BrandZap
George Little
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Case Study
Remesh is an AI technology company that is backed by venture capital. Its primary product offering is a unique market and employee research platform that takes the form of live conversations.
The platform enables survey-style discussions between a moderator, usually a research professional, and up to 1000 participants simultaneously. The moderator can ask open-ended questions to the group, and each participant can respond in their own words. The AI model analyzes, correlates, and ranks the responses, providing real-time results to the moderator. Later, comprehensive reports are automatically generated from the data and shared with stakeholders. Undoubtedly, the platform is impressive, although its complexity can pose challenges when it comes to marketing.
When I started working with Remesh, the marketing team consisted of only two people: a Director of Marketing and a Content Writer. The brand had recently undergone a transformation, including the development of a new WordPress website by a creative agency. However, there were two main issues that needed to be addressed.
Firstly, the brand was no longer effectively communicating with Remesh's target audience. The primary users of the platform were shifting towards large enterprise-scale research firms like Accenture or Deloitte.
Secondly, the website itself was outgrowing its capabilities and urgently required a rebuild. Although the previous site was beautifully designed, it was not scalable and had been built hastily during the transformation.
At the time, Remesh was a small player in a competitive market. There were several similar startups vying for the attention of a relatively small audience. It became crucial to establish a clear differentiation between Remesh and its competitors.
The existing brand had been designed by one of the company's early product designers, who had been responsible for critical elements of the product's UI. This designer had also guided the design agency in creating Remesh's new brand. The graphic identity was fun and reflected the company's culture, making it stand out among the competition. However, as Remesh shifted its focus and aimed to serve a larger, more enterprise-scale target audience, the brand's graphic identity and overall tone began to portray Remesh as somewhat immature and less sophisticated than it actually was.
Like many tech startups undergoing a rebrand, there are often complications regarding stakeholder buy-in, limitations of the technology stack, and the attention span of the internal team. At this stage of the project, it can be challenging to fully grasp the necessary scope to achieve the goals, primarily due to their somewhat loose definition. In this case, the objective was to enhance the overall impression of the brand while improving the workflows of the content and product marketing teams.
As a crucial initial step in projects like this, it's essential to gain an understanding of the market landscape. This involves assessing how Remesh compares to its competitors and examining the companies it admires from a branding perspective. I researched how these companies present themselves online, their social media communication, and their interactions with customers through various channels such as apps, email, SMS, or push notifications. By comparing Remesh with these companies, I aimed to identify areas of overlap and potential opportunities for growth.
Since Remesh had recently undergone a rebrand within the last year, the leadership team and other internal stakeholders were not keen on relaunching the brand publicly. Instead, they preferred a soft rollout of the brand updates over one or two quarters. This approach allowed for flexibility in developing, testing, and implementing various ideas, as well as the opportunity to involve multiple internal contributors and obtain stakeholder signoff.
This method of gradual implementation provided ample room for developing and deploying solutions while accommodating the needs and preferences of the team. It allowed for a smooth transition and ensured that the brand updates were well-received by both internal and external audiences.
One significant issue in the previous rebrand was the lack of built-in analytics and benchmarks to assess the success of the brand. For Remesh, a successful brand would result in increased lead generation and greater interest in thought leadership engagements, such as webinars, white papers, and blog posts. Another analytics gap existed between the marketing properties (website, blog, landing pages) and the product itself. The marketing and product teams lacked a clear understanding of how users behaved during the prospecting phase and their journey into the product.
Remesh was a small company when I joined, with only two people in the marketing team. Our processes were ad hoc and while productive, lacked organization. This lack of organization reflected externally, with inconsistent tone, imagery, and lead generation flows in our social media posts, blog graphics, and landing pages. To address this, I worked closely with the content team to create a set of basic templates that could be used for various applications. We developed a list of assets needed, which quickly grew to accommodate the demands of different online platforms, customizations for partnerships, and new product releases.
The Remesh brand, while fun and engaging, was not effectively reaching the company’s target audience. To address this, I carefully reviewed and made updates to various graphic assets such as arrows, iconography, colors, textiles, and layout. The goal was to enhance the brand's appearance and positioning for potential customers like Accenture, Deloitte, or government groups such as the Department of Labor.
