Aligning with the Client's Culture

Clients' companies have distinct cultures and personalities. I've never seen any two that are alike. When I first begin to work with my clients, I usually interview everyone in the firm. From that initial conversation, I get a pulse that helps me form their corporate image. Branding a firm to match their goals is one thing, but any branding exercise must first match the client's relative personality. With KCCT Architects, I was faced with the same challenges as Hickok Cole - don't look back, project the future. However, I needed to create a totally different look and feel for KCCT. When I re-imaged KCCT four years ago, I kept their elegant and clean double-embossed logo. To refresh the brand, we changed their existing cream color scheme to a bright white, and we moved to a lovely purple/blue-toned gray for the document's text: The image of refined statesmanship. For a company designing US embassies all over the world, it was paramount to convey a stately figure of quality, service, and ultimate dedication to portraying our national values. Again, past images did not reflect this firm's current projects. Highlighting thirty-year-old buildings against today's fast-paced arena seemed worthless at best. In this case, I decided to describe the company's values, strengths, and competencies through a word cloud/info graphics campaign. Both of these typographical representations seemed to be as exciting for me as QR Codes did two years ago. Again, selling the concept to an industry that lives and breathes images was a tad scary. However, contrary to my trepidation, the idea was immediately accepted and, like my other clients, once ownership began to take hold, they started to offer outstanding suggestions. The word cloud I had presented soon morphed from a rather ameba shape into a world map thanks to Principal Enrique Bellini's sharp thinking.

 

Graphic Designers Make Concepts Come Alive

 

Umbrella Approach

For most of my clients, I try and work on themes for an entire year - always maintaining the corporate brand throughout. For a few, we work seasonally. It all depends on the strategic plan and their specific business development needs.

I have a few basics to how I think a branding effort will succeed: Direct mail is not dead, and therefore, I request that my clients send out several hard copy mailers each year. Client gifts are essential differentiators in today's market, especially if the gifts are ahead of trends like the Blunt umbrellas I brought to Hickok Cole this spring. Be everywhere. Social media, while current and cool, still needs to find a way to be truly valuable so that new and old customers will find the information a necessity instead of idle chatter.

With any of these anniversary campaigns, the most important key is to make sure the corporate colors and fonts remain consistent. To have gone to a silver motif for the 25th would've broken away from Hickok Cole's brand and watered down their strong brand recognition of red, black, and white. Making sure employees don't go rogue and design their own in-house concept as a parallel-universe-25th can be another challenge, and it takes a brand champion like myself to make sure those things don't happen. Police employees' e-mail signatures for consistency as well. In today's marketplace, any diversion, for even the briefest time, can confuse clients. Always keep corporate colors and logos prominent throughout any campaigns.

View the KCCT Word Cloud:  Art Direction

See more successful campaigns: Art Direction  

Read about Marilynn's approach: Strategic Planning 

Above all, have fun and express your passions. That's me striking a pose next to the motorcycle. The racing theme for the Hickok Cole spring party came easily, as I have attended most car and motorcycle races all over the world. Again, the concept for that party was to show the firm in action-going forward. 

If you would like a consultation to review your branding, or if you are interested in changing the direction of your company's image, please call me anytime. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you and have a nice spring.