Digital Horizons
Welcome to Digital Horizons, where today's strategies meet tomorrow's innovations in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.
Dive deep with industry trailblazers and thought leaders as we uncover what's driving success right now and forecast the trends that will shape the digital landscape in the years to come.
In each episode, we'll decode the tactics, tools, and techniques that are transforming the way businesses connect with their audience, ensuring that you stay ahead of the curve.
From social media shifts to the newest SEO advancements, e-commerce innovations to content marketing insights, Digital Horizons is your essential guide to the future of online marketing.
Join us on this journey, and let's shape the future of digital, together.
Subscribe now, and never let the digital future catch you by surprise.
Digital Horizons
Rebranding for Success: Transforming Business Goals into Market Impact
Uncover the strategic motivations behind the transformative power of rebranding as we explore the journey of WHD alongside James Walker and Brian Hastings. Listen in to learn how rebranding is much more than a new logo—it's about aligning business objectives, market positioning, and customer values to support growth and enhance market perception. With insights from their collaboration, Walker and Hastings share the importance of ensuring a new brand identity stands on its own while maintaining ties to its origins. They dive into how WHD transitioned from Walker Hill's marketing division to a prominent digital marketing agency, highlighting the pivotal role of strategic business needs in guiding this evolution.
Gain insights into the complexities of crafting a brand identity that truly resonates with customers through engaging workshops. Discover the challenges WHD faced in selecting a visual identity amidst diverse opinions and how they ensured internal buy-in. The duo offers a candid look at the logistical challenges of rolling out a cohesive brand presence, from initial concepts to full implementation. By sharing their experiences, Walker and Hastings reveal the meticulous work involved in updating every branded aspect of a business, ensuring consistency and reinforcing the brand's strengths. From navigating stakeholder expectations to capturing growth opportunities, this episode is packed with valuable lessons on achieving a powerful and well-respected brand.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
Welcome back to Digital Horizons. We're the channel for business owners, e-com entrepreneurs and marketers. We trial and test different tactics and strategies that are working in digital and digital marketing right now.
Speaker 2:We bring to you the latest on what we are also finding is working within our own digital marketing agencies. I'm James Walker, the Managing Director of WHD, and I'm joined with Brian Hastings, managing Director of Nowse. Welcome to the show. Today we are going to be going through our process and anyone who's been watching or following us for a while as I just mentioned, I'm the Managing Director of WHD, which previously was called Walker Hill, and today we are talking about the experience that I've gone through in terms of rebranding our digital agency, and what I guess is cool about this is we actually partnered with Brian's branding agency to make this happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah. It's a cool case study that we're both intimately connected to, so I think what would be great to get out of today is a run through of every step of the process and your feedback and experience of what worked well, what was challenging, and demystify the rebranding process for anyone watching on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean we didn't know what we were getting into when we did it right. We came into it thinking, all right, we're just going to get a new logo, that's it. We need a new logo and we'll get into the reason why it's behind it all. But that was basically the idea behind it and in the past, when we were quite a bit smaller business, we would have just paid someone on Upwork to get this done.
Speaker 2:We would have just gone on to 99designs gone. Hey, give me some logo designs and we would have rolled with that, because that would have been what the budget would have allowed for and probably just the stage in our business. But coming to where we are now and also where we're going, it was something that we're like all right, we want to be serious, we want to get our big boy logo, and so now we wanted to start talking to a branding agency that was going to help us facilitate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember getting the call from you and I know you work with designers and have worked with logo designers, and when you called me and said, oh, I would like to get a new logo, I would like to change the name, I was a little bit nervous because I'm like, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it the proper way. We're a branding agency and you were certain, you knew you wanted to do this the right way and you told me from the start this is I want to do this, we need to do this. What's it look like? And I think that sort of kicks us off on. The first step of this process is a brand evolution or a brand change should be driven by a business strategy or a business need, not just a feeling of-.
