yet another way to show other women business owners how rebirthing their brands can lead to exciting periods of growth!