Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
business builder branding
by Bob Leaf and Matt Minnichsoffer
When your real business is graphics services and communications, and your business prospects assume you’re either in IT or chrome plating, you know it’s time for a name change and brand upgrade.
When Computer Chrome was founded in 1975, our core business was computer-generated slides or “chromes,” and slide duplication. Over the years the company grew through acquisition and anticipation of our customers’ needs, moving more into the creative side. Computer Chrome had gone beyond being just “the slide guys.” We had added a variety of services, ranging from CD-ROM, DVD and Web development, to collateral and presentation materials, logo and brand development and more.
Clearly, it was time to capitalize on the breadth of our product and service offerings and take our brand to the next level. The hitch? It wasn’t in the budget. No matter. We became our own client. We dedicated our regular marketing budget to the new-name, brand-evolution initiative. We followed a simple, streamlined model that kept expenses in check. We did it ourselves without breaking the bank. You can too.
1. Get internal buy-in upfront.
Bring in the troops at the onset and create ownership and enthusiasm. Involve everyone in the project, from the receptionist and administrative personnel to manufacturing to sales to HR and so on. Provide comprehensive information about the project.
Who are we? What are we? Where are we going? What’s going on? Record the answers to these questions. They’re your internal brand assessment. As the project evolves, hold regular update meetings for everyone, not just the management team. Internal buy-in is essential if employees are to accept and create the change that is inherent in a new name and brand upgrade.
Assign each employee to a committee with a defined scope of responsibility (or let them sign up for the committee of their choice). Ours included design, content and development. The design team developed a creative blueprint, designed the new company logo and incorporated it into the company’s marketing materials. The content team assembled the copy and portfolio samples, and the development team did the Web site programming and created the actual communication tools.
2. Set a D-day; don’t deviate.
Set a project completion date and don’t deviate from it, no matter what. With the help of your committees, create a list of project components, things that must be done to complete the project. Assign a hand-off date and timeline to each task. Your quarterly marketing budget (available funds) will dictate some of the timing, as will major upcoming projects and regularly scheduled corporate events.
It took us approximately three months from project kick-off to completion. A caveat here: Branding and design are prominent in our product/service arsenal. It could take your company a bit longer, since you’ll have to rely on an outside design firm for creative execution. Add two months on to your schedule just to be safe.
3. Conduct external customer research.
As an up-and-coming smaller company, we found that do-it-yourself customer research was just as effective, far less costly and much quicker.
Our sales staff did the market research in person and over the phone. We asked simple questions designed to elicit customer perceptions of the company: When you see or hear the name Computer Chrome, what do you think of? What do you think our value proposition is? What do you see as our core competencies? After about 20 conversations, we saw a pattern; the responses became repetitive.
Our customers said that we understood what they wanted, met their budget, finished on time, and were friendly and cooperative in the process. Oh yes, and that we were expert at melding creativity and technology to get the job done. This was our brand; it was who and what we are, and it aligned nicely with our internal brand assessment. We were on the right track.
4. Brainstorm a name, check it out twice.
With customer perceptions in tow, it was time to develop the new name that would best communicate our brand. Rather than use an outside naming agency, we again tapped into our internal resources. We solicited name ideas from everyone. (You’ll be surprised at who comes up with some of the best ones!) We held brainstorming sessions, narrowed our name list to 10, voted on the three to four “keepers,” and tested each finalist against our brand attributes.
We also checked in with our administrative group, insurance people, accounting, legal, and others to identify any possible problems with the names from their perspectives. We then went to the Web to check out domain name availability, and contacted the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office to see if our four final name choices were available. If we did business outside Minnesota, we would have had our attorney run a national or international name check as well.
5. Develop a creative blueprint; call in the pros to execute.
It’s now time to list all the points of contact between customers and other external audiences and the company that must reflect the new name.
Must-haves include phonebook listings, the elevator speech that defines the company, how the receptionist answers the phone, letterhead, calling cards, various sizes of envelopes, invoices, checks, mailing labels, a basic Web site, and a promotional folder and inserts. Nice-to-haves include company polo shirts and coffee mugs, giveaway items, and so forth. Must-haves come first in your creative blueprint. Non-essential pieces can come after D-day, if they are deemed to be business builders.
Invest in the services of a professional design firm to develop all must-haves, from logo to printed pieces to Web site. Don’t trust your new name and brand, the essence of your business, to a neighborhood kid or a relative to do it on the cheap. It will show.
Logo labels are another way to stay on schedule and on budget. Here’s how they work. If you placed our new and old calling cards side by side, you’d notice that our new color scheme doesn’t deviate radically from the old. This is literally by design. It enables us to morph many of our existing promotional pieces such as CD-ROMs, printed case studies and large posters through the use of a self-stick label that bears the new logo. Naturally, we’ll update the pieces themselves as inventory dwindles. Later on, we can augment our color scheme through a process of metamorphosis.
6. Tell the world, cheaply.
When it comes time to announce the name change to the outside world, among your choices are a print ad augmented by a direct mail piece, or an e-mail. We chose the latter to get the new name out as quickly and inexpensively as possible. However, the practicality of e-mail depends on the attributes of your customer base. Our list is quite large, and we have permission from each of those on the list to send them e-mail.
The message announced the new name, inviting customers to visit our Web site to check out our new look. It also contained our elevator speech, or key messages, and indicated that our sales person would follow up with them. It’s expensive to mail to a 5,000-name list. Blast e-mail is free; it paved the way for future contacts and put customers in the know. We put out a press release to local business and trade media announcing the change and its rationale. The news appeared in our target publications at a cost far less than an ad.
Renaming your company and reinvigorating your brand doesn’t have to break the bank or take forever. With a streamlined and focused do-it-yourself methodology, and in a few months.
