Branding is no different than any other business investment. In the end, it comes down to return on investment.
The challenge is that with branding, ROI can be difficult to measure. You can look at increased sales. You can see an uptick in your social media and digital media analytics. One of the toughest questions to anwers, however, is if an acquisition were to occur, how much precisely is the purchase price affected by branding or even that a deal is in play because of brand investment?
What I can confidently say is that branding can contribute enormously. It can contribute to the possibility of your business being acquired and the value the ownership receives for the business.
Executives constantly question how a re-brand impacts enterprise value and the probability of being acquired. Here are some reasons that should open your eyes to the “why” of re-branding and the impact it can have on your enterprise.
Re-positioning. Through the lens of a rebrand could be a signal to the market that you are now an expert and market leader in the hottest and fastest growing market segments in your industry. This re-positioning exercise makes your business much more attractive.
Internationalization. In some cases re-branding is necessary so that a brand can also be used internationally. This may be because the brand name is too specific to a particular country. In certain countries a brand name may also conjure up the wrong associations. Organizations that sell the same products in several countries but under different brand names are also increasingly opting to use one brand internationally.
Bad Reputation. Bad reputations can have a serious impact on the enterprise value of a company. Re-branding can ensure that negative associations with the brand are forgotten or dispelled, both outside and inside an organization. This is the only way that a branding effort can remove any negative feelings about the brand.
Other reasons to re-brand include an outdated image or visual identity, or when a new CEO is put in place. These business changes usually have a desire to send a signal to the market that this isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile.
Bluetext has had quite a run of helping companies shape their brands as they position for growth and some type of liquidity event.
Some recent branding to acquisition stories can be found here:
Sourcefire Acquired by Cisco for $2.7 Billion (12 months after rebrand launch)
Sourcefire Case Study from Bluetext on Vimeo.
Acentia Acquired by MAXIMUS for $300 Million (4 years after rebrand launch)
Altimeter Acquired by Prophet (18 months after rebrand launch)
We recently launched some exciting re-branding efforts, including Cigital’s following their $50 million capital raise. The live website, the centerpiece of the branding effort can be found here. It will be interesting to see if our recent brand births eventually blossom into great acquisition stories. Are you next to be acquired? Lets talk about your brand and how we can help.
We get a lot of requests from companies of all sizes looking to “rebrand.” These requests can range from changing some colors and messaging, to completely overhauling a brand and website to address a new market or opportunity where the current brand identity may not be sufficient to address emerging corporate goals.
Enterprises across all industries face a lot of tough questions when deciding on the degree of their rebrand. Is the logo in play? Should the company consider a name change? Is there a mascot or other brand element that drives the culture? Have they gotten as far as they can with the current brand? Are there situations whereby they want to enter a new market and their current brand can actually be detrimental to future success?
To answer these questions we combine insights from both inside and outside the corporate walls, as well as the competitive environment and external market factors to define a path forward that helps them achieve their future corporate goals while addressing different budgetary requirements.
Sometimes there are brand elements that are so ingrained in the culture that tough decisions emerge. A great example was the first time we were asked to rebrand Sourcefire. Sourcefire rose to fame with the commercialization of its open source intrusion detection software product Snort in the 2000s. The product included a massive community of loyal and dedicated supporters who were passionate about Snort and its technical capabilities. They helped the company grow in terms of revenues and fame, and were closely aligned with the company’s mascot Snorty the Pig.
Snorty the pig was always associated with the brand, and all marketing materials including an annual calendar were very popular across the IT security community.
They engaged the Bluetext team to drive legitimacy for the company and brand as they looked to diversify their revenue base into Government. This was a new audience and there was a feeling that the Snort Pig mascot and company attitude would not play well. Following a thorough discovery process our recommendation was to tone down Snorty without eliminating him from their marketing efforts. Our goal was to present the brand as more stable and conservative. The results were tremendous. When they came back to us three years later to rebrand again, Snorty was playing a significantly less prominent role but they continued to leverage the pig in ways to embrace the old while expanding into new markets. The rest for Sourcefire is history as they were sold for $2.7 billion to Cisco in 2013.
The lessons learned from Sourcefire are quite valuable. Many factors need to be assessed to measure the value of your brand equity with your current and prospective customers, including search equity, brand equity and association, and name recognition. If your current customers are loyal and you are in a position of strength with them, but you need help entering a new market, they should understand the reasons for the rebrand and what it means to them without disrupting their relationship with you.
