Rebranding
Rebranding a 15-year-old brand requires a unique blend of care and strategic vision. This project involved in-depth analytics, a comprehensive brand audit, strategy development, and a full digital and web redesign. As a result, the brand was successfully revitalized, ushering in a new chapter with renewed energy and market relevance.
Category
STRATEGY
REBRANDING
WEB DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Customer
Completion Date
JANUARY 2024
Location
NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA
About the project
The initial request of the client was to redo their website. However after the first round of meetings, it was clear that the work has to go much deeper than the website redesign, hence a more comprehensive work with the brand was suggested. The client was interested, happy to engage and work on the reimagining of the brand.
About the client
Big Idea Lab (BIL) provides a modern take on spirituality and personal growth. It is a consulting company that provides productivity, spirituality, and mindfulness services to individuals who want to align with their highest potential.
Big Idea Lab was founded in NYC in 2009 by Marina Romashko and has helped countless clients improve their lives, become more mindful and productive since then. After almost 15 years of active consulting and coaching work, Marina was ready to take Big Idea Lab to the next level. That’s when she approached me with a redesign request.
The nature of the business required us to do coaching and strategizing work with the client personally in order to accurately identify her own values, needs and goals and how she wants to realize them through the company.
Project timeline
The first stage of the project was to clarify the client’s goals and needs. The original project was initiated as a website redesign, however soon it was agreed that the scope needed to be expanded in order to bring forth the results the client was expecting.
One of the advantages of this case was the fact that there was only one decision maker, and so it was easy to pivot and adjust on the go. Simultaneously, it meant that the project timeline was highly dependent on the involvement and availability of the business owner.
Challenges:
One of the project’s distinctive features potentially owed to the nature of the client’s work. A major approach the client uses is slowing down in order to achieve greater results. So in order for me to truly experience what the Big Idea Lab brand is about, we decided to work within its framework and allowed more time for the project to come to fruition than originally predicted.
Additionally, when working with a company founder and/or entrepreneur, the issue of company brand vs. personal brand comes up. In this case, we had to do extensive market and customer analysis as well as brand and self discovery exercises in order to determine whether to combine the two. In the end, we decided to keep the brands separately but have them complement each other.
Brand Platform
The next stage was the most collaborative part of the project. It involved homework exercises for the client and collective brainstorming. Given the nature of the company – a consultancy with a strong founding figure – and the niche it operates in – a meeting point of spiritual psychology and business savvy approach, – we decided to create an extensive brand profile, taking much from the personal brand approach. It included:
It also included a lot of coaching and strategizing work with the client personally in order to pinpoint her own values, needs and goals and how she wants to realize them through the company. As a result, a new and reimagined brand started to emerge.
Visual Identity
After the brand platform was built, we needed to create the brand’s visual identity. Since the brand uniquely blends business coaching and deep mindfulness, its visual identity needed to reflect and accentuate this powerful mix. For that, I chose pastel but clean color combinations, with a sprinkle of bright orange accents for its webpage.
Chosen typography also reflected the main archetype of the Sage, complimented by the qualities of the Creator and the Magician. With that in mind, a new logo and brand’s visual identity were developed and activated through the new website and social media content. The client was also advised on how to extend this new brand identity through other communication channels, including marketing and promotional materials, as well as a photoshoot guide for the founder.
Since the brand uniquely blends business coaching and deep mindfulness, its visual identity needed to reflect and accentuate this powerful mix.
Website Development
The next important stage of the project was the creation of the company’s new website. For Big Idea Lab, its website is the primary place where potential customers can learn about the company and its offerings. Historically, most of the traffic to the website came from social media and direct referrals.
With the new website, the goal was to make it not only for business presentation but also to add a blog and provide the capability for e-commerce, courses, and podcast integration as well as community/membership functionality.
Given that the original site was too crowded and lacked visual coherence and consistency, it was important to simplify it, rethink navigation and create a clear site map.
With that in mind, WordPress was a platform of choice. Given that the original website was too crowded and lacked visual coherence and consistency, it was important to simplify it, rethink navigation and create a clear site map. This would ensure a more coherent user experience and increase engagement and conversions.
From there, I created the wireframes for website pages and developed its design based on the visual identity created in the previous stage. The client provided the content and personal photography for the website, allowing me to focus on the design and functionality of the final product. The website was designed with mobile devices in mind and the copy was SEO optimized. Final integrations were done by the developer from the client’s side.
It was exciting and heartwarming to see the new brand identity come to life across multiple marketing channels and be embraced by existing and new clients with delight and curiosity.
Results:
The project was successfully completed within the established timeframe, and the client was highly satisfied with the outcomes. The new brand identity was rolled out across multiple marketing channels, resulting in a 25% increase in customer engagement and a 15% growth in new client acquisition within the first three months. It was exciting to witness the brand’s transformation, as both existing and new clients embraced it with enthusiasm and curiosity.