Speaker 2:You've got some negative feedback on your logo, on a social media comment or something. You're like, hey, we've got to change it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. There needs to be something driving this. So when you go to a branding agency or say you're trying to tackle it internally, god forbid you actually have a driving reason to do this. There is either a need for growth or capturing market share, or you're wanting to increase your margin. What you can charge, there's all the benefits that come with a powerful, well-respected, memorable brand generally starts with thinking well, what does our business need to achieve and how are we going to get there? That business strategy, in your case, led you down to well, what are the marketing and branding initiatives? What are the things we're going to need to do Maybe your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats to SWOT analysis to identify what have we got and how are we perceived? You rightly landed on the brand being one of the elements that could evolve to help you get to your business objectives.
Speaker 2:That's right, and so I guess the way that we have come out of this is being part of Walker Hill.
Speaker 2:It's a company that does accounting, it does digital marketing, mortgage broking and finance solutions. So what we were finding is that we were possibly being seen within the market as the marketing division of an accounting firm, because the accounting firm of the business is much larger and more established than what the marketing side was. But over the years, the marketing, our team and the clients we're working with, and just the quality and everything that we're doing, I felt was probably not being recognized without our industry as a digital marketing or as a leading digital marketing within the space. And this is why I was like well, I think we need to have a separate stamp or look, feel, brand for ourselves to make sure we can position ourselves as a standalone, but still keeping that connection with our roots and within the Walk Hill group of businesses, that where we have come from, which is what we've come to you with the challenge of yeah absolutely, and I think our job as a branding agency is to make sure those questions have been considered or asked and you're coming for the right reasons.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, you can end up in a brand evolution or a rebrand project that the business doesn't really want. They just started it but didn't actually need it. But in this case the logic was sound. We generally ask these types of questions of what are you looking to achieve from a rebrand? Do you find your current or existing brand isn't matching your reputation or the quality of what you do? Is your current brand not aligning to the values of your ideal customer, or is it difficult for them to find alignment in their values with yours?
Speaker 1:One of the main reasons for an evolution or a big brand shift is the lack of capability of the current brand to deliver on what the business is looking to achieve, so that just might be not memorable enough.
Speaker 1:There's not enough to tie or pin your content or communications to so that people know it's coming from this particular brand. When focusing on the visuals, maybe there's not enough personality built into the brand so that different people in the business can consistently communicate the same personality in everything they do going forward, not just visually but in how it speaks and how it communicates. So generally there's a bit of. You know, maybe the old outgoing brand is a bit outdated and lacking a bit of polish and in that case maybe it's just a slight evolution. In your case, there was a need to carve a space, a personality and a space for this brand so it could stand on its own two feet. And you're about to do a whole lot of content and a whole lot of communication efforts and you want the memory of that activity to be tied to a memorable brand.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's talk about the process, of what we went through to get to the outcome that we are at today. So first thing you told me is like, hey, you're going to have to bring your team in to have a workshop and I was like, what does that? Got to do with you designing me a logo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why can't you just?
Speaker 2:send me over the logos yeah. So let's go through the reason behind that. And I mean we were very happy with the outcome of what came out of that, but I guess the reasoning because I guess for a lot of businesses that haven't gone through this process they're probably a little bit like, well, does that need to happen? And I feel it definitely did from our experience. So if you could run through that now, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:We call it a brand framework. Brand agencies in general will have a strategy or a process for coming to grips with what's at the core of your brand, what's its reason for existence. Some branding agency call it the why why does your brand exist, not just what does it do or how does it do it. What we find is, if you jump straight to look and feel or personality, we'd just be making up concepts to show you and the prettiest one would win. Branding is more than just the suit that the brand wears, the logo or the tone of voice guide. It's an agreement between the people who make up the brand as to why it exists and why they care and why anyone else would care about it. So, to clarify that and to make it super clear, would care about it. So to clarify that and to make it super clear, we host a workshop and in some cases, we do customer research, we do market research prior to this process. In this particular case, the brand framework was what we needed to draw out the information about the brand and hold it back up to you and the team to say is this who your brand really is? Is this what it stands for? Is this why you do what you do.
