Restyling a Victoria hair salon

Buying a business is daunting enough. Doing it in a new country where you don’t yet speak the language is a Netflix series.

You have to take a lot of people you don’t know – and can’t really understand – at their word.

Fortunately Liu Ping, the new owner of Royal Oak’s Salon Amici, got lucky. Helping her navigate the ownership transition – plus a significant rebrand and renovation – were the two former owners, now the Salon’s senior stylists.

The chemistry and camaraderie between these 3 ladies lies at the heart of this rebrand.

 THE SPIRIT OF AMICI

Maggie Mackay and Praveena Charan opened the Salon’s doors in 1998. They named it Amici (friend in Italian) as a tribute to their own friendship. But twenty years owning a business can be a grind and they were only too happy when Liu Ping bought their company. In the spirit of friendship, they have been with Ping every step of the way as the Salon has undergone a comprehensive refresh.

Brand Intervention was engaged to provide a clear strategic direction and a fresh face (the Salon’s face, not mine!), and line up the team that would transform the interior.

A Brand Workshop with the Salon staff kicked off the process and pointed us in the right direction: We needed to more fully embrace Amici, and warm up the environment.

Doing online surveys gave us a clear sense of visitor expectations, and told us how far people would travel to see their stylist, which helped us nail down our marketing territory as well.

A FRESH NEW STYLE

Graphic designer Megan Munro provided a stellar refreshing of the logo and brought a signature colour palette into play.

OLD LOOK

NEW LOOKWe soon had our physical brand ready to roll with a new website, business cards, brochures and social media pages.

Enter interior designer Marika Beise of Rock Paper Square. She took in the brand essence and responded with a design upgrade that brought a visually warm welcome to complement the human one. Strong Construction provided the building savvy.

OLD INTERIOR

NEW INTERIOR

Urban Sign transformed the exterior of the Salon with overhead signage and sandwich boards.

EXTERIOR SIGNAGE BEFORE/AFTER

The final touch was bringing in Derek Ford to capture the newly branded salon – and it’s re-emphasized spirit – in photos, many of which you see in this post.

I’ve worked on a lot of rebrands, but never before one where the spirit of the team was ultimately the brand strategy. Talk about living your brand. Thank you ladies of Salon Amici!

Rebranding Fort Street Cycle

Even their Google Street View was unlucky

It has been a rough first year for the new owners of Fort Street Cycle.

Bad energy left over from an unpopular ownership transition was sucking the life – and at one point, nearly every staff member – out of the shop. The new owners, from Beijing, were in crisis management from the get-go and wondering how they could survive. They decided they needed to start fresh. Well, fresher.

This is where the Brand Intervention happens. (This is the icon that says that’s happening.)

I started with some online surveys to existing customers and non-customers to determine attitudes towards the store, and its perceived strengths and weaknesses. This was the key starting point for the rebrand because it told us that there was indeed some bad juju out there about the store – but no respondents had a clear sense why they felt that way.

It also told us that the brand really wasn’t on anyone’s radar and was considered past its day.

So there was no damage here.  But there was a lack of clarity about the store. The lack of clarity came from a lack of a vision, and a lack of  noise in the market. But we could fix those.

ROLLING UP SLEEVES, FINDING A VISION

An analysis of the business, it’s core service and product offerings, and the opportunities in the market, indicated that we could chase the negative spirit away with a big, positive step forward. The store itself was in excellent shape: a good service reputation, a well-known location on Fort, and fantastic bikes: Cannondale, Cervelo and Giant, all high-end machines.

It just needed a focused brand strategy, and a look to pull it off.

The shop’s focus on placing service and proper fitting before bike sales pointed in the right direction, but we needed something bigger.

As luck would have it, the main competitive stores (Oak Bay Bicycles, Russ Hay’s, Trek and Broad Street Cycles) all referred to themselves as “bike shops” in their positioning lines. This created the opportunity.

WHERE CYCLING LIVES

Fort Street Cycle would no longer be just a bike shop. It would be about cycling: where the rider and the bike come together to create the magic. The store would be all about that. A place for cyclists to gather, to read cycle mags and drink coffee, to be professionally fitted, to watch live races on the TV, to post messages about stolen bikes, to find the latest gear to wear, to test ride new models, to talk cycling. Not a hardware store for machines, but  a place for people, something their “service-first” way of working already beautifully supported.

Hence the new tagline: Where Cycling Lives.

