BrandZap
George Little
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Case Study
Network Right is a growing IT & Networking Services company focused on VC-backed and technology startups in San Francisco.
When Network Right approached BrandZap, they faced a critical challenge. The company had engaged a website development and branding agency to build a new WordPress marketing website, but the project lacked direction and a clear brand foundation. Anthony Garcia, the CTO of Network Right leading the effort, identified two major issues: the website's look and feel did not align with the company's envisioned branding, and the structure did not effectively communicate their services and offerings.
The previous agency's approach was heavily template-based without a deep understanding of Network Right's unique needs and values. The branding they proposed felt too futuristic, missing the mark on Network Right's core value of delivering reliable, human-centric IT consulting services. BrandZap stepped in, listened to Network Right's vision and values, and helped establish a solid brand foundation. This foundation made subsequent design iterations smoother and more aligned with Network Right's identity, enabling them to build their brand with confidence and clarity.
Before diving into any branding design work with Network Right, the first step was to get a better understanding of the issues and prioritize how to solve them. Since they were already working with an external branding agency, we thought it was best to communicate with them to see what progress had already been made on the website, and what scope remained. With a better understanding of what had already been accomplished, we coordinated with the marketing leads at Network Right on expectations and a few strategic options to finish their website and fix their brand while also getting the most out of the unused agency scope.
The Brand Revamp process at BrandZap designed to be quick and efficient. Unlike large marketing agencies that take weeks to onboard, interview, and create large branding presentations and pitches, we’ve streamlined an approach that allows for 2-3 versions of a companies brand to be explored, critiqued, and developed within about two-weeks. This allows us to quickly understand how stakeholders feel about various elements, methods, or styles a brand can embody.
For Network Right, we set out to start this process using influences from their existing logo plus a few of our own ground-up solutions. We’ve found that when a founder is attached a or set of visual styles that they feel align with their company’s brand and culture, it’s always a good idea to consider those options in the first round of brand studies. Through a few interviews with the CEO, COO, and CTO, we quickly got to work putting together a set of potential directions for the branding.
Following the presentation of these new brands to Network Right, we went through a few more iterations that aligned with all of the stakeholders’ vision for their graphic identity. Once this creative consulting process was complete, we quickly got to work building out social templates, google docs templates, slide deck starter kits, and files for the marketing team to continue developing and using the various brand assets like logos, iconography and background imagery. These are the core assets included with an Brand Revamp, and are customized for each client.
With the new brand established, attention turned to fixing and finalizing the current in-development wordpress website. The issues were beyond aesthetics and required a reorganization of the website’s content. Most importantly, there was a limited about of scope remaining for the agency, so efforts were made to minimize the amount of development changes required to launch the new website in a timely manner.
The in-development website need reorganizing. The site’s user experience and goals weren’t clearly established, so content seemed out of place, pages were very long, and calls-to-actions didn’t effectively captivate user’s attentions or pain-points. To address these issues, BrandZap walked the marketing team through a combined site-mapping and wire-framming process that would allow them to conceptually visualize where content was, and the ability to ‘play’ with arranging it across the site more effectively.
The branding agency already building the site made the decision to use wordpress. As a result, the site’s existing page structure was fairly modular and repetitive. Using this to our advantage, the newly arranged page aimed to rely on the least number of modules possible, making the final development of the site easier. This meant the redesign of the website would heavily consider the page structure and layouts already created, relying more of a restyling that a complete rebuild of the site itself.
Many of the modules on the website were fairly standard: single column, two column, logo, grids, testimonial, sections, etc. this made updating the styles to reflect the new branding, a fairly straightforward process and that we were able to complete within a week or two.
The result of the site mapping and content consolidation process, combined with the restyling of the website, resulted in a smaller more efficient and more visually appealing website experience for Network Right. We were able to cut the number of pages down significantly, reducing the overall bloat of the website and making it more straightforward, more accurately, communicating, the value of the services provided by Network Right. BrandZap provided new full-desktop mockups of the in-development website to allow the agency to simply update the styles on the site.
With the design content set, we were able to coordinate with the existing agency to get them moving going on making the changes and redeveloping the few portions of the site that required a break from the existing structure.
While much of the content on the website is about the products and services offered by Network Right, or about the company itself and hiring, there was also a blog that contained articles and company news that existed on the company’s existing website (which the agency site planned to replace). The transfer of this content hadn’t been fully considered special attention to ensure that all links would remain accurate. We worked closely with the project management team at the existing agency to ensure everything would transfer over to the new site seamlessly.
Once the new website was developed, BrandZap led Network Right on a bug identification and fixing process to ensure the new site worked well across browsers and mobile devices. We coordinated with the agency along the way to help prevent any miscommunications or unnecessary questions for the stakeholders.
BrandZap played two major roles in this engagement: brand design and agency liaison. One of the primary reason’s we were brought onboard to help finalize Network Right’s website, was our ability to communicate and resolve issues that naturally occur between design agencies and clients. Whether it be differences in knowledge base, or overall understanding and priorities, or something as simple as language barriers or missed vocabulary, many agency-based projects can go ire as a result.
BrandZap was able to successfully establish a friendly and healthy relationship with the agency such that we became a trusted partner to them. If Network Right wasn’t providing the information or content needed, we were able to push them to do so. Vice versa, when Network Right felt they weren’t getting the results they wanted, we were able to work with the agency to find a solution without creating additional issues or communication blocks. This kind of coordination is only enabled by an underlying trust in BrandZap’s ability to effectively speak for a clients design, brand, and marketing preferences.
The overall result was a revitalized brand for Network Right that truly reflected their values and offerings. The website, which was initially off-track, was not only brought back on course but was enhanced to more effectively communicate Network Right's services. This project’s success underscored BrandZap's ability to efficiently intervene mid-process, grasp the client's needs accurately, and deliver a successful outcome that includes many stakeholders and existing agencies.
Strategic Advising in Design, Marketing, & Creative Direction.
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