Branding Hint: Be Yourself
"At long last, popularity will be mine..."
STEWART K KELLY, Marketing Strategy
Many firms see rebranding as an opportunity to transform how they are viewed by people in their marketplace. But if you hear someone influential in your organization say “we need to become more hip,” it’s time to get very worried indeed.
As any teenager will tell you, you can’t just decide to become hip. You either are or you aren’t.
The secret to branding is not to conjure a false image to force people to change their minds about you. It’s about building on the positive characteristics you already have.
A nice recent example of this phenomenon was the advertising tiff between Apple and Microsoft. With its Mac guy, Apple gave us a personification of its brand: confident, relaxed, cool, and a little self-righteous. Microsoft’s PC guy was represented as the opposite: geeky, dithering, and defensive.
Of course Microsoft got all upset about this perceived insult. But was it really an insult? What’s wrong with being a geek? There are far more dithering geeks in the world than there are urbane young chaps. Who do you think Microsoft’s target market (i.e. the rest of us) identifies with more? As most commentators now agree, Apple actually did Microsoft a favor.
If Microsoft had a really smart marketing team on board, they would have played up this gift from Apple. Geeky is good, and more important, it is who they really are. Instead, they spent millions fumbling around with celebrities and other peripheral stuff.
If you want a successful brand, tap into who you really are, and run with it.
Life After Sports
BRANDON GILSON, Sports Marketing Associate
Our client base has become more diverse as we’ve expanded into new fields, and we’re publicizing more than just authors, speakers, and business executives. As we rebrand, “Life After Sports” has come to play an important role in our business: we’re working with retired professional athletes on their careers after sports to help them plan for their futures. This new piece of the company gives us the ability to help these experts have their voices and messages heard, whether it’s through aggressive promotion of their sport or creating wellness facilities for current athletes.
Sports are a central component in today’s society and the best athletes are revered as celebrities. The question is, where will these athletes go and what will they do when they retire from their sport? Here at Ictus, our mission is the same: to work with our clients and help them achieve greater recognition in their fields. Naturally, then, working with former athletes to help them have their expert voices heard plays to our strengths.
In many cases, when athletes retire they want their messages to be heard worldwide. That’s where we come in. Having spent most of their working lives as professional athletes, their expertise comes from their games, and in most cases has only been applied on the field. Yet many don’t realize the extraordinary stories they hold and how they can use those stories to inspire others. One client, for instance, overcame great odds to participate in two Olympic Games. Not only can his story translate to students, professionals, and others looking for success in their own “games,” but it can also be leveraged to bring awareness to his oft-overlooked sport and show that it brings new challenges (and opportunities) that other athletes don’t even have to consider. Another client, a former NFL player, realized while playing football that being mentally prepared to play was as important (maybe even more important) than physical readiness, but found that his training didn’t cater to that important need. After his football career he studied meditation and other eastern teachings, and now seeks to share that wisdom with other working athletes.
Our job for these athletes, then, is the same as it has always been: to package their stories and bring awareness to them. The rebranding of Ictus has everything to do with our new direction. Our path is the same, but with the newest aspect of the company, Life After Sports, it’s just become a wider road.
Rebranding: building on to our identity, not re-establishing it
Derek McIver, Public Relations
In “Principles of corporate rebranding,” (European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42, No. 5/6, 2008, pp. 537-552), authors Bill Merrilees and Dale Miller of Griffith University in Gold Coast, Australia, continually refer to the need for a revised brand to “meet core brand values yet [become] relevant to contemporary needs.” Rebranding, then, isn’t a total transformation. If it were, the process would start with a clean slate. For so many years, Paige and George, all of us, and all of our predecessors have worked hard to build a company our clients and partners can trust. And by all accounts, they do. So to ignore that idea would be suicidal. For us, something that has been consistent throughout Ictus’ growth and the establishment of that brand is the orange pyramid logo – no doubt a symbol that our stakeholders recognize and trust. Therefore, we cannot throw it out altogether; we need to build on that idea, which is why Naomi (and everyone) is keeping its essence in the front of her mind when redesigning it. But, while the new logo needs to relate that idea, it needs to become, as the authors say, more relevant to contemporary needs.
