How We Refreshed Our Brand

Hello, and welcome, fellow Awsomologists, to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, episode, we are gonna fill you in on some exciting changes with the exclamation brand, how we got there, and where we go from here.

Yes. And we’ve been working on it a long time. I’m excited to talk about it. Can we do a little bit of housekeeping first, though?

Sure.

I hate to surprise you with housekeeping, but I decided just before we started recording that I wanted to do this. I don’t, so this is the housekeeping. If you listen to the last episode, one of the cohosts was told by the other cohost that she sounded fine, and she sounded like she had been gargling glass.

And when I listened to it, it just so no big shocker. We do not record these. These are not live. We don’t record these on the day they go out. So on the day we’re recording this, the other one just dropped, and I was interested to see because I had lost my voice. I was interest interested to see how it sounded.

And now I wanted to do this housekeeping and tell everyone if it sounds like I don’t sound the same.

You are correct.

It is not an audio problem. It is a me problem.

And You’re also not some, Android that we can modify your voice from episode to episode or anything.

Not yet, anyway. That’s yet.

That’ll come. Yeah. So I did I wanna I wanted to get that out there. And especially because I feel like even now, I’m not at a hundred percent.

Yeah. I can as someone who hears you pretty much on the daily, I can definitely still hear a little something, but you sound so much better than you did, last time we recorded.

And, you know, I’m glad that you took advantage of this moment to do some housekeeping because I felt bad that when we recorded that episode, I didn’t acknowledge it right up off the bat and tell our audience to give you a break if you sound like you just woke up or something because it wasn’t that.

You were just It was both.

Why not both?

Yeah.

I mean, it could have been better.

Yeah. Anyway, all is good. Glad you’re feeling better, even if you still have a little twinge of, vocal anomaly happening, but you’re you’re doing great.

Yeah. Yeah. Getting back on track.

Right.

Yes. I was And that feels good.

Right? For real.

Like, No.

Yes.

Knock on all the wood. I personally haven’t been sick for a while, and I’ve been telling a few people how lucky I I am about that because, it is going around.

Yeah. Like our kids’ school and everything like that, but we’ve just been pretty darn lucky. But I I certainly am one to appreciate when you get sick. Those first couple days after you start feeling normal again and you just feel great, like, those are those are good days for sure.

Precious precious moments in your life. Yeah.

You you need to not talk about the fact that you have you gotta shut your mouth.

I’m just living on this.

Jinxing yourself.

Yep. Hey. I’m just just putting those positive vibes out to the universe, and you know what? Do with me what you will.

Trying to manifest. Yeah.

Right.

K. Well, good luck. I mean, your wife’s a teacher, and I’m sure they’re I’m sure she does not come home with every She never really turns. Never.

Yeah. Good.

So here we are. Now we are, today, healthy, and we can talk about our brand refresh. We’ve been working on it for it seems like I mean, it’s months.

Certainly, it is months.

Seems like forever.

And we are now at a point, again, because we do not record on the day that this comes out. In a little less than a week, we are hosting a launch event. Less than a week let me clarify. Less than a week from the day we’re recording this, when you hear this, we will have had our launch event.

So we have months of work we’ve been doing and not saying at least not saying, quote, unquote, publicly here.

Right.

Lot to catch you up on.

So let’s start with this. What were the factors that told you, Ben, that it was time to do a refresh?

Yeah. Wait. Wait. What’s the difference between a refresh and a rebrand?

Oh, good question.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think, their definition is up to interpretation or up to the situation for sure, but, I guess the easiest way I would describe it, and there’s a ton of flexibility in these, descriptions or definition.

Rebrand is typically a bit more comprehensive. Right? You’re typically, doing something like a full fledged name change, maybe even, not necessarily a name change, but a modification to your brand that’s so significant that it’s gonna, you know, involve more time, more resources, more costs to make these changes and things like that.

Whereas a refresh, some of those core elements aren’t changing. Right? So your your name isn’t changing. Maybe even, you know, like, color scheme and things like that aren’t changing, but you’re taking an opportunity to bring certain visual elements of the brand, you know, into current times or, you know, and it’s beyond look and feel and stuff too. It could you know, your your brand voice could be a part of that. Basically, every part of the brand could still be a part of a refresh where it’s getting just a little bit of a tweak, a little bit of an update.

And I I kinda feel like ours is somewhere right in between. I mean, certainly, maybe more on the refresh side, which is what we’ve been calling it. And we aren’t experiencing any of those big changes. We’re not changing our name. We’re not, you know, going full fledged change. Actually, if you were to take our logo and convert it to black and white, the before and the after, will be darn near unnoticeable.

The size of our icon changes just a tiny bit, but, otherwise, like, the font’s not changing Mhmm.

Stuff like that. So so using our own project here as an example, we definitely are more of a refresh than a rebrand. So, anything you wanna add to my descriptions there?

I I think you nailed it. I think, I think what we did even, you know, you mentioned if you take the two logos, our old logo, our new logo, I actually think that some of the things that we did were so subtle that if you are not a part of our team, you might not if we just showed you the logo now, you might have you you are you familiar with the term Mandela effect? You might look at it and go, isn’t that always how it was? Right. Yeah. And, so I think I think that made it an an interesting project to know that we are we it is a significant change, really.

Oh, for sure.

It is not, it’s not as publicly noticeable.