As brands mature, what has gotten them to one point may not be the best path to get to the next level. Many factors should be addressed. Weigh the pros and cons, and don’t make judgments based on gut. Look at the market, assess the opportunity, and make sure to give your brand the best chance at long term success. While you may be succeeding in many categories, it is possible that you have to take a step back in order to move forward. Here are six questions that must be answered when embarking on a “rebrand” effort:
1. How will this rebrand impact current customers?
2. Have you taken this brand as far as it can go?
3. How will your current brand play with prospective customers in new or adjacent markets?
4. Have you thoroughly analyzed the market to see what the outside world thinks about our brand and market positioning?
5. Are you positioning around how customers search for and consume products or services, or how you internally orient your business?
6. Do you want to zag if all of your competitors zig?
A rebrand effort can come in many shapes and sizes. Make sure you do a thorough assessment of your needs and growth opportunities, as it is critical to never disrupt your business as you embrace the market through a rebranding effort.
This is part 1 of a 5 part series by Bluetext about innovation in marketing and communications.
Before hurling yourself into a production and budget battlefield to get that amazing video shot for your next campaign or brand asset, marketing commandoes now have a variety of tiny, toss-able reconnaissance robots they can hurl into any business or consumer use case as it follows you around and keeps your brand battling above its weight class.
For challenger brands without the resources of a major real estate marketer or major retailer etc, they can now have million dollar footage integrated in their marketing mix of assets for amazingly low cost.
These tactical flying robots have gained a ton of traction within the marketing world as of late for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that any time you send a robot to execute an expensive and trick task, you’re not sending a human. And that is scalable and cost effective. Traditionally robots are generally complicated, fickle machines packing a lot of moving parts. They often require on the ground pilot operators to undergo special training just to learn how to use them and fly them everytime. Not this technology, toss and follow. Really amazing technology and solution.
Removing the pilot and giving this new paint brush to the creative minds in marketing departments and their partner agencies will really improve the experiences we will start to see as this innovation sinks into the millions of brand messages we see a day.
At Bluetext we work with many companies that can benefit from this kind of technology. For example, in our real estate practice, we see many of our clients like JLL, Kettler and HomeVisit to leverage this kind of technology to deliver better more impactful imagery to deliver their product and service to market.
Interested in being innovative with your brand, marketing or communications? Talk to Bluetext
As business grows, driving innovation can be challenging. Bluetext recently developed this mascot character to inspire one of our clients to drive innovation and promote an innovative spirit across its global client projects.
Bluetext named her Ana-Vation – a female spin on the key phrase Innovation.
Bluetext loves these kind of creative challenges. We see companies like consulting firms and government contractors that need to find ways of driving innovation as employee de-centralization and work on client sites can be a cultural challenge.
Here are some ideas to drive innovation in your marketing, branding, and overall cultural efforts:
- Be easygoing.
- Hire for culture.
- Bring on people who love the work they do.
- Build a diverse workforce.
- Manage innovation in a transparent methodical fashion.
- Schedule time for brainstorming.
- Tolerate and expect mistakes.
This week, just in time for its Global Sales Conference in Orlando, Bluetext client CSC (NYSE: CSC) launched its redesigned, fully responsive website. This was an incredible collaboration that the Bluetext team is so pleased to have been involved with from the beginning.
As one of our largest clients, CSC is always pushing Bluetext to think outside the box to get more creative and push the limits for the global brand. Over the past year we have collaborated on several exciting projects including their Digital Briefing Center (http://www.csc.com/digital_briefing_center/aut/110681-digital_briefing_center) and their Manufacturing industry go to market web experience (www.csc.com/OM).
Last fall we proactively approached them to highlight several areas of their corporate website that we believed could evolve. I guess it is just in our nature to try and proactively look at our clients key marketing channels and make recommendations to push them out of their comfort zone in ways that we feel could be executed more flawlessly.
Our client Nick Panayi, Head of Global Brand & Digital Marketing for CSC, spearheaded this effort and had this to say:
The thing I value the most in Bluetext as a true partner is that they don’t tell us what we want to hear, but what they truly think is needed with solutions ready. You cannot teach an agency to do that. That is in the DNA of the agency. And once you find that, my recommendation is to keep that agency around for a long time.
The new fully responsive website design centers around the key technology focus areas that CSC is driving solutions for into market. Big beautiful imagery and clear calls to action, all aligned with cross industry brand efforts are hallmarks of the new site. We worked with their in-house development team to integrate many modern techniques, including a snap navigation for a seamless browsing experience and a smart lazy loading strategy for fast browsing.
The launch of the new csc.com is the first phase in a multi-phase rollout for CSC with new phases rolling out in the coming weeks. We are very proud of our partnership with CSC.
Working at a Washington DC digital agency that works with brands spanning the largest, most cautious Fortune 500 companies to the most speedy of start-ups disrupting every corner of Earth, we need to back up our creative and marketing recommendations with stats. Here are some that stats could arm you in your next planning phase, ranging from user experience design to marketing promotion and branding.