As a marketing and PR consultancy, we are constantly responding to the events going on around us. Whether we’re exploring stories’ various angles, or deciding between blasting information to journalists’ emails or through posting it on YouTube, and even settling on which font is most appropriate for a client’s webpage, we are looking at everything in three dimensions. Our current logo, however, is flat. Apart from a discreet gradient, it has little movement. Certainly, our clients’ contemporary needs would, in a way, be ignored if we continued to use it. More importantly, potential new clients might not be sold on the breadth and quality of our services based on our current logo alone. So, in Naomi’s new designs, that “3-D” idea is being expressed. If we look at the world in multi-dimensional terms, why shouldn’t our logo reflect that?
Another bit that hasn’t gotten a lot of play on this blog (and, regretfully, in the office discussions either) is the question of our tagline. Right now, there’s even a question about what our tagline actually is: both “Publicizing Authors, Speakers, and Business Executives” and “On the Air, On the Web, and On the Street” appear on most of our promotional materials, but there isn’t a strong consensus on which to call our official tagline. That, in itself, is a problem, but what’s more significant is that neither of those lines adequately express the full range of services we offer, nor the mood of our highly creative company.
The first identifies three types of people we serve, but what about the others? For example, athletes are becoming a core part of our clientele, but why aren’t they addressed? And the second line, “On the Air, On the Web, and On the Street” is OK, but doesn’t it really emphasize only the PR work we do? It ignores some of our most fundamental functions like all of the important content development stuff we do. One of the taglines I’ve proposed is “You know it, we show it.” That, to me, will appeal to any expert (which, broadly defined, is what every single one of our clients is) who wants their message to be heard.
So, I’m convinced that Merrilees and Miller would be satisfied with our work so far. Corporate rebranding, defined by them, is “the disjunction or change between an initially formulated corporate brand and a new formulation.” Our process has expressed that because we’re building on ideas that have always been a part of this company. We are just re-formulating the brand that was already developed through the years of hard work that came before now.
Image credit: “Mad About Shanghai” blog
The Tricky Business of Rebranding
MATT BROWNELL, Editor
Here’s the dirty little secret of rebranding: it’s not always popular.
The truth is, people fear change. And when an established brand undergoes a face-lift, the gut reaction is often a combination of nostalgia and anger. Companies that wish to revamp their image are thus caught at a crossroads, simultaneously hoping to keep their brand current without alienating their loyal customers.
Nowhere is this more true than in professional sports, where brand loyalty isn’t just a corporate buzzword – it’s a prerequisite for fandom. Numerous sports teams have taken the plunge and overhauled their logo and uniforms, with mixed results. The Buffalo Sabres ditched their long-time logo, a charging bull over two crossed swords, in favor of a stylized animal that didn’t sit well with fans. Ten years later, they went even further in stylizing the logo, but their latest attempt was even less popular. In the eyes of the team’s loyal fans, the classic and powerful logo of their franchise’s storied past had been replaced by… a banana slug.
That’s not to say that a team can’t rebrand successfully. At the beginning of the 2008 season, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays dropped the “Devil” from their name, ditched their teal uniforms, and replaced their manta ray logo with a simple sunshine theme. It was a smashing success, in large part because it coincided with an astonishing turnaround in the franchise’s fortunes – they went from perennial cellar-dweller to a World Series berth in one year. It also helped that the old brand wasn’t very good to begin with – the uniforms were ugly, the logo uninspiring. The new brand was more notable for what it wasn’t, and that was just fine with the fans.
This all gets to a larger point: changing an established brand can be a tricky thing, and it’s hard to tell when you’re bringing much-needed modernization and when you’re just messing with a classic. Why has Coca-Cola endured for so long while Pepsi gets a new logo every decade? Why is Jack Daniels’ simple, rustic label design so enduring? Why is it that the Detroit Red Wings’ winged wheel logo is superior to anything conceived by a design firm in the last 30 years?
I’m not a graphic designer, but I still know a classic when I see it. Perhaps the goal of every rebranding is to create exactly that – a classic that no one will want to rebrand.
A multi-layered approach
NAOMI HUI, Creative Director
With a developed strategy in place, the next step in a company’s rebranding should be to analyze the current logo. From a designer’s perspective, the process begins by asking the following questions:
How does the logo convey what the company does?
How does it show that the company is different from others?
What kind of image does the logo project?