If if you’re talking exclusively about the logo, and I think that that’s actually a really nice segue to a maybe more important point of this whole thing, and brings us right back to something we talk about often, which is the fact that your brand is a heck of a lot more than your logo. Because if you’re looking at the logo, like, yes to everything you just said. Like, not a lot of change. Some folks are probably like, is that not what it always was?

Even though, of course, to us, the people that are super close to it and probably some of our long term clients and partners and things like that, I definitely would notice it.

But if you look at that as a part of everything else that we do, including our website, our marketing, our collateral, all of that, then it’s a very obvious change. You know, the new color scheme is more evident. A lot of the new visuals that we brought into it are a lot more evident, which we’ll talk about all that as we go on here. But, I think, you know, that’s maybe a nice way to put a button on these definitions or descriptions of a refresh and versus a rebrand is that, even though one might sound easier because it’s not a name change and all that kind of stuff, it’s still not easy because Right. You’re all of the elements that go into your brand, go so much further than your logo. You know?

Very good point. So Yeah. Now why why did we do this? What what were the factors that led us to do this refresh?

Yeah. You know, if I can put the why into two big buckets, I would say time and feedback would be the the two. And maybe I’ll add a third.

I I think I was gonna batch this into the feedback bucket, but I’ll call, I’ll call the third accessibility slash usability.

Okay. So You can have three buckets. Have as many as you want.

No. I I have to have that slash in there. There cannot be more than three buckets.

Okay. Fine.

I’ve only got two hands, and I don’t know where the third one’s third one’s around my neck or something. But, anyway, so time. Right? So we’ve been in existence since twenty eighteen. We developed the brand really in twenty seventeen or, you know, the end part of twenty seventeen. So, I mean, it’s been eight years.

Now I’m not saying that a company needs to update their logo or, look and feel and do a refresh every eight years, but it’s been long enough for us for sure.

And, you know, the scope and focus of our organization has changed a lot too. So, you know, that’s, I think, a contributing factor to the the time aspect of the why behind this whole thing too. A lot’s changed in those seven, eight years. So, there’s just some extra purpose in giving us a a little bit of a refresh. We went from a more comprehensive cross functional organization with a whole lot of other services beyond marketing, and creative work in it to now, you know, that being our focus. We’re really positioned now as a creative marketing agency. So, so that, I guess, the brief that’s the brief version of the the time aspect of, why make this change.

Feedback.

You know, we were hearing, things from our leadership, our board, even, you know, some clients and prospects that told us it might be time to give this a look.

Most notably, maybe being just people seeing our name, in isolation amongst other organizations and partners and just straight up, like, not knowing what we do. And I think that that’s something that’s just really important to acknowledge as a business that’s trying to grow.

Now our name hasn’t changed and things like that, but we’ve added some elements to our, to the refresh that, gives us some opportunities to more clearly show people what we do by just adding some of our services, alongside our logo, which everybody’s gonna get to see all this stuff, if you’re listening and curious.

So, yeah, that feedback from, leadership, our board, our clients, prospects, partners, and I suppose people on our team too. You know, that’s definitely feedback that, kind of inspired the change, because there were certain times when our logo was difficult to use, the previous version of it, you know, being you know, our logo is still full color, but it’s a much, simpler color scheme. It was definitely more complex than the previous version, and that just can be difficult to use in some applications, and that’s a nice segue to the third bucket of accessibility and usability.

Some of those colors weren’t really vetted well to be used in places where contrast is super important, you know, especially thinking of accessibility from, like, a, you know, ADA and Mhmm. Inclusivity sort of standpoint, you know, making sure that people that maybe have a little trouble seeing or, you know, semi colorblind or anything like that, It was important for us to make changes so that we could get over those obstacles.

But then, you know, even as simple as, you know, a a full color version of the logo being used on a certain background color or printed in a certain way, embroidered in a certain way. There were certain elements of the logo that just straight up got lost. You know? So, as much as, I mean, it’s it’s so interesting because, you know, now that we have gone through the process, identified all the things that we wanted to fix, fix them, and have real stuff out in the world, like, you can’t help but, like, love the new look and kinda hate the old look.

But it’s interesting how, quickly you can forget that, like, that was an award winning design at one point in time, and we got a ton of positive feedback about the look and feel, you know, when we were first kind of introduced to the world. And, you know, even though it certainly had its problems and its limitations, you know, it was still overall a really strong look and got a lot of great feedback and results as we were going. But, considering all those factors, you know, the time, the feedback, usability, and, all of that, some changes have been made, and we’ll get into the process pretty soon. But anything else about the why that, you know, you were a part of those early, conversations too that, anything about the why that you think I missed?

I don’t I don’t necessarily think you missed it because you do number one, we can only have three buckets, apparently. That’s right. And I don’t know what I maybe personal maybe this fits in the feedback bucket.

But I think for me, there was a certain, a a certain.

No.

A certain emotional I listen. It I don’t want to overblow it, but I think it’d be accurate to say there’s a certain amount of emotional baggage.

And I and I think for a good reason because we I believe as we went into, creating the original version of this LLC, the QSO, We did everything. We created that first version of the brand with such intentionality.

And as time went on and things changed and our direction changed and services sort of peeled away, we were dragging it along, and I felt like I spent a lot of time justifying things because we just we hadn’t changed them. It wasn’t who we were.

