When the stars fall smartly into alignment with a new brand, it can elevate the organization to new heights. For Integrity Applications, a government contractor comprised of three of the leading companies in space, intelligence, cyber, the stars became a main focus of the rebrand. It turned to Bluetext to develop a new name, messaging, and brand that would represent the value that it brings to its U.S. government customers in the intelligence and national security community.

The company had several significant challenges that needed to be overcome, the first of which is that it works primarily in a sector where the programs are very sensitive and highly classified. Second, a primary goal for the brand is recruiting a talented team with advanced skills in software engineering as well as all elements of STEM. And third, it needed to stand out as a prime contractor in a crowded field of competitors.

Bluetext employed an extensive discovery and research process that included In-Depth-Interviews (IDIs) with top experts and executives across the company to define the specific attributes that make the organization unique. Our goal was to define what ties together the missions that the company supports. After interviewing senior executives across the organization, we conducted a separate set of IDIs with newly hired recruits to understand what made them choose the company for their careers. The focus on space became a key component in our process. We also talked to a number of veteran employees to understand what made them stay and what was important to their longer-term careers, a crucial component of the new brand story and recruiting materials. Using the results of these interviews together with competitive analyses and additional research, we created a messaging platform that recognizes its strong commitment to space as a key part of its legacy as well as its biggest opportunity for growth.

Employee engagement was a critical element in the process, especially given the competition to attract the best candidates with the technical skills and security clearances required by government customers. Once the new brand was approved, team members across the company were asked to participate in the brand launch through parties, branded clothing, contests, and a variety of other engaging activities. We also created a “Brand Essence” video to help tell the story.

Because of its interest in and focus on space, we also wanted to capture the hopes and vision that space exploration suggests. The result was the new brand Centauri. Centauri, from the star system Alpha Centauri, is the closest star system to Earth. And, like the company, it is composed of the brightest stars in the sky. It also has always been used as a navigation guide throughout history. We believed that because of these associations, Centauri was a great fit for the brand.

Once the name was approved, we turned to the corporate visual identity. Bluetext designed a cutting-edge look and feel for Centauri that sets it apart from the competition. Written in a custom lowercase typeface, the Centauri logo is modern and approachable with a unique icon representing the stars that make up the Centauri constellation. The star pattern around the logo became the basis for texture and patterns across collateral and the website.

We then turned to the website. Centauri’s new website incorporates all of the brand’s new elements, ensuring consistent brand identity and a strong web presence. Bluetext designed a site and user experience that prioritizes recruitment.

With the brand in place and the website launched, we introduced Centauri to the market through a series of media interviews with key vertical trade publications. Offering details and interviews with CEO Dave Dzaran in advance to key target outlets under an embargo agreement, we were able to shape the initial launch coverage to focus on Centauri’s growth strategy as it continues to acquire new capabilities for its customers.

 

For Centauri, with the help of Bluetext, the stars aligned for a bright new brand and a successful launch.

Interested in Refreshing Your Company’s Brand? Learn How Bluetext Can Help!

How digital media is delivered and received by consumers will continue to evolve in 2019. Privacy will be an even bigger issue for audiences. More publicity around Facebook and Google about how individuals are targeted, how their information is shared (and sold), and how they believe they are being manipulated will continue to take a toll on their online behavior. Amazon’s entrance to the digital media market will only compound these concerns.

To give a little bit of context, according to eMarketer, more than $46 billion was to be spent on programmatic advertising in the United States by the end of 2018, an increase exceeding 33 percent – or about $10 billion more than 2017. More than four-out-of-five digital display ads in this country will be bought via automated channels.

However, issues of consumer privacy are changing online behavior, as individuals move away from banner ads that follow them from site-to-site. Already, we have seen click-through rates from banner ads plummet. We expect consumers in 2019 not only to shy away even farther from banner ads but also to enlist ad blockers to keep them out altogether. As a result, marketing campaigns will move to other more strategic platforms, and especially to LinkedIn for its content and influencer marketing programs.