There should not be a disconnection from the old logo. The newly designed logo should still have the recognizable essence of the previous one, but not be so different that it alienates current clients. The current Ictus logo can be viewed above in the header, and you can see that the multi-leveled pyramid is a very strong element. The symbol is appropriate, because the company builds upon the client’s expertise with solid strategy, strong marketing plans, potent public relations, and relevant design. All of these factors are crucial to creating the customized client experience that is unique to Ictus. This pyramid symbol shows these defining qualities of Ictus, and is an element from the old logo that should exist in the new.
Through strategical discussions, we established the goals and objectives early in the process, and the image of the company was clarified. This focused message will be conveyed in the new logo and the updated look and feel. The vision for the dynamic graphic elements is that they are flexible for use across different media, such as web and stationery. All these multi-layered components will form the identity of Ictus, and it all began with some simple sketches…
gel pens are ideal for quick sketching
{ c.style.left = x + aw – ah / 2 – cw; }
else
{ c.style.left = x + ah / 2; }
if (y + ch + ah / 2 > bh + bst && y + ah / 2 – ch >= bst )
{ c.style.top = y + ah / 2 – ch; }
else
{ c.style.top = y + ah / 2; }
c.style.visibility = “visible”;
} } }
function msoCommentHide(com_id)
{
if(msoBrowserCheck())
{
c = document.all(com_id);
if (null != c && null == c.length)
{
c.style.visibility = “hidden”;
c.style.left = -1000;
c.style.top = -1000;
} }
}
function msoBrowserCheck()
{
ms = navigator.appVersion.indexOf(“MSIE”);
vers = navigator.appVersion.substring(ms + 5, ms + 6);
ie4 = (ms > 0) && (parseInt(vers) >= 4);
return ie4;
}
if (msoBrowserCheck())
{
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomanchor”,”background: infobackground”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomoff”,”display: none”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”visibility: hidden”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”position: absolute”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”top: -1000″);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”left: -1000″);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”width: 33%”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”background: infobackground”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”color: infotext”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”border-top: 1pt solid threedlightshadow”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”border-right: 2pt solid threedshadow”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”border-bottom: 2pt solid threedshadow”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”border-left: 1pt solid threedlightshadow”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”padding: 3pt 3pt 3pt 3pt”);
document.styleSheets.dynCom.addRule(“.msocomtxt”,”z-index: 100″);
}
// ]]>
With a developed strategy in place, the next step in a company’s rebranding should be to analyze the current logo. From a designer’s perspective, the process begins by asking the following questions:
How does the logo convey what the company does?
How does it show that the company is different from others?
What kind of image does the logo project?
There should not be a disconnection from the old logo. The newly designed logo should still have the recognizable essence of the previous one, but not be so different that it alienates current clients. The current Ictus logo can be viewed above in the header, and you can see that the multi-leveled pyramid is a very strong element. The symbol is appropriate, because the company builds upon the client’s expertise with solid strategy, strong marketing plans, potent public relations, and relevant design[ID1]. All of these factors are crucial to creating the customized client experience that is unique to Ictus. This pyramid symbol shows these defining qualities of Ictus, and is an element from the old logo that should exist in the new.
Through strategizing discussions, we established the goals and objectives early in the process, and the image of the company was clarified. This focused message will be conveyed in the new logo and the updated look and feel. The vision for the dynamic graphic elements is that they are flexible for use across different media, such as web and stationery. All these multi-layered components will form the identity of Ictus, and it all began with some simple sketches…
PAGE \# “‘Page: ‘#’
‘” <!–[if supportFields]><![endif]–> [ID1]You’re using some great alliterating here. Why stop with design? Dramatic, deft, distinctive, daring, dashing…
The value of strategy
"Darling, I think you're reading it upside down."
STEWART K KELLY, Marketing Strategy
When you have a talented design team and top-notch web people, designing a nice logo and putting together a beautiful and technically sound website is easy.
But in the absence of strategy, all you will have is a nice looking logo and a beautiful website. And beautiful websites don’t do much, other than look beautiful.
For any marketing initiative, strategy is key. It gives you a roadmap to success, and sets a goal, objectives, and a series of standards to guide you through what can be a long and difficult process.
So it is vital to remember that some of the hardest work in the rebranding process happens before you put pen to paper or create artwork. It happens in the meetings, discussions, and lengthy debates that take place early in the process. This is when you start to get to the bottom of questions like:
What is the five-year goal for the organization?