I think, and and we’ll I am sure that we will talk a little bit about the website because that was a big part of this project too.

But there was that is a good example of somewhere that we had built that with such intentionality, and, it just it became an albatross around our neck to try and figure out how we take something that was built for basically built for one business, same with the brand. It was built for a different business, really.

Right. Right.

And we tried to make we tried to make it work, and that just became exhausting.

You know? Yeah. So I think even minus the feedback from other people, the combination of the time and the toll the toll. Like I said, I it sounds overblown, but, man, you look at this stuff every single day. You spend time dealing with this stuff. You know, you you mentioned the some of the difficulties with the with the logo.

The only reason that worked is because we committed to it.

Yeah. If if it had been another client, we would’ve said, no. You’re gonna be screwing around with that. Yeah.

You’re not gonna like that in two years. Yeah. And it’s just gonna be a lot of screwing around. But it was us, and we committed to it. Right. And we knew what work we were gonna have to do.

You know? Certainly, even if we missed it the first time, once it started coming up and seeing, you know, some of the extra fiddling that we needed to do, we committed to it. Right.

But doing what we’ve done and making some of the changes that we made, we can set all of that down. I just think it’s a it is a good lesson if people are thinking about, yes.

Yes. This is hard work. Yes. It is. And we’ll talk about some of the hard work we did.

And if you are feeling the way we were at the beginning of this process, there’s a really good chance that that hard work is gonna be worth it.

Right. Yeah.

You know, after hearing you talk, I will allow a fourth bucket because I think I’d say, a big enough one just like business change being a part of the why. You know, I mean, it’s a really, really great point in that the initial iteration or version of our logo and brand and look and feel and language and all of that was created for a completely different business than what we’re running and operating today.

So, I mean, that’s that’s like a I mean and I think that there’s other real life examples of brands changing and being updated because of changes to their model and their scope. I mean, even one that may be like the well, no. I think the visual elements are quite significant, actually. Like and, of course, I’m a Apple geek, so I’ll naturally go to them as an example. But, I mean, you look at, you know, how their look has evolved over time.

Part of that certainly is because they’re not just a computer company anymore. Mhmm. You know? I mean and they needed a brand that was a little bit more adaptable to the different lines of work that they’re in, whether it’s, you know, new products like the iPhone and iPad and headphones and all that kind of stuff, all the way to digital services like Apple Music and Apple Arcade and things like that.

You know? Now their much more simplified look is just so much easier to be applied depending on, you know, whichever line of business that Apple’s in that you’re talking about. You know? So and I think I don’t wanna compare what we’ve done to that, to Apple or anything by any means.

But, as we’ve changed both by, like, focusing in on marketing and creative marketing, by doing that, we’ve also gained a clearer understanding of who we are, what we do, what we’re good at. And the visual side of our brand is also, I think, by simplifying it, it’s become more adaptable to Mhmm. The different kind of work that we’ll do as well and, you know, will just be easier to be applied in different ways. And, when we do continue to grow and evolve and a new line of work pops up or something, at least our look and feel in the brand won’t be a limitation to doing that, or we’re not gonna feel like, oh, well, we’re doing something new now.

That means we have to change everything again. Maybe it’ll just be adapted into that new line of work, which I I don’t know what that is. We won’t know until we get there, but, I think that we really set ourselves up for that next stage in our growth too.

Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Well and I can’t stress enough that the mindfulness we put into our original brand, was just as significant. And I think the the hallmark of what we have done both times is looked at who the business is and create a brand that reflects that.

Mhmm.

We we had a necessity when when we had multiple, multiple lines of business that were not marketing.

You know? It was just necessary the way that we did it and the way that we looked at it.

And, now we the biggest thing I think our brand refresh has done is is reflect the people who are creating this business Right.

In a more in a more focused way.

Yeah.

But but enough preamble. Let’s talk about how we got there because we could talk about this part forever.

Yeah.

So let’s talk about our process. How did we get to where we were? So we already we already mentioned that there was feedback, and that feedback from some people came, prior to the decision to think about it. Mhmm. Maybe it was something that was, simmering, but we had not made a formal agreement that that that we were going to really look at that feedback.

We Right.

Had just accepted it and said, okay. That’s good to know.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the the positives and the negatives of that feedback too, you know, the, you know, maybe people advocating for change or to not.

Right.

Because, you know, we certainly got some, feedback along the way that people loved the brightness, the color, the vibrancy. You know? And I think that that is part of the reason why, you know, we’re talking about how people that maybe aren’t familiar with us or are familiar with us on a lower level, might not notice the difference significantly. We definitely kept some vibrancy. We kept, you know, the color and things like that. But, if you if you compare the two side by side and you understand the work that went into it, you definitely can see the significant difference.

So Right.

But, yeah, that it started with that feedback and then, you know, really kind of doing a lot of, like, looking in the mirror, you know, evaluating the current brand, getting that feedback from, our community, our our clients, our prospects, our ourselves. Right? Like, our team, the people that interact with it every day, and then, you know, our leadership board buy in was really important.

So, you know, they were a part of that evaluation process too. I suppose we should talk a little bit about when it what went into that, and I guess that is my segue to research and starting to shape the vision for what the new brand would be.

Yeah. Yeah.

I’m I’m looking at your notes, and I I logically understand this is the process we used. But I am trying to remember every little piece we did and plug it in where, you know, where it was.