Speaker 1:So the brand framework process we start with the easy stuff. What is it that you do? What are the features of the business that could set you apart? Then we really delve into the customer, not just a list of the types of the business that could set you apart. Then we really delve into the customer, not just a list of the types of people who work at businesses that you'd like to be your customer, but what are their needs? What are they looking for when they reach out to an agency like you? We then try to go a step further and in this workshop, we're drawing this information out from you guys. You know all of this back to front.
Speaker 1:So the brand framework process shouldn't be us making anything up. It's just drawing out the truth from the people who work in the business every day and we really want to find what did the customer feel like as a result of working with you? What was the unmet need that you delivered like as a result of working with you, what was the unmet need that you delivered? They came for more leads, but they left feeling confident and empowered and ready to forecast for the next quarter, feeling like their business can reach its potential, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:There is a lot of outcomes your clients receive from working with you that they didn't originally know they were going to get. It's trying to get in the mindset of the customer and find, well, what are those golden things that they've experienced that we want to latch onto and bubble to the top of our brand personality? So once we've looked at the customer, we'll consider the personality of the brand. How would we describe it If it was a human? If it's taking this brand leap, what are its characteristics? And we try to shift it away from corporate talk and into human speak so we can all get an aligned view of who this brand is as a person.
Speaker 2:I think you referred to ours as the hot girl at the party.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, that was the personality of our brand, I believe, was something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got you know it was uh appealing people wanting to go up, um.
Speaker 1:But you know the hot girl at the party was confident, engaging, smart um, and you know everyone wanted to talk to her that's right, that was.
Speaker 2:That's sort of what we drew from and you know, I didn't make that up. Yeah, that's what the conclusion from the research? Yeah, from the research.
Speaker 1:So once we have the personality down, we then try to determine the pillars that your brand wants to be famous for. Easiest way to think of these pillars are what are four attributes that you would want a customer to use in that conversation or that referral. When they're talking to another prospective customer and they're saying you've got to talk to WHD, they gave me this, this, this and this. Without getting into too much detail, those deliverables need to be provable. You can't just come up with great deliverables that the customer is going to receive every time they work with you. You can't just make up things you're not actually going to deliver. So you dig into your features. What is it that you do that's different, that we can latch onto there and prove?
Speaker 2:I think going through this process for us was really good as well, because we know what we do, we know what we're good at, but we don't ever sit down as a group and go, all right, cool, let's just put this down on paper. And this was really valuable for us because it was able for, I guess, for us to work out well, these are the things we do, these are the things we're really good at, these are some of the other things that we do and probably shouldn't be doing them, and certainly because sometimes we do like to you know, please, and go above to what we need to do, and maybe, when it shouldn't be doing it, because, firstly, it's not profitable from a business point of view, but also it's probably not within our real expertise, but we're still trying to go above and just saying yes to things from client requests that were probably outside of scope. So this was good to get a really concise document outlining what it is that we should and what we offer our clients. That is of really high value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's great for the people in the room having multiple team members who represent different parts of the business in the room coming to an agreement, thrashing it out going. Is that really our customer? Is that really what they get from us? Or is this really what we want to be famous for, what we want people to remember as a result of working with us? Or is that personality doesn't quite feel right? That word's not quite right. It's the process of working it out together and landing on a brand you not only feel perfectly hits for your audience, but you guys can all get on board with and drive into the future.
Speaker 1:At the end of those four pillars, we wrap it up with what we call a heart and a promise. For other branding processes that might be the why. What's the non-financial reason you guys get out of bed in the morning to go and do this? What are you passionate about and what do we want your clients to see in that passion? And the promise is so if that's the heart, the promise is what's the one thing you can expect to get every time? Why should that customer care? What do they get from you? And we find those two sides of the coin. The promise and the heart help to really clearly define not only what your customer will get, but why you get out of bed in the morning to do it, and it helps rally the team together to go. This is a great business. This is why I do it, and now I can really understand who it's for and why they give a shit.