This mostly will be  fine with many brands, as transparency into the media-purchasing process becomes more of an issue. It is almost impossible with digital ads to verify how many dollars in media spend are going to ad inventory versus overhead. This is new to digital media, as print and broadcast ads can be seen and evaluated. In addition, the negative publicity about brands whose ads show up on controversial websites will also drive marketers to other digital media approaches.

According to eMarketer, of the nearly $19 billion in additional ad dollars that will be spent on programmatic display between 2018 and 2020, most will be targeted to private setups such as private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct transactions. Platforms such as LinkedIn may be more expensive than online display, but that price comes with the confidence that it is being spent on the right audiences who aren’t blocking them.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

For part four of our Top Marketing Trends 2019 series, we now turn to digital media campaigns and trends that we expect to see in 2019 based on what we are seeing today. Privacy, transparency, and confidence will have a significant impact on how digital media is leveraged for successful campaigns in the coming year.

How digital media is delivered and received by consumers will continue to evolve in 2019. Privacy will be an even bigger issue for audiences; more publicity around Facebook and Google about how individuals are targeted, how their information is shared (and sold), and how they believe they are being manipulated will continue to take a toll on their online behavior. Amazon’s entrance to the digital media market will only compound these concerns.

To give a little bit of context, according to eMarketer, more than $46 billion will be spent on programmatic advertising in the United States by the end of 2018, an increase exceeding 33 percent – or about $10 billion more than last year. More than four-out-of-five digital display ads in this country will be bought via automated channels.

However, issues of consumer privacy are changing online behavior, as individuals move away from banner ads that follow them from site-to-site. Already, we have seen click-through rates from banner ads plummet. We expect consumers in 2019 not only to shy away even further from banner ads but also to enlist ad blockers to keep them out altogether. As a result, marketing campaigns will move to other more strategic platforms, and especially to LinkedIn for its content and influencer marketing programs.

This will be mostly fine with many brands, as transparency into the media-purchasing process becomes more of an issue. It is almost impossible with digital ads to verify how many dollars in media spend are going to ad inventory versus overhead. This is new to digital media, as print and broadcast ads can be seen and evaluated. In addition, the negative publicity about brands whose ads show up on controversial websites will also drive marketers to other digital media approaches.

According to eMarketer, of the nearly $19 billion in additional ad dollars that will be spent on programmatic display between 2018 and 2020, most will be targeted to private setups such as private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct transactions. Platforms such as LinkedIn may be more expensive than online display, but that price comes with the confidence that it is being spent on the right audiences who aren’t blocking them.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

As part three of our Top Marketing Trends 2019 series, with this post, we are focusing on the look and usability of one a brand’s most valuable marketing and revenue asset – the website. Here are our top website design trends for 2019, culled from our insights into the market, feedback from clients, and discussions with top marketing industry experts.

  1. Expect a bold new look from many top brands. Bright colors are in because of its ability to draw attention quickly. And in today’s crowded online market, the competition is fierce to stand out from the crowd. Beyond its power to stand out, brands are more willing to be seen as a bold organization. As a result, we are seeing more clients wanting to boldly take risks with color variations, blends, and saturation.
  2. Typography will follow this trend. Look for bolder typography with large fonts that dominate the page. Expect to see less of the cursive style and thin lines, and more fonts that allow letters to clear, obvious, and thick. Brands will be better able to express themselves with a bolder style.
  3. Look for more custom illustrations. It’s hard to stand out from your competitors when everyone is using similar stock photos. Customers gravitate towards brands that are authentic and appear confident in the market, and stock photos are neither. Customer illustrations give a brand a platform to express itself, tell its story and differentiate itself in the market.
  4. Integrated animations will help improve navigation. This trend will continue at high speed in 2019. Also called micro-animations, these features can both grab users attention and guide them on their journey through the website by showing them that they are in the right place and that they’ve taken the intended action.
  5. Mobile first design. Okay, we’ve been saying this for several years now, but it’s even more important. According to a recent report from Google, “Every day, people are becoming more reliant on their smartphones to help make last-minute purchases or spur-of-the-moment decisions. In fact, smartphone users are 50% more likely to expect to purchase something immediately while using their smartphone compared to a year ago.”