Yeah. Good luck.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Because I think I think we started with surveys. Mhmm. Right? Yeah.

It was one of the earlier steps for sure.

We surveyed the board. We surveyed clients.

Yep.

And Simplicity. We surveyed Simplicity. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all coming back to me now, buddy. I got it. Yeah.

And and it was inter it was interesting to get some of the feedback that we got.

Some of it, I think, just agreed with how we were sort of feeling or confirmed for us if we were a little bit on the fence.

Yeah. That what we were thinking was true. I’m trying I’m trying to think if there was anything in that survey. So when I say survey, online form, super simple.

The public version of that survey was pretty much the same, and between between our clients and our board, there were just a couple other questions.

Money questions, I think, specifically, were the things that we added for the board, which is an important thing to talk about.

So to really my my goal behind, the money questions when we surveyed the board was really to make sure that as they were thinking about how profoundly do you want us to change things, that they were also thinking about how much money are you willing to approve to make those changes? Because you those two the answers to those two questions can’t be at at odds for us to move forward.

So Yeah.

I mean, not without limiting, you know, our work. You know? Right. So yeah.

Yeah. We also took advantage during that survey and research phase to really make sure that the questions that we were asking were more about they that they weren’t limited to just the visual aspects of the brand. We asked questions about, you know, awareness of who we are, what we do. Mhmm. You know? And and that, those few audiences that you mentioned, you know, clients, simplicity, our board.

Yeah. I think it was important to ask those questions to all of those folks because we know, you know, obviously, our our board, the people that are meeting with us monthly and familiar with our operations and things like that, they’re gonna have a different level of awareness or a different kind of awareness at least of we are and what we do.

And you say the same thing for each audience too. So we really took advantage of the moment to learn a little bit about, you know, the awareness of ourselves as an organization. And I I think not only is that, like, just helpful information to gain and take advantage of the moment where we’re asking people questions, you know, just to know for knowing’s sake, but also, because it should inform the work of the refresh. Right?

If if what we learn is something like that, people don’t know what we do, or, you know, anything that research like that is what we know that that’s gonna be a crucial iteration to make sure that you’re asking me how the logo looks or the questions included with it, or we’ll get you to the best information to help you do your best whatever. And that doesn’t always mean what the best like. Something that kind of fiber. You know, doing this work for a client or you or you’re asking us, you know, what’s so much more than valuable steps in the process that, you know, we gotta make sure we take advantage of.

That research phase is so important, so crucial, and just make sure that you’re asking the questions that will get you to the best information to help you do your best work. And that doesn’t always mean, what color do you like? Do you like this kind of font or that? You know, what Mhmm.

Design trends are you into now that you know, it’s it’s so much more than look and feel and design.

And if you’re not asking those questions, you’re missing out. Plain and simple.

Right.

Because at the at the core of the look, the field, the design, the voice is, you know, again, coming back to that idea of who are you? What is who is your business? Right. And, you can when you when everyone is on the same page with who your business is and how you want people to see you, some of those things can evolve as the business evolves, and it can still be you know?

It it just is so important.

I think I am overexplaining how important I think it is Yeah.

To know who you are Right. To know what you’re trying to do. You know?

And I think the nice the nice thing was in that process, we did not have we didn’t have a lot of disagreement on who we were.

Right.

Which I think that was a thing, honestly, I was afraid of from the board specifically to hear from the board.

That if we had not been aligned fairly well, obviously, we are a team. And so what we are going to do to get things done is different from what the board is going to do to get things done.

So As it should be.

As it should be. That’s the point. Yeah. But, yeah, I I felt pretty gratified that that there wasn’t a lot of fight that we had to do.

Mhmm. Yeah.

And there were some things that as we got as that feedback was coming in, we could make really rapid changes to try some things Mhmm. That were low stakes.

I mean, I’m thinking specifically about some social media stuff that we, like, immediately could try Yeah.

Which is a great place to test that stuff even as you’re going through a process like this Yeah. To see, how people are actually reacting and what you’re capable of.

Yeah. You know?

Yeah. So something that’s not in the notes, but I think was I don’t think it I’m certain was part of our process was a little bit of testing early on too. Right? Yeah.

But then I I suppose we should keep moving. Yeah.

We should. Probably.

As well, you know, we’ll do our best to keep us moving through the process because we’re on, what, step two of eight.

But what I think is what I I’ll just take this moment to acknowledge, you know, that this is just a preview of, like, the size and scope of a project like this. Every step that we just talked about, we can make our own podcast episode talking about just the evaluation phase, just the research phase, you know, just, you know, what’s next, which is, you know, really starting to create the vision and start to explore ideas for the look and feel and, you know, do some internal testing with ourselves and our team and some external testing with our audience too. I mean, we could spend hours talking about every single step of this thing, but we’re not gonna do that.

We’re gonna talk about what’s next, which was one of the funnest parts for me, for sure. And I think for all of our team as, you know, a group of creatives, whether we’re all graphic designers or not, we’re creative people, and a lot of our work is, certainly creative. So, you know, this is where we got to dig in and talk about color, talk about typography, build our vision board for what things were gonna look like. And, you know, not every organization is gonna have the resources that we have on our team to do this kind of work all on our own and do it internally.