Speaker 2:So we landed on, for ours team was to relentlessly pursue results, and that's something that all of our team because we knew that everyone was so determined and so energetic when they know they're getting good results for their client base or for their portfolio. And so when those words came up and it was documented, it was something that our team could just really get behind and everybody in the room was like, yeah, oh, that's me. It was so good, because then it also gives you the ability to weed out people who aren't the right fit for the team right.
Speaker 2:Because you can be like hey, if they don't get excited by this, well, maybe they're not the right person. That fits within this, because this is what we're about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think all sharing that same mantra or that same reason for existing really helps. The next step which, once that brand framework is documented, agreed on, tweaked, maybe we'll change the words here and there it forms a brand on a page. It's like a poster that you can put up in your office to say this is what we do, this is who we're for, this is our personality, this is what we want to be famous for and this is our heart and our promise. Having that in place before we move on to the next step, which is in some cases for businesses it's naming, some cases it's logo and visual identity development.
Speaker 1:For WHD it was the logo and concept development. That brand framework helps bring everyone onto the same page and remove any personal considerations around. You know things like colours or how they feel about a logo, and instead that gives them a brief for what the next steps should look like and how the brand should communicate. So we take that brand framework that's been approved. That's a step, that's sorted. You can keep that from that point on and your brand, your logo, might change over the years, but your reason for existence, your framework, should remain pretty consistent over the long term. So then we moved into step two, which was the visual identity concept phase. You could probably take us through how that went and what you did.
Speaker 2:So. This was a challenge because obviously you presented us with about 10 different logo concepts and I think I had the right amount of people in the room, but I think we had about six, possibly from my team, that we invited to come and be part of this process all from different areas within the business, and I guess I didn't probably consider prior to going into this is everyone's going to have different opinions? And with that many people sitting in the room looking at stuff which they all have differing opinions because they're all different ages and they just like different shit, I ended up with a few votes for every logo concept and so then it became more of a political thing, and so it was more about all right, well, of a political thing, and so it was more about all right, well, who can I make unhappy? Who can I keep happy? How can we compromise and where can we land on something that we're all excited and can get behind?
Speaker 2:And this process wasn't easy. It was probably I think this was the slowest part of it all, like you'd presented it to us, and it wasn't because there were anything wrong with any of the logos. It was probably because we had too many options and there wasn't anything where we could just go all right, cool, we unanimously decide, we like this one. I mean that would have been beautiful if that happened, but I feel like that would never happen, or you know, if you did, you probably got too many people that are exactly the same sitting in the room.
Speaker 1:It can happen, but generally in one-to-two team situations. And you're right, we presented more concepts to you than probably any other client and we were on a bit of a stretch from not stepping too far away from where we are to wildly different and bold, and on that path we provided too many examples. I reckon we probably could have brought it back to five maybe, but where your feedback came from that first session was very different. We might not have had the one you landed on in that 10.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the agency's responsibility to do that removal process. First, we had 30 that we sort of refined down, but there were three or four in each different category that we felt really did the job. So, with your capability in the space and being marketers as well, we thought, well, let's share them with you and take you through a rationale for each one. It did work out that we did have options there, but I think we could have streamlined the process by providing less option and more rollout of how it could look from the get-go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's no complaint on the volume of options as well, because, as you said, if the one that we landed on, which we're extremely happy with that we are at now, maybe would have been left off that list, because I think they were all quality and good concepts, so if you were to cut it by half, which half would have gone? And that could have then led to us not having the option that we've landed on. So I guess that just having to almost negotiate and compromise and settle and change and trying to keep everybody in the room happy was difficult. But I think, through the changes and refinements and everyone understanding that, hey, we're not all going to get 100% exactly what we want, because it's a company, it's not your personal brand. We need to take almost the personal feelings out of it and see all right. Well, from our brand guidelines and brand book that you'd provided, how does this fit within what we're trying to achieve here?