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

ManTech, a multi-billion-dollar public company that provides technology services to the U.S. government, had the challenge to elevate its online presence and continue its competitive position in the crowded Federal government marketplace. To achieve its goal, ManTech selected Bluetext to take its brand to the next level and transform its online presence – all to meet tight deadlines in less than 6 months.

Bluetext designed a fresh, bold look and feel that embodies ManTech’s cutting-edge capabilities and sets the company apart within its industry. The designs and collateral made thoughtful use of ManTech’s color palette, balancing the brand’s vibrant red tones with whitespace. The use of dynamic motion throughout the visual identity showcases ManTech’s innovation and adaptability, always moving forward to meet the evolving technological needs of the government.

Part of the project included a new website. ManTech and Bluetext worked together to design, architect, and develop a fully responsive site with an enhanced user experience. The intuitive, well-organized design drives users to their needs quickly and functions as a lead-generation tool. The new site also provides a new experience to recruits with a seamless integration of job application workflow, allowing prospects to quickly search and filter jobs relevant to their specific interests and experience.

The site was built on a Drupal 8 CMS platform to provide the flexibility and scalability the large enterprise needs to support its digital marketing initiatives. The team conducted a comprehensive content overhaul and developed a strategic SEO plan to make ManTech.com an organic SEO over-achiever. The ManTech marketing team is now empowered to “own” its digital platform and market to its users, no longer requiring the involvement of the development team.

One of the key aspects that sets ManTech’s new site apart is the use of motion. As one of the final components of the project, Bluetext produced a series of videos for the website, weaving ManTech’s suite of capabilities into one cohesive and powerful story. These videos highlight ManTech’s mission-driven brand while educating potential customers on its world-class solutions.

Click here to see more examples of the ManTech project, or learn how Bluetext can help your organization elevate its brand and online presence.

As we recently wrote, Bluetext has been selected as a finalist for the 2018 Acquia Engage Awards in the category of “Lightning in a Bottle”. The Acquia Engage Awards recognize the world-class digital experiences that organizations are building with the Acquia Platform.

More than 100 submissions were received from Acquia customers and partners, from which 43 were selected as finalists. Nominations that demonstrated an advanced level functionality, integration, performance (results and key performance indicators), and overall user experience advanced to the finalist round, where an outside panel of experts will select the winning projects.

A sneak peak of the project:

As a leader in technology services and digital transformation, Mindtree must not only provide a website as a sales tool, but also act as a testament to the brand and its mission. In April 2017, Mindtree approached Bluetext with the goal of reimagining, redesigning, and re-platforming its self-hosted Drupal 7 website, with 10 unique page templates, 1800+ pages, and 700+ blogs in under six months. Mindtree, in partnership with Bluetext and Acquia, was able to achieve a complete digital transformation and launch a scalable digital platform in less than 6 months through the strategic partnership.

The Acquia Platform provided tremendous value for operationalizing the development workflow to gain efficiencies. When paired with Acquia’s Build and Launch Tool and Acquia Lightning, it takes the time savings to a new level. Acquia Lightning provides a starter kit that is geared towards content editing and workflow.

More information about the Awards:

Winners will be announced on October 24, 2018, ahead of this year’s Acquia Engage Conference, which will be held in Austin, Texas, from November 7-9, 2018.

“Acquia partners and customers are tackling the biggest challenges facing marketers, developers, and digital teams,” said Joe Wykes, senior vice president, global channels and commerce at Acquia. “This year’s Acquia Engage Award nominees show what’s possible when open technology and boundless ambition come together to create elegant, world-class customer experiences. They’re making every customer interaction more meaningful with powerful, personalized experiences that span the web, mobile devices, voice assistants, and more. Their work is inspiring, and we’re proud to recognize their accomplishments.”

The Acquia Experience Platform offers a suite of technologies for easily building digital experiences at scale, across the web, mobile sites, native applications, voice assistants and more. The platform allows businesses to manage the deployment and iteration of those experiences in the cloud, and intelligently optimize how they are tailored for specific audiences using machine learning.  

