Marketing Case Study / Gradwell
Brand Refresh
| Client | Gradwell | www.gradwell.com |
|---|---|
| Objective | Develop a visual identity and tone of voice to appeal to a wider target audience |
| Quick Facts |
|
Gradwell is an internet services company, providing internet telephony, hosting, broadband and email services to small and micro businesses in the UK. Established by Peter Gradwell in his second year at university, the company has achieved year-on-year organic growth for the last 10 years.
When this project commenced, marketing activity had been ad-hoc and growth had been achieved mainly through word of mouth amongst the technology enthusiast community. To enable continued growth, Gradwell needed to appeal beyond this market, to a wider small business community. They approached Clear Thought to undertake lead generation activity.
Following an audit of the sales funnel and research into the target audience, Clear Thought found that the visual identity and tone of voice was alienating the audience segment with the most growth potential.
Problems with the existing brand:
Gradwell's brand appealed almost exclusively to a techie audience, and was difficult to engage with if you were less technically literate. With growth potential sitting amongst small businesses without technology specialisms, this was a barrier to growth. The key issues were:
- The logo made a reference to coding language by using <> device around the name
and strapline. To a less technically literate audience, this had no meaning. - Imagery was primarily hardware shots, giving no impression of how the technology was used to benefit a business person.
- The tone of voice was one of technical expert talking to a peer. This meant heavy use of jargon, and assumptions made about the level of technical understanding a person interacting with Gradwell would have.
- Technology features were highlighted, when the audience needed to understand business benefits.
The brand we delivered:
Clear Thought pulled together a freelance team with specific expertise in business-to-business marketing and IT to work on the new brand.
Making extensive use of the detailed customer research and market messaging project, we delivered the following:
- A revised strapline (Internet for business people) that served to put the audience in the
message, clarify the market in which Gradwell operates, and place the products within their widest category - the internet. - Maintained the core colour, yellow, to allow for some continuity and to borrow the colour association that helped express Gradwell's helpfulness (AA, Yellow Pages, hi-visibility jackets)
- Two levels of imagery; primary imagery that places the technology in context being
used by a real person, and secondary 'life-style' imagery that helps to express a concept, a sense of humour and approachability. - A revised tone of voice that means using plain English and focussing on business benefits rather than technology features.
One year on, Gradwell conducted an staff survey in which 95% of employees agreed that the brand was important to the company as a whole. Peter Gradwell, MD, comments, “it was a really tough decision to spend money on something that wouldn’t directly generate leads, it was about building the foundations. But, I’m absolutely sure that it was the right thing to do. It has had huge benefits across everything we do, but to give a tangible example, we were recently approached by HP to appear as a pretty high profile case study, and I’m sure they wouldn’t have shared a stage with us if we hadn’t looked as credible and polished as we now do.”
This project was undertaken as part of a 12-month marketing transformation programme for Gradwell. Hear Peter Gradwell, MD, talk about his experiences in this 3-minute video »