Speaker 1:That concept stage and we find it at two stages really is the naming stage, when concepts are presented, and the visual identity concept stage, when there are a lot of stakeholders who have a say or the ability to make a decision or influence the decision. It can make the process take longer, but it is really important to do what you did and bring people together and have them see what they did in the framework side of the brand strategy is being delivered visually so that they can really get a hold of this brand. Where I think we landed was really good. We refined them down. Your team would provide feedback in the form of problems that concepts were giving them, rather than direct feedback of change this to this or make this circle bigger. That kind of feedback makes your agency almost second guess or not understand what it is you're trying to fix. But what you guys did really well was provide meaningful feedback of what some concepts were doing, what some concepts weren't hitting and that helped us turn or get rid of some concepts for you. Then, once we refined them down, we would carry out a little bit of additional brand rollout. How would it extend, how would it look in different environments? Which then threw up some more questions and I'm not sure how this could work like this.
Speaker 1:Our intent as an agency is trying to get it down to the one approved concept direction before you do too much of that rollout, because if there's three concepts you're doing everything three or four times.
Speaker 1:But in this case we wanted to give you those examples to help share internally how it's going to look when we move forward.
Speaker 1:But it was an enjoyable process because the problem wasn't that the team didn't like any of the concepts, it was that some were liked more than others, and that's a good problem to have. And I think where we landed, there's been a lot of internal buy-in and people are really comfortable with where we landed. But, importantly, everyone can hold up the original brief, which is the brand framework that we developed and the visual identity and the tone of voice that we've created with you guys, and say this is the best representation of this brand and this brand strategy. So concepts get finished, we agree on the concept and then it gets packaged up, logo files get created and handed over, but we concurrently start working on the brand style guide and tone of voice to form the brand guidelines. That's probably at the same time. You can jump in with some of the rollout assets that you've been planning and doing internally and let us know what you've been working on.
Speaker 2:I was up at 4am this morning. Today's our rollout, today's the day we're launching it. So yeah, it's been a good time to record a podcast.
Speaker 2:But um, it's. It's been a massive job and it's weird. You don't think about the amount of branded things you have that you're just using daily, that you didn't even consider. Like we build out, we run our business through click up and we build out a board of all the items and we keep missing stuff, even just just spreadsheets, like we have branded google sheets. We have branded templates for all our reports. We've got printed everything you can think of. So it's working through, because we don't want to get to a position, because we again want to have complete control of the brand and how it looks and make sure that we're not last minute. Hey, someone needs something, so they're just whacking something together and it's not in line with everything else.
Speaker 2:So trying to make sure from the start we're getting it all right and every single piece of communication we're having with our clients or to the within our marketing is all consistent. And so trying to work through that list has been massive, even just rebranding videos and all the content there, rebranding all of our ads and refilming ads now based on the new language and the new, the new brand book. So making sure that's all consistent. The website, that's obviously we're rolling out in stages. We've only got a landing page to start with, but that's going to be something that'll be an evolution because from going through this process, we've just identified the voice and the tone, the way that we want to talk, the way that we want to look now for as a business. So it's been.
Speaker 2:It's been a challenging part because also we've got a team with a full client load yeah, absolutely it's been that whole part of it and I guess obviously, you guys do this stuff and you guys are offered to help on that, which, looking back, I probably should have taken you up on because it would have sent me a lot of stress, but I think that, being in a creative agency as well, my team were just like hey, this would be so fun, we want to have a shot at this, which is the only reason we didn't. They were just so keen, after going through the process of this all, to then be able to take charge and really bring it to life, because they're the ones who got down the track will be doing that anyway, so I think that they wanted that opportunity to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:So a unique scenario where you've got people who understand brand and marketing, who create ads, who you have access to designers. My preference would have been to have the budget spent where it was, on the brand framework and the concept evolution and the brand guidelines, so that you have the best foundations to work with, for other businesses probably don't have the same resources that.
Speaker 2:James has access to.