That’s why I suppose you hire someone like us to help you with it, which, you know, whether it’s a creative agency or even a freelancer, a facilitator, someone to help you get through it and keep things moving.

If you’re an organization that doesn’t have those resources, that outside help, I really think is crucial. You know, when you’re talking about brand, the dedication to those resources to make sure you’re doing your best work there and making sound decisions that set you up for the future is really important. And I think that it really showed in this part of the process where we you know, each of us brought our own ideas for things that we liked and saw out in the world and things that could inform our look and feel and color scheme and all of that. And then the practical considerations too. Like, if we were to change our typography, what does that mean for how the new website looks for updates that aren’t gonna be optional, you know, like Mhmm. Signage and things like that.

You know, every single decision could impact, dollars really Right.

Quickly and easily, you know, if you’re if you’re not giving them good consideration. So, I’d specifically, what I’m picturing as I’m, talking about all of these things that we did is the day during Plantopia or our midyear planning. So Plantopia, if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, is our annual, planning day. And then we do a midyear kinda mini version of it as well. So I don’t remember if we did it at midyear or at our full fledged Plantopia, but, you know, spent some time bringing all this stuff together, and helping, take the first steps in building our vision board and informing our designers and the the whole team on what things would look like. And that was cool because, you know, you got to kinda see everybody’s personality come through. You got to see everybody’s preferences come through.

And then we had to figure it all out, you know, through a very democratic process of, voting with stickers and having good conversation, making the case for our own preferences and raising important questions like, you know, well, if we do this, then that’s gonna mean we have to change all this other stuff or it’s gonna cost that. You know? So, that was the time to have those conversations too and kind of an interesting intersection of the artistic creative side and then, like, the practical execution side too.

Yeah. Yeah. And just let me call it out. You know, you you pointed out not everyone on the team is a graphic designer, and it was really I loved those exercises because it was really intentional. It would be easy for, a group of graphic designers to say, you just don’t worry about this. We’re gonna show you some things.

Yeah.

And, you, the non graphic designer, just, you know, thumbs up, thumbs down, or shut up because you’re not a graphic designer.

But, we, Kylie from our team was tasked with developing how we would put together that vision board and collect all that information, and she she did an excellent job.

And everyone on the team, including myself, a non graphic designer, brought in the same amount of influence. So we had the same, you know, number. It was a precise number of fonts and colors and, you know, that we each brought in. So no one no one really had outsized influence, when it was. No one could, everybody had an opportunity to discuss it.

And I think we’re really blessed because, you know, we we hope we’ll continue to grow, and it’s not gonna be forever that our team is the size that we could do something exactly like that. Right.

But a team of seven people, everyone was able to offer feedback.

I think it’s a good example for how you can how you can do that.

And I anticipate that the benefit of that will be you know, we’re, we’re early in this process. We started using it using that brand refresh, but newly, I think that what we’ll see is the buy in is just better.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because it everybody feels an ownership to it. Right?

Right.

Yeah. I think it it’s important to acknowledge I mean, every single step is significant, but the, inclusivity of this step, I think, was really important. It really reminds me a lot of, like, the strategic planning process, making sure that there’s representation, at the table, you know, that it’s not just the c suite.

You know, and, yeah, as organizations get big, there’s not enough room for everyone at the table. But, you know, how can you do your best to make sure that, as many people have a voice and the folks that, are at the table are representing their function, their department, their teams, you know, as as good as possible. And, you know, we took advantage of having small team to be able to do that in a really comprehensive way. And I’m just gonna go on a little bit of a tangent here to, you know, just kinda echo the point before about how if you don’t have these resources in house, the use of a partner is really important.

And we have a real example of where we were hired to help with, a new logo, a refresh, for a client really early on. I’m not gonna name them.

So if you don’t remember who this is, we’ll we’ll I’ll remind you after we’re done recording. But, they wound up not choosing our work, and not only did they not choose our work, they chose not to change their logo. They chose to not, make a change, at least for a while. I think they’ve made a change since.

But, part of the outcome of our work for them was to show them that, like, yeah. You know what? Actually, right now, we’re we’re pretty good. Like, the logo that we have now, the look and feel that we have now is is pretty solid.

So just by seeing some new ideas, seeing your name or your brand in a different way might actually tell you, no. Thanks. Not quite yet. You know?

And and I I I I share this example because I am very confident and genuinely believe that our work was good. Like, what we created was good. But it was just enough to tell them, yep. Not not now or, you know, not in this way and and really make them consider, like, okay.

If we were to choose one of these concepts, like, let’s really think about everything else that needs to change because it is more than the logo. You know? Mhmm. So Yeah.

Yeah. I I do remember that. Yeah. And I think that, actually, it’s it’s a little bit ballsy because it’s not like they didn’t have to pay.

And it was us, and I think it was another they had another option too. Right? Another agency?

Yeah. I think that they started with another agency, weren’t totally in love or bought into those concepts. And and I I I don’t mean to speak for them, but, I think that part of their feeling was like, just don’t like how this stuff turned out. Mhmm. So it’s not that we’re not gonna keep doing this. It’s not that we’re not gonna change our logo or re refresh, but we just don’t like these concepts. And then seeing additional concepts from us, from another agency, I think just, you know, like, cured their decision.

Right.

But, yeah, just now is not the time. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, I don’t want to openly advocate for people to spend money and then not not use it, but that could have been the absolute best investment in money at that moment.

