We Rebranded Our Own Agency and Here’s What We Learned…
To say that today’s launch is the most radical overhaul of our brand identity in BANC’s history is an understatement. A step-change which we’ve been cooking up for the last 12+ months, this rebrand will set our stall for years to come. Months of research, strategy formulation, conceptualising and hard creative graft have gone into it – and now we can properly announce, with confidence, that we have well and truly arrived.
Here’s how we went about it, why we went about it and what we’ve learned over the course of such an in-depth and extensive project.
A Potted History of BANC
For those who don’t know us, BANC started out 14 years ago as a boutique Paid Media and Performance outfit, building up new products and services over time, hiring new talent and establishing more powerful processes and systems. Our client relationships went deeper, and our customer base evolved as a result.
But the direction of our business and our strategic ambitions felt out of step with our brand purpose. And in the minds of our management team, it was a concern that was growing and growing.
Why Have We Changed – and Why Now?
Our previous identity refresh and website launched in 2020 – but work started much, much earlier. What’s more, it was a project that was mired by delay. Most glaringly, there were a few key ingredients missing: particularly genuine direction, and a properly thought-out strategic view.
We rebranded for the wrong reason: because we felt like we should. The old brand was centred around channel marketing. This was a legacy hangover from a time when we focused our messaging around technical proficiency, service provision, and Digital Marketing services as a commodity. It was a time where product trumped solution, where keeping the production line rolling and fulfilling retainer requirements outweighed strategy and consulting.
In the words of our MD, Martin Cozens: “It was a reflection of historic views, senior egos, and who we thought we were at that time. We wanted to show a small evolution in identity, but there was definitely a desire to do better – but we didn’t really have the people, time or experience to execute that.”
We tried to say everything, caving to a by-committee approach that ended up with us saying not much at all. Our website, for example, lacked any discernible proposition and left us feeling uninspired (never mind potential customers). This took the focus off how we should’ve been thinking about company strategy. The gulf then grew more and more obvious as we reorganised our agency structure and refocused our client proposition.
Re-emerging from a series of commercial, logistic, market-based and personnel changes – all of which were, of course, sped up by the COVID-19 pandemic – we opted to reassess our brand strategy and the way we go to market.
In other words:
We wanted a stronger, more impactful company identity and personality to really drive investment in sales and marketing. Attracting new customers wasn’t enough, we wanted the right customers to build relationships with, too.
Our brand personality needed to evolve to match the internal culture and values of the business, emphasising our company outlook in ways that would ring true for clients.
We wanted to elevate our brand and communications so we could better speak to the high-value clients we were working with more and more, positioning ourselves as a solutions and consultancy business with the delivery capabilities to deal with their challenges.
We wanted to create new brand messaging with a more compelling proposition for our services that highlighted our USPs and IP. By becoming easier to separate and select from our competitors, we’d be able to break away with compelling messages that set us apart.
Assembling the Team
A project like this had to be very hush hush, even within the company itself.
We knew where things went wrong last time, so we kept the team small and stealthy, only involving our colleagues and management team when the time was right.
Our goal was to reveal our blindspots, recognise our strengths and opportunities – and ultimately, nurse the the wounds of the past back to full health.
We wanted to develop our new brand based on actual empirical findings, rather than gut feelings – something we hadn’t done previously. This approach revealed the changes to we’d need to put in place to form the identity below.
Investing Time in the Right Places
Next came our own internal discovery phase. Our aim was to gain insight both internally and externally to form an accurate and rounded view of how BANC as a business and ‘brand’ was perceived, and where the opportunities to right our previous wrongs were.
This constituted:
Interviews with Clients: We spoke with a cross-section of current and historic clients, as well as lost pitch prospects – each matched to our target professional profiles – so we could gain a fuller picture of how we were viewed, as well as how they search for and select vendors to learn more about ourselves.