WHO ARE YOU BROWSING FOR?
The latest stats are in from the US Government on Browser and device usage. Plan your next website user experience design based on these stats as well as the stats from your analytic application.
WHAT DID THAT ICON SAY?
According to ScienceDaily’s recent study, Icons need to tell something very clearly or face horrible usability issues with your user experience.
The recent report asked users to look at an icon and try to avoid thinking of both the word of that image, as well as how many letters that word had (for example, a subject is told to look at a iPhone and not think “iPhone” or think “6,” the number of letters in the word). Nearly 80% of people could not stop themselves from “sub-speaking” the word in their head and only 50% could stop themselves from saying the number of letters in the word. Stopping the brain from making associations in the subconscious is nearly impossible, which makes it extremely important to ensure that visual icons and representations are completely recognizable and aren’t easily confused by the user to have another meaning.
Placement of icons should not just be for visual effect. It can actually aid your user without making them think at all. It’s important that you choose the right icons as well, because you don’t want to trigger an automatic association from your user about something unrelated to the purpose of the icon.
DO YOU PERSUADE WITH VIDEO?
A recent User Experience Dynamic study by SearchEngineWatch shows that 73% of people will convert to the sites desired action when they enhance their user experience design with video.
HAVE YOU JOURNEYED BELOW THE FOLD?
Countless recent studies are showing that almost every user (yup over 99%!) these days are scrolling below the fold. Be adventurous and think of the user experience taking place on a tall dynamic canvas.
GOT SHARES?
Facebook continues to be the most widely used social channel for sharing. It gained 8.2% share and made up 81% of all shares in Q4. Sharing activity by email also increased, but it still only represents about 1% of total share volume. Looking at the channel distribution of sharing on mobile, Facebook edges out the competition even further. Facebook activity jumped 51% from last year and now represents 85% of mobile sharing activity. Pinterest and Twitter have also gained traction on mobile.
Force 3 is one of the fastest growing network security services and solutions company servicing the Federal Government with revenues of more than one billion dollars annually. When it’s brand, messaging and website needed an update it turned to Bluetext. We added a fresh set of colors and a new design with the sensation of motion to the logo, a theme that plays out across the website. We also created an animated introduction that uses the color palette to draw the visitor into the site.
The new website is infused with search engine optimization so that Force 3 comes up when customers are searching for network security solutions. One of the company’s key differentiators is the expertise and passion of its team of experts. That message is persistent across the site.
The imagery is clean and modern on each page.The new brand design plays out not only on the website, but in collateral, iconography, and a new trade show booth. It delivers a brand that is in tune with today’s government customer and differentiates their offering and value from competitors.
When it was announced that Reston-based Maximus Inc. signed a definitive agreement to buy Acentia for $300 million, I must admit I got a little teary eyed.
Acentia (formerly called ITSolutions) selected Bluetext following a very competitive search to do a full rebranding effort, from name to logo to corporate identity to messaging to website to videos to launch, etc.
Todd’s challenge was hefty – he had to unify a brand across nine diverse companies (not an uncommon issue in Federal Contracting) to create a brand that would enable his company to be acquisitive and get in the game as a mid-size contractor.
This was one of our first major rebranding assignments since founding Bluetext and turned out to be an incredible project for us, working with Todd Stottlemyer and his entire management team.
If you have ever had a chance to work with Todd, his passion and commitment to excellence are second to none, and he pushed us to create work which we are still proud of today.
We spent weeks developing a name and message that not only was powerful but truly reflected the focus on his people. When the tagline was selected, Essential to the Mission, it became a rallying cry that pulled together employees, created a sense of purpose for the company and its brand, and became the theme for the company’s first advertising campaign we developed which highlighted historic people like Jackie Robinson and Clara Barton who were essential to their mission.
As my partner Jason Siegel pointed out to me last night, this is first company we named as Bluetext that is now off the market. It is a great feeling for our entire team knowing that our efforts helped them achieve their goals. Here is a link to a testimonial from Todd following the successful rebrand effort – http://bluetext.com/acentia-ceo-todd-stottlemyer-on-bluetext/
Trade associations that represent the interests of and provide services for their members, be they large companies and organizations or individuals, all face the challenge of retaining their current members every year, growing their member base and reaching non-members who may be involved in the policy or business arenas. Competition among associations is fierce. Even without competitive pressures, it’s not always easy to convince individuals, organizations, small business or large corporations to devote resources and pay fees to an industry association year-after-year. They not only have to see the value, they need to feel part of the group and believe that it is looking out for their interests and providing them the services they want.