The full list of finalists for the 2018 Acquia Engage Awards are posted to Acquia’s website.

About Mindtree

Mindtree is a leader in technology services and digital transformation. Mindtree delivers digital transformation and technology services from ideation to execution, enabling Global 2000 clients to outperform the competition. “Born digital,” Mindtree takes an agile, collaborative approach to creating customized solutions across the digital value chain. To learn more, visit mindtree.com

About Acquia

Acquia is the open source digital experience company. Acquia provides the world’s most ambitious brands with technology that allows them to embrace innovation and create customer moments that matter. Acquia believes in the power of community – giving their customers the freedom to build tomorrow on their terms. To learn more, visit acquia.com.

Learn How Bluetext Can Help Your Brand with a Great Platform Experience.

Acquia, the leading hosting and support company for Drupal open-source content management systems, has named Bluetext as a finalist in its 2018 awards for best digital marketing firms and website design. Acquia chose Bluetext for its work with Mindtree.com, one of the global leaders in digital transformation and technology services. Bluetext created a revitalized digital brand, a new website user experience, and a state-of-the-art Drupal content management platform for Mindtree.

Acquia considered more than 100 submissions from top digital marketing firms for its annual award. Among the factors it evaluated for for its best digital marketing companies and websites were client projects that demonstrated an advanced level functionality, integration, and performance, including the results and key performance indicators for each site. Acquia also evaluated overall user experience for each website.  Acquia called the breadth of submissions “inspiring…  and continues to affirm that Acquia’s partners and customers are setting the precedent for exceptional digital experiences.”

For the new Mindtree.com, Bluetext developed an intuitive, fully responsive user-experience that leverages personalization to serve relevant content to each user. The site was built on a Drupal 8 CMS platform to provide the flexibility and scalability that a large enterprise needs to support its digital marketing initiatives. Best of all, the web design reflects the vibrancy of the brand and its employees, a specific goal of the brand.

Bluetext and the website will be featured during Acquia’s annual Engage conference, where the best digital marketing companies and the foremost leaders in digital will take center stage to share their insights, revelations, and lessons learned in the quest to deliver best-in-class customer experiences.

Learn how Bluetext can deliver a great user-experience for your brand.

Has your CMS become a drag on your organization? One of the most frequently-asked questions we get in conversations with clients is, “Should I upgrade my Content Management System?”.  As trends in marketing evolve, so do the feature sets of tools used by marketers. As your CMS begins to show its age, the costs of keeping it up to date and adding enhanced functionality increases.

For many technical, marketing and IT teams, a clunky CMS, or one that they have simply outgrown, can mean lost opportunities to update and management content and analytics from one of the most valuable corporate assets. To help you determine if your Content Management System is weighing you down, we have put together a list of questions that can help you decide if it is time to upgrade your CMS platform. 

First, Consider Refreshing your Brand

  • When was the last time your refreshed your brand? If you don’t remember the answer, it’s probably time for a refresh.
  • Is your brand identity fresh and modern? Take a look at your website, your logo, your digital assets and email campaign you use to sell your brand and connect with your customers. Also look at what your competitors are doing.
  • When was the last time you did market/user research to identify your target audiences? Do you know if you are you still marketing to the right audiences?
  • Does your messaging and positioning accurately reflect your current value proposition and customer pain points?

Asking yourself these types of questions should help determine if it’s the right time to progress your brand with a fresh perspective to meet customer preference and expectations. A brand refresh is the perfect timing for an update to your Content Management System. It also allows you to take advantage of the ever-growing feature sets that today’s platforms provide. Take the time to review the CMS market and do a comparison to determine what platform best meets your business needs.

Upgrade your Technology Stack

  • Does your current CMS platform allow your team to easily and effectively find, create and update content?
  • Are you managing several web properties across multiple technology platforms? Would it be easier if these were consolidated into a single platform?
  • Does your Content Management System provide you with the tools you need to effectively reach and attract you target market?
  • Is your Content Management System built for IT or is it built for Marketing?