Internal Workshops: We spent time with Directors, Senior Managers, company advocates, new starters and returning employees to offer a balanced view of the company’s current identity and outlook to reveal strengths and research.
Competitor Research: We also conducted in-depth research into 19(!) different competitors and their brand strategies, personalities and positions – including a mix of current, aspirational and adjacent agencies for balance, and to reveal where opportunities were for BANC.
Employee Surveys: Finally, we conducted employee surveys to take a pulse on how the agency’s brand is viewed day-to-day at the operational level.
Armed with these insights, we could then translate the findings into guiding principles for our rebrand – outlined below, and which would be expressed across a formalised brand strategy, a ground-up visual identity refresh, and a newly documented tone of voice.
So, what’s different this time around?
Welcome to the New BANC
Here are a few of the fundamental learnings which informed our change in direction – and which form the basis of our renewed brand strategy.
Owning a Consultative Position
Our research certainly made one thing clear: the strategic, business-connected view of our clients’ overarching goals and business challenges was a standout feature. But it also highlighted how much this part of us was clearly lacking in our identity.
Since we reckon it’s key to longer, more connected client relationships, we’ve addressed the mismatch by now putting the message front and centre.
We’re the strategy-first partner who acts on change and has the expertise and tools to put the pieces in place and create new opportunities for clients.
Strength for Sales & Marketing
There was an opportunity to craft our own sales and marketing journeys as a brand that resonates with senior decision-makers on the hunt for a higher value of work.
Realising this led to a moment of clarity. We’re no longer nervous about who we want to be: we know we have a role as a key partner who defines our clients’ marketing strategies – instead of just supplying outsourced services. We know where marketing fits into both the commercial model and business growth projections; we’ll use the components and product excellence we have to build this view with a strong consultative wrapping.
Bridging the Gap to Services
Simplifying our product architecture was one of the first goals we had our sights on. But it presented its own challenges. We lacked the ‘if you know, you know’ clout of bigger agencies. But at the same time, we were all in on breaking the legacy of BANC being ‘the SEO and PPC agency’ some of our older clients have historically viewed us as.
But we have subject matter experts who are integrated in a structure that lends itself to broader strategy and makes us a desirable partner. When we talk shop, we’re always highlighting the difference of doing it with us – not just features and benefits of each discipline.
We offer complete deliverability – but we don’t want to be known as a full-service agency because we offer plenty of products; we want to be known as a full-service agency because of our consultative expertise and the ways we shape the strategic agenda for clients’ businesses.
Our People and Values at Front and Centre
Our team is our strongest asset – we want to ask the right questions, truly interrogate client requirements and get to the truth of the challenge. And over the last few years, our mindset has changed; we truly live our clients’ businesses and care deeply about what the correct solution is and how to implement it.
We want to be the trusted, proactive advisor who’s full of great ideas. We don’t have an ego – just a genuine desire to spread our knowledge far and wide in the correct way, to the correct people. We’ll likely have the solution – and if we don’t, then we’ll get to it by working in partnership with our clients.
We’re quietly confident, but not the modest BANC of old. So, you won’t see brash statements, gimmicks, or weird copywriting to get our points across. We’re personable, understanding, and ambitious.
Breaking Apart from the Group
We found there were very few new ideas happening among our current competitors – many of them shared a similar style, whether intentionally or not. We’re lumping our previous version of ourselves in with that, too. We were all pitching ourselves at the same level with the same services, and honestly, we’d had enough of that.
Our rebrand aimed to help us be the masters of our own destiny. Now, we’re no longer at the mercy of competing on a tactical level with businesses offering like-for-like products in match-making processes. Likewise, were no longer waiting for opportunities to come calling; now, we’re dead set on actively creating opportunities within our clients.
Purpose in Digital Marketing Transformation
If that all feels a bit too word-y, I’ll let my colleague, Production Lead and 9-year BANC stalwart, Chris Balme tell it how it is in the next section…
“We’re moving from tactics to strategy, provider to partner, fulfilment to consulting. By making these moves, it’ll position our work as revenue-connected within our clients’ businesses.”