What is our overall marketing strategy to help us get there?
How can a rebrand and a website upgrade help?
What would we like to achieve with these initiatives?
Who do we want to reach with our message?
How do we want the outside world to see us?
What action, if any, would we like visitors to take when they come to our site?
A rebrand is a time for reflection. It allows you to assess where you are as an organization, think exciting thoughts about where you want to be, and plot a marketing path to help you get there. Beautiful imagery and sound web infrastructure are just two vital pieces of a much bigger puzzle.
Brand experiences
DEREK MCIVER, Public Relations
As we’ve discussed, a brand is a whole lot more than a logo. Brands, ultimately, encompass the experience a consumer has with a company. A mother shopping for orange juice is comfortable picking up the carton with a straw sticking out of an orange, because that carton, that brand, has consistently delivered a delicious breakfast beverage. Likewise, car buyers frequently associate Volvo with safety because of its strong record in that area. Volvo may not have the most memorable logo, but their brand is strongly defined by high-quality products that consumers trust.
Volvos and orange juice are perhaps “easy” examples of the interaction and experience we have with various brands. But how does a small marketing firm on the edge of Boston create a similar experience? After all, we have the same goal in mind – to create a brand that is recognizable and trusted.
Our approach is a direct one. We’re driving the experience. To experience something you need to know what that something is — people need to know who we are and what we do. This blog is (hopefully) helping you learn about our company, and later this week, we will bring some more attention to our rebranding project with a press release. As we continue to rebrand ourselves we will solicit feedback from you, the readers, and consider your feedback as we move into each new phase.
Eventually, we hope that these projects will show how much we value collaboration. We’d like to think that we have all the right answers, but we know we don’t. We have good ideas, but sometimes someone else’s are better. And when that happens, we’re all ears. This rebranding experience, then, echoes the modus operandi we’ve always had with our clients. These men and women are true experts in their fields. They know their stuff. And by working with them, and not just for them, they are truly experiencing the Ictus Initiative.
Slogan: More than Just a Few Words
STEPHANIE WINIARSKI, Marketing Associate
It’s a common life lesson that we have to learn from our past in order to move forward into the future. In keeping with the theme of the past, the time has come for us to look at what will soon become the “old” Ictus Initiative slogan, created in 2003. If the whole purpose of rebranding is to refresh and revitalize your company’s image, it’s obviously important to study the parts of your slogan to understand why they’ve become outdated. Our current tagline is “On the air, on the web, & on the street.” The tagline’s purpose is to highlight to the public the three medias we utilize to promote our clients and their expertise, and this purpose is not outdated. We still use broadcast media, the web, and word of mouth to get our clients exposure. However, what is dated about this tagline is how it distinguishes us from any other marketing, public relations, and content development firm.
Think back to six years ago. In 2003, the web was not a brand new invention, but it was new enough that it wasn’t the huge part of our society that it is today. Did you have an active email address in 2003? Even if you did, did you check that email address as often as you do today? Look at all the other services the web offers now, from reading news online to ordering your mother’s birthday present to creating online photo albums. Our common uses of the internet today were novelties back in 2003. In six years we’ve also witnessed the exponential growth of social media. Here’s a scary thought – six years ago, Facebook didn’t even exist. The site wasn’t launched until February of ’04, and it was still a few more years until Facebook became more than just a site for bored college students. Today the website is one of the top two social networking sites. Adding on to the list of websites that didn’t exist in 2003 is Twitter, which means that no one received daily news updates from the White House, CNN, or your celebrity of choice.
The fact of the matter is that the web has changed drastically in just six short years, and has become a standard tool for all marketing and public relations firms. Today, we’d view any type of firm or business that didn’t use the internet as “out-dated” and “old-fashioned.” So the problem with the current Ictus Initiative tagline is that it doesn’t allow our firm to stand out anymore because all the communication mediums we emphasize in the tagline have become common practice in our industry.
Therefore, it’s time for us to make a change. It’s time for us to create a new tagline that when read is uniquely and distinctly Ictus.
The “Face” of the Ictus Initiative
STEPHANIE WINIARSKI, Marketing Associate
Why have we decided to go public and ask for outside opinions on something as important as our brand? After all, isn’t a company’s brand a direct reflection of the company itself?
Of course it is!