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic shift in ownership of Content Management Systems in the Enterprise. No longer are CMS’s provisioned and managed by your IT teams. No longer is it enough to provide an easy, structured way for non-technical users to create and manage content. No longer is it enough to provide useful tools such as WYSIWYGs, Form Builders, Workflow Tools and Enhanced Navigation Structures.

Today’s CMS’s are expected to not only support native content management tasks, but they are expected to support multiple digital properties. They are expected to keep up with ever evolving policies like accessibility and privacy. They are expected to enable a conversation with users based on what is known about them.

Improved Security

  • Is your current Content Management System supported by a company and/or a community?
  • Is your CMS currently up to date with the most recent version of the technology?
  • Do you have old legacy custom code preventing you from updating the underlying CMS technologies?

Security is always a concern when dealing with your website. The last thing you want is for the homepage of your website to become a poster-board for the hottest deals on the dark web. Having an old or outdated CMS leaves you vulnerable to well-known security vulnerabilities that are just waiting to be exploited. It might be time to get that ticking time bomb disarmed.

Most platforms provide tools to keep you informed about platform security and notify you both when a vulnerability is found and when a patch is presented. We highly recommend learning how your platform handles this type of communication to ensure you are in the know. Below are some links to useful information for Drupal/WordPress.

Reduce Maintenance Costs

  • Are you paying a hefty monthly retainer to keep the lights on for your CMS?
  • Do simple changes (like text or image updates) require a technical team to implement and/or take days or weeks to get updated?

Wouldn’t you like to use all of the money you are dumping into keeping your technology up and running into your marketing campaigns and content initiatives? If you are spending more money on your technology than you are on your marketing, it is likely past time to upgrade your CMS. A CMS should streamline your content management tasks and empower your team, not suck it dry.

Save Time

  • Do simple changes (like text or image updates) take days or weeks to get updated?
  • Are your page templates flexible and adaptable across desktop and mobile?
  • Are you spending a majority of your development efforts trying to keep your website up and running rather than enhancing it?
  • Does your system allow you to effectively market to your customers?

 If the answer to any of the questions listed above are “yes”, then it is likely you have outgrown your current CMS platform and need to upgrade.

Looking for help in determining if your organization is in need of a CMS upgrade? Contact Us Today!

When Finite State, one of the hottest new start-ups in the cybersecurity market needed a strong visual identity and a website for its launch at Black Hat this year, it turned to Bluetext. Finite State has the first comprehensive and proactive cyber solution to the growth of IoT, which has quickly become a significant security challenge across enterprise networks. Bluetext developed a graphic approach that draws themes and connections across the business landscape, and a new website approach that educates the audience on the IoT threat while differentiating Finite State’s solution for the market.

It’s always rewarding to see a client do well and continue to grow in their market. It’s doubly exciting when two clients team up together to build a powerhouse brand. That’s exactly what has happened with CQRoll Call, one of the best-known and most widely-respected publishers of both policy content and advocacy tools, was recently acquired by FiscalNote, a Google-backed player in the governmental affairs and advocacy that has grown into a data-driven, global player and has expanded into digital advocacy and issues management.

The partnership takes advantage of CQ Roll Call’s rich history of unbiased coverage of the Federal government and FiscalNote’s expertise in technology and real-time policy data and analytics to provide a broader suite of products and services in a dynamic market. The acquisition allows both brands to identify new opportunities to adapt and grow in the digital news landscape.

CQ Roll Call chose Bluetext to design a new website for its wide selection of both policy information and advocacy platforms in order to better attract and convert target prospects into customers. We developed an approach that allows visitors to quickly self-select what they are looking for on the website and gets them to those software options with in-depth product information and pricing.

For FiscalNote, Bluetext designed a new approach for its brand and website to simplify the user experience, delivering the right content and information to prospective customers to understand the best options for leading advocacy campaigns in today’s digital age.

For both brands, Bluetext was able to take them to the next level in terms of their position in the market, transforming them into cutting-edge industry players.

The end result: A strategic acquisition that makes the new combined powerhouse brand the market leader both in the U.S. and globally.