As Consultants with Means, our business is now arranged into 5 key Service Pillars – each strengthening our overall proposition (as you’ll see across our new website); they overlap and lift up, never existing in disparate product siloes, so every colleague has their time to shine on any given project.
Further to this, we Over-Deliver, Not Over Budget – ensuring clients have visibility over the breadth of our expertise. When they expect XYZ, we demonstrate why they might actually require UVW – offering value that’s far higher than the competition.
But we’ve not forgotten our values either – Kindness, Patience and Empathy have always been at the heart of what we do. Now they’re backed up by a Proactive, Professional and Proud service outlook and a philosophy of 360° Support in the places that both our clients and colleagues need it most.
Timeless & Honest
In the words of Niki Lau, BANC’s Creative Lead, “We knew that BANC holds to its principles and isn’t swayed by passing trends or fads. My overarching concern was with creating something both recognisable and timeless – something which builds off the strong and deep-rooted foundations of the business itself.
“I took inspiration from design that prioritised function and usefulness – things like European brutalism, system-based design, and the works of German designer Dieter Rams – which did away with unnecessary bells and whistles. As a business I feel we are intensely honest and transparent, and I wanted our identity to reflect that.
“So, I wanted to show the materials of the design as they are, so they are an intrinsic part of the aesthetic – that there is nothing to hide.”
This thinking is demonstrated throughout our identity – but perhaps most in our new logotype and typefaces. Both are now effectively equivalent, improving recognisability and featuring a grounded base to the lettering that project strength and confidence.
BANC’s new colour palette – Eggshell and Black, punctuated with shocks of Blue, Coral and Pink – offers this same utilitarian view while elevating our look and feel. The colour system allows for one primary colour to be mixed with two secondary ones, in virtually any combination – meaning a huge amount of flexibility for different applications, while paying homage to the company’s historic shades.
Something that became apparent from our competitor analysis is that an agency brand might look the part, but then fall down at the final hurdle with a tone of voice which didn’t reflect the power or confidence the visuals suggested. We were very aware that the visuals and the voice had to work in tandem, and that leads us nicely onto the next section…
Talking the Talk
According to our Senior Copywriter, Oliver Urwin, “We all sort of knew what BANC should sound like. We’re friendly and personable, we truly know our stuff, and we always get the job done right. But we’d just never put all the brilliant things that make us who we are down in words.”
“Wrestling with producing a Tone of Voice which was clean, clear and concise was a challenge – but the amount of research we’d racked up made reflecting our values and strengths far easier. Now we can elevate our way of talking in a way that matches our current commercial and marketing ambitions.”
In Oliver’s own words, our core messages are:
People First: We are warm, genuine and authentic – and never detached, aloof or condescending.
…But Also Experts First: We are knowledgeable, skilful, reassuring, business-minded and trusted – without being stuffy or know-it-alls.
We Speak to Clients, Not Agencies: We are straightforward, honest and succinct – eschewing jargon-heavy, overly-technical agency speak for greater clarity.
Confident, Rather Than Cocky: While we’re passionate and ambitious, we’re unpretentious – never arrogant or conceited, we openly aim to bring people into our world.
Friendly and Familiar: We are down-to-earth, approachable and relatable, without erring into being glib, matter-of-fact or too cool for school.
Light-Hearted Instead of Silly: We’re funny and have a bit of an edge to us, but we’re not zany.
Could We Do the Same for You?
We hope the above offers some insight into our redeveloped brand and ambitions as an agency – if you’re interested in seeing more, why not have a poke around our brand-new website?
And if your own brand strategy’s in need of a similar rethink, why not drop us a line to share some challenges and pain points? We might just be able to help you make the pieces fit, setting your business on the course to better achieve Sales and Marketing ambitions you have in mind.