Speaker 1:So you know we have. The final stage is the asset rollout. So before you go to market and run any paid campaigns or launch your brand, there's some basics you need. You need your website, you need all of your, even just the social assets like what's the background going to look like on your LinkedIn?
Speaker 2:header Literally just designed that five months before I just signed that off, five months before walking into recording this.
Speaker 1:And there's so many things that we because we've done it a lot we have almost a shopping list. Here are all the assets that you could get us as an agency to do, but we're a little bit more flexible than some of our counterparts in the branding world that you don't have to pick us for all of it or any of it. But there may be some keystone items you want sorted, like the website design and built. If you don't have that, capability, video, top and tails, signage, concepts, things like that that you want to get done right and once to show your team how to do it going forward. In your case, we covered that off in the brand guidelines, so they're empowered now to take it and drive it forward. That's it, yeah. So I think another important part of the process as well is having an audit of all of these assets before you get to this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were doing it on the fly, but it's also you don't realize, because some teams and I guess this is just part of being in business for a while now some teams have just got stuff that they use and it's just their tools that they use and some of it is client-facing.
Speaker 2:but everything, even internal usage, we want to make sure everything is looking consistent to keep that consistency there, and then we're buying random shit. Like you know, you had to get a sign. You had to get like a neon for the background of content, which is probably not necessary. That was one of the first things.
Speaker 1:That's fun right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, that's the fun one, but it's bright. Then there's stuff like and this surprised me because I recently sold well, not really, but six months ago I sold a printing business that does business cards and you know, one of the first requests I got was hey, I need business cards and as much as people are like they're dead, like no one needs that shit anymore. It was probably this first or second thing that was designed on the list, because the team were like I'm going to a networking event next week. I'm going to go meet people, I want to be able to hand out some stuff and show off our brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I still make them for us as well.
Speaker 2:I don't have any, but I'm sure that there is a big place for them, which is something I feel like a lot of businesses wouldn't consider.
Speaker 2:They'd be like, oh, we don't need that shit anymore, but it seems like it is still useful. So I'm really excited to see how it all rolls out today. First of all, we're going to get I back, as we do push this out today. At the time of this airing, we would have been out in the market for a couple of weeks. So everyone who has been watching this, please feel free to leave us comments. Brian's feelings won't get hurt. Well, they might.
Speaker 2:Be kind, but I mean from our point of view, we're extremely happy with what the process has looked like, really happy to roll the brand out and really excited to see what's next for us because, as you said, it's a stamp, a sign, basically for who you are and who you are within the market, and I think that this really reflects who we are and who we're becoming as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely You're right. It's a statement of intent of who we are and how we're going to carry ourselves. I think it's important for brands to remember, to live and breathe the framework that you've developed and who you said you were in that brand framework. So it's not just a nice logo or a pretty website or a nice piece of copy. When you communicate or spend time with the staff at this brand, it's reflected in them too. They're all reflecting the brand in the same way and, of course, it looks like this because you know they're high-end performers and the brand matches their delivery. So it's been a really fun process working with you on this as well.
Speaker 1:I got really close to the business. And, yeah, any final tips for anyone going through a branding process.
Speaker 2:Expect. It's just going to be a lot more work than what it is, but it needs to be. I feel if it was easy and it was as simple as what we've done in the past, where we just hired a 99 designer on 99designs or an upwork person to knock out a logo, we wouldn't have had the team buy-in. We'd look different, but I don't think we'd have the same experience and get as much out of it, even just from a business point of view. We haven't even hit the market with it yet, yeah, but even just internally, I can feel the difference within our business. Yeah, so I think that that's expect the work. There's going to be a lot more to it, but it's worthwhile. Yeah, thanks for doing it.
Speaker 1:Well, this feels a bit like a case study for you. Anyway, yeah, go to nowcecomau. Nowce makes brands, james, didn't you? That's right. This was not intended as an ad for now, so it was more of a process but happy with what we got.
Speaker 2:Cool. We'll be back next week with brand news coming up soon, yeah, thanks. Thanks for watching.