Does your mind immediately recall a bottle of Coca Cola when you see white cursive writing on a red background? Can you immediately recognize the make of a car as soon as you see the hood ornament? Often times we view companies as faceless entities. But they in fact do have a face – their brand! Just as one would match a person with their face, we match companies with their brand. Because a brand (which includes logo, color scheme, and overall image of a company) enables a person to easily identify and make a connection to a company, we as a business feel its essential to put in a great deal of time, effort, and thought as to what should make up the “face” of our company.
Ultimately, we want to change the way you view the rebranding of a company. Many times outsiders see rebranding as one, instantaneous company-wide transformation, and this can leave people feeling confused and disconnected. Take Tropicana for instance – the logo of the orange with a red and white straw stuck in it became synonymous with the word “Tropicana.” If a mother at the grocery store was looking to buy orange juice, she doesn’t even need to read the label if she recognizes the logo to know the carton of juice she’s about to buy is indeed Tropicana. Unfortunately, PepsiCo, Inc, maker of Tropicana, underestimated the public’s attachment to and recognition of their label, and when they began to rebrand Tropicana, they removed the image of the orange all together, seemingly overnight. HUGE MISTAKE! No one recognized their product as the same Tropicana orange juice they always loved and people felt blindsided by the sudden and drastic change.
Here at the Ictus Initiative we’re changing the way the rebranding process is done. Our rebranding will be a gradual process that can be watched the entire way through, so you will not only know when the change is coming, but also what to expect. We hope that redefining the process will make our rebranding a smooth and harmonious first step into the Ictus Initiative’s future and perhaps the pave a new path in how brands are developed.
Welcome to the Ictus Initiative Blog!
STEPHANIE WINIARSKI, Marketing Associate
Welcome to the Ictus Initiative Blog!
You’re probably here for one of three reasons:
1) You, your spouse, a family member, or a friend of yours is a client of the Ictus Initiative, and you’ve come to read about what’s new with the company.
2) You were wandering through the blogosphere looking for a good blog to read (and in which case, look no further because you’ve found one!)
3) You heard the Ictus Initiative was rebranding and inviting the public to witness the step-by-step process, but also share their opinions and feedback on what will ultimately be the new look of the company.
Regardless of which initial reason brought you here, it’s safe to say that you’ll come back because the concept of you becoming a fundamental part of the rebranding project is new, exciting, and intriguing. You might have a limited idea or no idea at all of what we do, and that’s OK! We still want to hear from you and get your feedback on our new look. It sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard of or experienced before, and it’s a new idea to us as well, but we here at the Ictus Initiative like blazing trails and becoming pioneers.
First, though, you should have a general idea of what the Ictus Initiative does because that, of course, will impact what our new brand’s look and feel will best suit our company.
The Ictus Initiative is a marketing, public relations, and content development firm located in Boston’s North End neighborhood. Our clients come from a variety of backgrounds and fields, but there’s one fundamental thing that they all have in common: all of them are experts in their respective fields. Here at the Ictus Initiative we firmly believe that a person is the product, and through the art and science of marketing, we take experts and turn them into celebrities.
Now, how can you get involved in our rebranding process?
Are you one of the 321.1 million people who have a Facebook page? If you answered yes to that question, next time you find yourself looking to see if anyone wrote on your wall or commented on your status, take a few moments to look at and explore the Ictus Initiative fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boston-MA/Ictus-Initiative/108335772264?ref=ts) and become our fan. We’ll be using our Facebook page to announce important dates, release images (for example, a sample of the web page design), start discussions, announce possible events and promotions, and put up links for when we have a new blog entry.
Don’t forget to check your phone, because we’ll be using Twitter in the same way. Follow us @ictusgroup (http://twitter.com/ictusgroup), to receive the latest news and updates on what aspect of the project we’re focusing on for that day. We’ll also tweet promotions, sneak peeks at the final product, and possible images or logos that we want to hear your thoughts about.
Lastly, it probably goes without saying that this blog will be one of the main ways in which Ictus will communicate with you. We’ll use the blog to not only keep you updated with any steps we’ve been taking or any roadblocks we might have hit, but also to give you history and further insight into our company. At the end of this project, you’ll be able to see our logo and look as more than just an aesthetically pleasing blend of colors and symbols. Instead, you will be able to understand why that particular logo was chosen, what it says about the agency, and how the new brand is different and a fresh take on our old look.
The Ictus Initiative Blog 