With industry associations as with other organizations, the website is the hub of activity for members and others who want to know about the group and its issues. Too often, the hub is ignored because it’s not viewed as central to the mission of the group. We think a strong website is essential, because that is the first place that any target audience is going to look for information. Bluetext has helped dozens of industry and membership organizations leverage their web presence to better recruit and retain their members, grow their revenues and maintain a close relationship with their constituents. Here are our top five tips:
Make It Engaging. Compelling website design and graphics are extremely important to reach those key audiences and to keep them interacting with the site. First impressions are important, and if the design doesn’t resonate, the visitor may leave quickly without engaging. A tired or out-of-date design signals that the association may not have the resources or digital savvy to have a modern and fresh look and feel. The design should also allow the visitor to find a wide range of information that spans their interests. Visitors come to association sites not to purchase a specific product, but to learn about a variety of topics, policy issues, and services that are relevant to them. Burying that information under layers of tabs may lose the target audience. A responsive design is a must, as more and more individuals are accessing the sites through mobile and tablet devices. We also recommend longer scrolls as visitors swipe to navigate the screen, rather than waiting for a new page to refresh as they move about the site.
Make It Personal. This should be fairly obvious, but it is surprising how many membership organizations and trade groups fail to highlight their own members. Why is this important? Because individuals need to be able to relate to the other people in the organization, to understand the types of people who are also part of the group and what value they get from their dues. Not only does this draw in new members, but it also serves to “humanize” the organization by putting faces and stories on what otherwise might seem like a faceless group.
We recommend setting up a section on the website that is full of videos and scrapbook-type photos of members and their families. For Forest America, which represents the nation’s private forest owners, we set up a section called “Caretakers” on its website, with profiles of dozens of landowners and their families who are part of the organization. To capture the footage, we take a video crew to their annual meetings and film them during breaks telling their stories—with other family members at their side. We add in photos that they send us and any other materials that help tell a personal story. The Caretakers section serves three important functions:
1) It shows visitors to the site, including policymakers and other organizations, the human faces that comprise the organization;
2) It helps with recruitment, as other private forest landowners see that they can be part of the team; and
3) It energizes current members, who love to see their colleagues and friends—and their own families—in a scrapbook setting.
Give Them The Tools They Need. Members are busy, so any shortcuts that make their lives easier are welcome. For the Society of Human Resource Management, a membership organization that includes thousands of human resources executives, retention was suffering due to the economic downturn. HR directors needed an easy way to convince their CEOs that membership in SHRM paid valuable dividends in training and resources for their annual fees. Rather than their typical request for approval, which might be shuffled to the bottom of the in-box, we built a tool for members that with just a little bit of information would create a compelling brief presentation to be send to their top executives. The deck, which explains the value of joining or renewing their membership, was far more likely to get the attention and approval of the boss. After launching the new tool, SHRM saw its renewals increase dramatically.
Make It Easy. Not only do members appreciate better tools, they need easy ways to take action and interact with the organization. Having persistent Calls-To-Action across every page of the site is essential to get the type of engagement that demonstrates value for the organization. In some cases, those Calls-To-Action can be as simple as “Join Now.” But for advocacy sites, having a sophisticated application built-in that can send a tailored email or letter to a Member of Congress or a regulatory agency serves many purposes.
First and foremost, individuals will contact policymakers only if it’s a relatively simple process. Most do not have the time to write a note to their Congressmen, nor do they know the issues well-enough. In addition, they might have no idea how to find the right policy-maker and obtain their email or physical address. We have installed a number of effective applications for associations that take the burden off of the member. By filling out, for example, their zip code, these tools can auto-populate a letter with the correct Member of Congress and address, and offer a “Mad Lib” draft where certain fields can easily be completed.
Build In Engagement. There are excellent new tools to engage visitors to the site. The first is obvious: Make social sharing persistent on every page and section of the site. Whenever a visitor sees anything they like—a position paper, an infographic, a video or a blog post—encourage them to push that around to their larger network.
Another tool that we have implemented in a number of sites is a Tweet-Builder—a tool that poses a topic and then invites the visit to complete a tweet, with recommended hashtags that can be included. That tweet then goes in real-time into the associations Twitter Stream.
The benefits of this tool are that it encourages the visitor to participate while helping to populate the social media arena. It also gives an incentive for that person to follow the group on social media, and to broadcast posts out to their larger community.
A third tool that we implemented is a polling functionality—that poses questions on the site in the form of polling questions, and then displays the results on that same page. Designed to resemble a Pinterest Page, polling tools invite participation and give the visitor a reason to keep coming back to the site. This is one that we built for a media company that publishes a variety of sportsmen-focused magazines.