While the existing logo was modern and clean, it remained unchanged. However, the rest of the brand felt overly friendly and less serious than desired. I believed that this presentation might make large enterprises perceive Remesh as insufficiently sophisticated or capable of handling major contracts. To address this, I made the brand a bit more serious and contemporary, transitioning from a "hand-drawn lines on a marker board" look to a more "European parking garage meets technology company" style. The aim was to create an informative yet approachable brand identity.
In addition to the updates to the Graphic Identity, I also made critical updates to the way Remesh talked about itself and its products. The focus was on conveying more confidence and directness, with a solutions-oriented approach. While this strategy was already in place, the graphic identity and marketing collaterals needed to align with it.
Remesh's previous website, built on WordPress with several plugins and custom code, posed challenges for the internal content team and newly hired designers. It was difficult to add, improve, or develop new parts of the website. Given that the goal was to make visual changes to the brand, we decided to replicate the existing site as much as possible while updating its appearance. We opted for Webflow as the new platform, enabling the 10-person marketing team to easily make content changes and roll out product announcements without the need for a developer.
About 65% of the existing website was adapted onto the new platform, with improvements made to the content along the way. We also addressed issues with the previous site, particularly its complex navigation. Users ended up relying on direct links mentioned in newsletters and social announcements, which was not ideal. To resolve this, I led the creation of a new section called Resources on the website.
The Resources section served as an index of gated collateral, webinars, and ebooks related to market research and employee engagement, two crucial topics for our client base. It allowed prospective customers to download relevant content while generating leads for Remesh. Additionally, all of Remesh's content was indexed on the website, making it searchable via Google.
For select ebooks, we even developed an adaptable HTML version that provided a seamless reading experience on any screen. This allowed us to track user behavior and gain insights into interest and engagement through marketing analytics.
Remesh produced a wide range of content, including webinars, e-books, white papers, case studies, a blog, and a newsletter. Most of this content was published on the Remesh website and promoted through social media with accompanying imagery. As the marketing team grew and more content was being created, the visual appearance of these promotions became monotonous and indistinguishable. To address this, we developed "sub brands" for each type of content, using selected colors and styling from the Remesh brand. For example, webinars featured a dark teal main color with highlights in blue and yellow, while e-books used pink as the main color with highlights from blue and teal.
This approach resulted in more vibrant and dynamic newsletters and social media feeds that showcased Remesh's content, making it easier for clients and prospective customers to find specific types of content based on the subbrand's color and recognizable illustrations on the covers.
Another significant enhancement in the new brand and website was the introduction of upgraded product marketing graphics and illustrations. Instead of relying on simple screenshots, I collaborated with the in-house creative team to develop a collection of animations and "product vignettes" that effectively showcased use cases and solutions through user actions. For instance, rather than merely describing the platform's ability to segment users through text, we could visually demonstrate this process with a concise animation depicting a group of users being grouped together and segmented. This approach greatly enhanced our communication and left a lasting impact on potential customers, ultimately resulting in an increase in lead generation.
The overall outcome of these changes was incredibly positive. Remesh quickly gained a reputation as one of the most sophisticated and unique companies in the market research and employee engagement industry. It became a common sentiment among competitors to strive to emulate the Remesh brand.
These transformations enabled the company to surpass its own capacity, leading to substantial growth and the need for new hires. Large contracts, both in the corporate and government sectors, were secured with greater confidence and fewer obstacles, largely due to the company's strong reputation backed by its powerful brand. Remesh's social media following and thought leadership engagement also experienced significant growth, with increased webinar sign-ups, newsletter subscriptions, and blog post readership.
It's worth noting that accomplishing a website relaunch, brand overhaul, or creative strategy deployment requires a cohesive team effort. The changes described here were made possible by the alignment and constant communication between Remesh's marketing and sales teams. By developing a clear strategy to analyze and execute large-scale brand changes, we were able to keep all teams aligned and establish a brand that has endured for over 2.5 years.
Strategic Advising in Design, Marketing, & Creative Direction.
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