For sure.

For that client.

So Absolutely.

Yep. So don’t if you go down this road, don’t feel like you like, trust your gut if Mhmm. Don’t do it.

Don’t make find yourself, you know, painted in a corner and decided and deciding you have to make a move Right.

If it doesn’t feel right.

Yeah. And all the more reason for these initial steps that we’re talking about to be taken, to be done well, because Right. At any of these steps along the way, you could realize, you know, that it’s time to pull the rip cord. You know? Yeah. Even if it’s cost you a bit of money to get there.

Right. Right. But let’s move should we move on to the next step? Boy.

Appreciate it.

We’re really making a meal out of this. Yeah.

The next step was the, we got all of that together. We got our initial ideas, and we pitched it to the board Yeah. Via video.

Yep.

Each one of us did a little bit Mhmm.

Of that video, which is a fun experience, I think, for the team.

Yeah. Fun, anxiety inducing. You know?

The both. Why not again, why not both? Yeah.

But no.

I mean, a cool opportunity for Kylie who did, you know, a lot of the design work, a cool opportunity for you as, you know, our our brand champion and the leader of the creative team, and obviously a cool opportunity for me to, to show the work of the whole team. You know?

Right.

There’s as the like, I don’t want the ego to show, but as the face of the company, one of my biggest challenges is to make sure that I’m giving credit where credit is doing, giving people opportunities to take credit for the work that they’re doing, take and, you know, credit and ownership of it. And that this was just a really cool opportunity for me to introduce the project, give them an update as to where we were at, and then say, and here’s, you know, two people that are gonna show you all the awesome work that’s been done. And you guys both did great, and I think it was a cool opportunity for both of you, and a cool opportunity for the board to hear from somebody other than me, you know, which is something we need to do more of. But Yeah.

And, yeah, this is a a key moment to, you know, make sure the buy in’s still there and make sure we’re going the right direction, pro you know, provide some, I think at this point when we pitched it to the board, we had a pretty darn solid idea with where we were going. We didn’t present a whole lot of options or anything like that. Mhmm. This could be a moment where if, you know, depending on the project, depending on the scope of the change, maybe you are presenting a few concepts and you’re trying to get a gauge or a feel for which one gets preference.

But for ours, we were pretty darn set and pretty confident. And I don’t wanna say make it sound like, well, here board, this is what we’re doing. We were definitely still open to, you know, their feedback and stuff, but, things were pretty darn set at this point for us. And I think that at least part of it is, because we are the internal team creating this work too. It’s not like we’re relying on a partner for it. So Right.

Yeah.

And it is you know, it’s something to dwell on for just a minute that, one what I think you did well in that and do pretty often, even even if maybe some days you feel like you don’t, was to keep keep the board functioning at the board level with that.

Right.

You know? They’re we’re a marketing team, man.

Yeah.

We the board doesn’t need to do our marketing.

Right. Right.

That’s that’s not you know, they there are some people who definitely couldn’t, could fill any role on our team, and they would be totally capable of doing it. But that’s they’re here for oversight. Right. They have to, you know, they have to serve that function and put on that hat when they’re in their board role. And so managing that and being able to say, here’s what we’re thinking. This is what our plan is.

You know? Isn’t that cool? I’m sure that’s not what exactly how we did it.

That’s how we ended the pitch.

Yeah.

Cool. Right?

And then drop the mic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And positive Yeah.

Positive experience.

Yep.

Yeah. Anything that was there anything in that that, gave you pause or, I don’t know, kept you up at night?

No. No. And in fact, you know, I think it’s, you know, a small example of something that happens oftentimes and in other ways where, you know, you own a thing or you have, you know, final say in something or the control over it, and that feels good in one way. But sometimes it feels as good, if not better, to give all that up and give it to other people, the people that should be doing the work.

Right? So, you know, the I I I wasn’t concerned. It certainly wasn’t keeping me up at night, that I had pretty minimal, work in the actual design process Mhmm. Some of the final decisions of color and look and feel.

Of course, I had plenty of review opportunity and approval opportunity along the way, but I was just really confident along the way that I have a great team that was working on it. And and that was all the more reason to make sure that you had an opportunity to present it. Mhmm. And at the end of it all, like I say, it would have been it would have felt great to do all of this on my own, you know, at my own desk and on my own computer and all of that and pitch my own ideas.

But it sure as heck felt a lot better to know that we did this as a team and that it was pitched by the team.

And at the end of the day, I spent less time on it. I could focus on what I should be focusing on so you all could do the creative work. You know? So Right.

Yeah. No. I I mean, I’m sure there were some things that popped up every now and then where I was like, are we sure about this or, you know, whatever. I’m sure that, you know, there were some moments of pause along the way, but nothing so significant that I would have done it any other way looking back on it.

Good to know.

But, yeah, overall positive for sure. Good vibes and feelings from everyone along the way. It’s so much so that we were happy to move right into our next step, which was starting to update stuff. And, you know, really, we had brand guidelines that existed, but this was a cool opportunity to really enhance them, of course, make all the relevant updates, but, add more definition, add more clarity.

And this is super timely. And you haven’t been back in the office to see them.

