PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The company, SSA Graphics, needed to evolve. with the next generation of owners, the marketing company and large format printer, that has served many retail franchise chains needed to refocus its value proposition and its brand in order to stay relevant and cost-effective.
The project was to develop a new strategy for a marketing company, focusing on their strengths and capabilities and creating a new business model, focused on a unique but familiar target market. Redesign branding around this new strategy to increase awareness of the new focused value proposition.
USER
Marketing Company in San Antonio. Their user: Marketing departments for multi-unit franchise retail chains that use in-store POP for regular marketing promotions throughout the year.
CHALLANGE
SSA Graphics wanted to focus its product and service offerings to better differentiate it’self in the marketing graphics, collateral, and point of purchase retail space.
Having specific and focused expertise with franchise retail chains, SSA wanted to shed some of its less-focused offerings and define an easily understood set of products for this market. Focusing these offerings would allow them to communicate this to the market more quickly.
Will this new strategy defined, a complete re-brand of the company would be needed to communicate the value of the company to this market. New trade shows and conferences would be attended and this new branding would need to be simpler, more colorful and more rememberable.
RESEARCH
In addition, we found a lot of great resources in industry trade groups that serviced the client the company needed to target. Groups like IFA (International Franchise Association) and the Franchise Marketing Leadership Conference, that both serve as a resource to the company’s client target had a lot of data to help define how the company needed to craft its branding and communication plan.
We involved the company’s internal partners (team members). Laying out the current state of the company and some transition challenges, we brainstormed some of the pros and cons and conducted a SWOT analysis of the different aspects of the new strategy.
Once we had some internal information, we then decided to conduct a brainstorming session with some business leaders we had some access to, both from the marketing world and from the retail and restaurant space. We conducted a mini-sprint, mapping about the issue, sketching solutions, idea voting and general discussion on the best ideas of the day.
Some takeaways from both of these sessions:
- Concentric circles – There are things that we say we do, things we actually can do and things that we do NOT do.
- The suggestion was made to include “Franchise” in the name because we are currently focused on servicing multi-unit, quick-serve restaurants that are typically franchises.
- With a last name like “Brand”, it seems like a given that we would include it in our company name because we are working with companies to increase awareness for their brand through the printing of P.O.P kits.
- Should we have “P.O.P.” in the name? Does everyone know what P.O.P is if we have it in the name? Does it mean the same thing to everyone?
- Feedback was given that we have a great product/service and we should not have a problem growing the company.
- The Brand Group is our LLC umbrella company and a suggestion was made to use that as our dba to replace SSA Graphics.
- Taglines were discussed to work with a Company name, i.e. The Brand Group..the POP experts.
- BrandPOP was suggested as a name and received positive feedback.
SOLUTION
Create a new set of symbols to represent the primary method of purchasing (512) beer and highlight and remind the customer that this is integrated into their philosophy.
Lessons Learned
The partners know a lot about the client. The phase where we involved the company partners in the lead up to the strategy rebrand was crucial going into the brainstorming with the business leaders. They had great insight into what the current clients’ perception of the company was and where we needed to improve in order to differentiate ourselves.
The Client’s Industry’s research. While doing research, the client’s trade organization provided a lot of data around what the client is thinking about and their needs. How the client reaches out to its own community gave us insight into how they thought about the company’s area of expertise and how we could best serve them.
My Role
- Account Manager
- Customer Research
- Strategy and Brainstorming
- Content Creation
- Marketing Strategy
- Branding Strategy
- Graphic Design