We got, printed versions of our brand guidelines, and they just showed up yesterday. You’re gonna love it. And I can say this on the recording because it’s coming out after the refresh event, which will be people’s first opportunity to see it, which is maybe the one surprise about that event that, people don’t know about yet. We’ll have copies of it there for people to see because it really is. I mean, it their brand guidelines for sure. We talk about color and font and all that stuff in there, but it really, is beyond, you know, the functional aspects of our brand, like color and font and all that. You know, we our values are in there.

Some great examples of how we bring it all together.

So, I can’t say anymore. People just have to see them. They’ll be on our website too so you can see a digital copy of them, but the the physical books themselves look really awesome too.

So The last time I was looking at that, the very probably the very last proof that I saw before, we said it was done, I realized how happy it may be.

There’s a picture in there when you talk about bringing it all together. There is a picture in there that I took with my cell phone at my desk at home.

And the fact that, I told I even told Kylie, it makes me feel so good to see something like that that I I mean, I it was a picture I took for a blog Mhmm.

Because we have an image on a blog. Yeah. And I needed a damn image, and I could not find the thing.

But it felt so good to see, especially here’s me being selfish. Here’s my ego.

Because so much of the work we do, I influence, and I I don’t necessarily direct design, but I definitely influenced design. I definitely you know, so much of it is someone else’s work Yeah. That people see. You know? Yeah.

And that that made that felt very special to see something that was something was work that I did. Yeah. That’s all.

Well and the fact that it is in our brand guidelines document, makes it even more special of an example, and really kind of a use case of strong a strong brand and strong brand guidelines that someone like yourself, a nondesigner, can have a comprehensive enough understanding of our brand and the look that we’re going for that with your cell phone in I don’t know. I don’t know if I wanna call it an emergency, but in in a pinch where you couldn’t find what you needed elsewhere, you created what needed to be created, and you had a a tool, and an understanding of our brand in place to be able to do that.

And that’s exactly why the research, the time Right.

Right.

The vision, everything else that we’ve talked about so far to this point is so important because now you’re activating a whole organization, every person in the organization to be an advocate of, a creator, of the delivery vehicle of your brand. You know? So, yeah, that’s an awesome example for so many reasons because you took it and because it’s, like, proof of how important this work can can be.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Love that.

And, you know, I mentioned the guidelines first because it really does start there, like setting some rules, some expectations, creating some clarity, and that really helped inform the next step, which was starting to update all of the stuff that we have and create, you know, our our print collateral, our marketing collateral, our website. You know? And speaking of things that we could spend a whole episode on, that that is a huge part of this process. And we really took advantage of the moment by doing a refresh, to, really enhance our website, you know, of course, from a look and feel standpoint with the new look and feel, but, but just the information that was on there too and, you know, getting to having to show and tell, the, why we do what we do and how we do what we do and what we do in general.

You know? Because our pre the previous version of our website was super high level, rather basic information. And, you know, as you’re going through this process doing a bunch of research and asking yourselves questions like, what are our processes and how do we do what we do, and how do clients succeed because we work with them?

Why not take that information and make sure that it’s translated and put out there on the website. Right? So and full disclosure, lots more work to be done on the website. We’ve got a lot of great news sections and content and pages and all that, but, a lot more to come too. But we’ve got a really nice framework for that, set us up for the future for sure.

Yeah. It is it’s interesting.

You know, when you I thought of this as you were mentioning the brand guidelines. It also applies to the website.

We you know, for for a while, we have done we have marketed ourselves, our business, on such a part time basis Yeah.

Because we are so busy, you know, trying to grow the business, helping other people, doing other people’s marketing.

And this whole process, up to including the website, creating the brand guidelines, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, has been an excellent reminder that if we want to be a good example for people, we’ve we’ve gotta do the thing. We have to do the heck out of it. Yep. We wanna tell people, you have to be mindful of the content that’s on your website. It has to be user friendly. It has to be, you know, optimized for SEO. People if people are searching for the thing you do, they damn well better be able to find you.

Right.

We there was just a lot that we weren’t do we can tell you as an expert in our field that you should be doing it, but, you know, if the cobbler’s children have no shoes Yeah.

Like, prove it. Prove that you actually know it, know how to do it. So Right. Yeah. That that’s is something that excites me that we are, I believed in us, but I think we now have much more of an outward facing example of how we do actually know how to do this stuff now that we’ve taken the time. Right. You know?

Yeah. So lots of stuff there. Still things to update.

Still working on things in I mean, you know, we talk about the website. We talk about the brand guidelines.

Talk about some of the collateral.

And, even up to this recording right now when we have an event in just less than a week, we have not even brought up our signage, the interior of our building.

So that stuff that, we made some decisions about things that are just too darn new Yeah.

And we just put up and that we will maybe live with for a little while.

Right.

But Yeah.

Yeah. Lots there there are things that seem still need to get done, but we’ve done a ton.

Yeah. Well, in keeping, you know, business purpose and our current goals in mind, we’ve updated the stuff that’s gonna help us, you know, achieve those things as quickly as possible. We could we could have spent thousands of dollars updating signage and graphics and stuff inside the building, or we could have spent time, to update stuff for the, you know, new businesses that we’re trying to capture and new clients we’re trying to work with and folks that won’t be in our building, but they’ll be on our website, you know Right. Right. Like that. So, so I think our priorities are where they need to be, and we’ll get to that stuff, soon.

And, I imagine, as creatives that are really close to the brand, the more and more that we see the brand in our day to day use and in stuff that we’re sending out to folks and all of that and then also see some stuff that’s leftovers that we haven’t done yet Mhmm.

It’ll all probably happen a little sooner than we think it will because Right. It’ll bug the crap out of us.

Probably. Probably.

Yeah. So that’s Lots more sorry. Go ahead.

No.

I’m counting off because that’s where we’re at ongoing work. That’s what that was. The work continues.

And, moving on to measurement. But what did you wanna say before that?

That’s exactly what I was gonna, shift to was, you know, now that a lot of the initial work is done and as more and more gets done along the way, it’ll be important for us to, you know, just like anything else in the marketing world, make sure that we’re keeping an eye on what’s working, how this is working, where the changes helped us, where the changes hurt us, and then addressing those things from there. Right? So, you know, I don’t know how easy it is to measure the effectiveness of a brand refresh, for every kind of organization in some sort of universal way. But for us, you know, a clear indicator as a small, aggressive growing business, You know, a big part of our measurement is gonna be awareness and engagement.

Right? Like, how many more people are visiting our website? How many more people are submitting requests for work? How many clients do we have?

All of that kind of stuff. You know? So there’s also some pretty easy and logical ways for us to measure, like, what’s been the impact of this stuff. So, more to come on that down the road.

Right. Well and and so much of it is, any of this kind of stuff is about your trajectory and watching your trajectory. You want to, not everything that you do, like changing our logo colors.

There is no straight line between changing our logo colors and, getting a bunch of new clients. Right. But, I think like so many things in marketing, there there is a certain level of it where if you are doing the right things as a big general sweeping statement, then you are going to grow or you’re going to meet you know, if you’re doing the things aligned with the things you want to get accomplished strategically and then you accomplish the things you want to accomplish, you are probably on the right track.

Right.

And you can feel good about a lot of things.

Mhmm.

That was some half talk made up marketing junk.

Anyway We’ll we’ll workshop that in a little bit.

Yeah. We’ll come up with something there.

So we we have covered a lot of the rest of these questions that we have here for each other.

We have.

So, what final question for you, before we get to what’s next. What was your favorite part of the whole process?

Yeah.

My favorite part for sure was working with the team on those initial visionary steps in the process, creating the vision board together, bringing our personal preferences and ideas to the whole thing, just for so many reasons. One, because I love our team. Two, I love to see the creativity of our team, particularly the folks that get to do that kind of work every day, our designers and, those folks, but also to see people that, don’t do that stuff every day and to see their ideas, because and I’ve I think I’ve said this before in workshops that I’ve presented and speeches that I’ve given and things like that.

Everybody is a creative. Everybody is a designer whether you think you are or not. And I know that there’s a lot of people that wake up in the morning and think that, you know, they don’t have a creative bone in their body, but somehow they’re matching colors to put an outfit on for the day. Right.

You know? And there it takes creativity. It takes an understanding of color sense and principles and things like that. So everybody is creative, and that step in the process where you got to see that come out of folks was by far my favorite part of the process for sure.

Yeah. Awesome. I think the watching the interaction you know, and we we got to experience it when we were first launching the brand.

There were much much fewer of us, but we got to have that we’ve gotten we’re lucky.

We got to do this twice Mhmm.

And have that same kind of experience twice where we got to be with people we really, really liked. We got to talk about who we are, who we wanna be, what the business is gonna look like when it grows up.

And we got to do that now. Hopefully, we’ll get to, you know, do it again with a different group, you know, with more people. Yeah.

So watch yeah. Being a part of that and watching the creative team bouncing back and forth on things and, like, the some of the energy was probably my favorite part, Mhmm. Watching people get excited about things.

And watching it solidify this vision that that I’ve had, and I hope that we continue to really push forward with this idea. You know, you just talk about everybody being creative.

That’s why the titles on the that’s why the creative team is called the creative team. All of their titles end with creator.

And that was always the intention behind that, that our we’re a team of people who are creative, who are create they create something.

Everything they touch is creation.

Right. So to, solidify that as the brand and to let people see themselves not as order takers, not as, I don’t know, cogs cogs in the machine. Even though you heard me say that to someone just last week Yeah. That you are merely a cog in the machine.

I don’t mean it.

But to see themselves as creative people and artists, you know, I think is so important. So Yeah.

So what’s next, Ben? More work.

Yep. More work. About that. More updating, more new stuff.

And that’s you know, you’ve heard my favorite part, to this point.

I’m excited to see the new new stuff, new ideas, new product services Mhmm.

New ways that we help people, that we can tie back to a pretty cool moment in our time where we freshen some things up because I think that the work we’ve done at this point, probably already has, but certainly will, mean we get to help some more people because of it.

Right. Awesome. Well, that is our time.

That is time.

That is times. We are so excited that you walked through this. We know that we, we could, as Ben said, do entire episodes on each chunk of this or one on the website. We should probably do one on the website.

But we’re just always excited, when we get to this point in the podcast to say that if you’re listening, you continue on this journey with us. We appreciate you for doing that.

You can always learn more about us at our website, exclamation QSO dot com. Check out our blog. Check out some of the new stuff out there, and see what we do.

We’ll see you there. Thanks, friends, for tuning in. Be awesome. We’ll see you next time.

The Awesomeology podcast is a production of exclamation services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kyla Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Seager for booking our guests, and Alex Westerhausen for social media support.