As the brand strategy and visual look were being created, the store went on a serious hiring spree. Using both online ads and networking, there were soon ten passionate cyclists on the store’s staff roster. A mix of road and mountain cyclists, elite competitors and everyday grinders, they embraced the new brand direction and shouldered the tasks involved in bringing it to life.

DON’T KILL THE OLD LOGO. JUST REMAKE IT.

Even though the store’s reputation had suffered in recent years, it was still an established brand with a history. We wanted to respect that by evolving the business, both the name and the logo. Enter long-time collaborator Michael Tension, who delivered a modern and impactful updating of the previous logo, along with an inspired palette of supporting colours to carry it. The name was shortened to Fort St Cycle, because it felt friendlier, and doing so created the space that allowed the name to be on one line in the logo, rather than stacked.

The old….and the new. Urban Sign behind the new one.

The store had been quiet in Victoria for years and was poorly connected to both the cycling community and the businesses along Fort St.

To help improve that, we gave the staff tools to build new relationships, from branded work gear to highly personalized business cards (the photo is of the staff member, and they chose their own quote and colour) – neither of which the store had ever provided. Then we crafted marketing and social media strategies to slowly build back their audience.

Service Manager, Russ Parks in his new gear

BUSINESS CARDS

Michael Tension cards: folded and white on the inside for notes

Once all the branded pieces were ready, Derek Ford did his usual exceptional job capturing the team spirit in photos. And then it was on to a welcoming Open House to let the market know Fort St Cycle was alive and kicking!

Megan Munro poster

To promote the event and get rid of some pesky old branded water bottles, the staff rolled up invitations into the old bottles and left them in bikes with empty water bottle holders all over downtown.

Message in a bottle campaign

The Open House saw a good crowd, and the positive buzz energized everyone and helped to exorcise the ghosts of the old brand.

Open House July 12

A new website from Leap is on the way, jerseys are being printed and a store renovation is planned for late fall. The store also has plans to lead a cycling tour to the Great Wall in China this year. More details on that coming up soon!  Until then, drop by the store and talk cycling: these guys know their stuff.

And ask for one of those cool new business cards!

 

 

 

Branding a Victoria mortgage brokerage

THE BRIEF

A well-regarded young mortgage broker wants to launch his own brokerage in a crowded Victoria market. How do we make his business stand out?

THE BRAND STRATEGY

Build the business around an important and under-serviced sub-audience the brokerage can legitimately specialize in:

Victoria’s mortgage specialist for First Time Home Buyers.

THE IMPACT ON THE BUSINESS

Research showed us that First Time Buyers, generally 20 – 29, are the fastest growing segment in the real estate market and the most likely to concede they could have gotten a better mortgage. They are on the go, rate shop on their mobile phones, and often take mortgages based on the lowest rate, which rarely serves their long-term interests.

This convinced us of some major business directions:

> The brokerage should be mobile like its audience, and do without a fixed office, meeting wherever is convenient.

> It should be about more than mortgages, but should also support and educate buyers about all aspects of the first time home purchase process.

The name flowed from there, as did the logo and responsive website (both designed by Victoria graphic designer Megan Munro.)

The website offers resources and information about the first home purchase process. MobileFirst will continue to pile on the content as the business matures.

NICE FEATURE

The owner realized that most first time buyers are entering a foreign world of notaries, accountants, contractors, insurance agents, lawyers and so on. So he decided to create a network of respected and like-minded professionals in these fields so his clients wouldn’t have to venture into unknown territory to find trustworthy people.

Victoria photographer Derek Ford did some ace photography of the MobileFirst team.

To help the business get some traction among rate shoppers and site visitors, a 15 page guide for First Time Buyers was created and offered by email to site visitors.

The branding work wrapped up with business cards designed to mimic the smartphone format.

“I chose to work with Doug as he came highly recommended from colleagues, and he did not disappoint,” commented Jake after the brand launch. “I’m truly grateful for his expertise.”

Buying your first home in Victoria? You now know who to ping!

A good brand specialist is part snoop, part janitor

Your brand is not a logo or a look that you toss out into the market with fingers crossed. It’s your company’s promise.  It tells the world what it can expect from you on a consistent basis.

Your brand promise might be experiential. You might promise “innovation” or “simplicity” or “to treat your customers like family”. (Hopefully that doesn’t mean shouting matches at the table!)

It could be functional. You might promise to “save time” or “use less energy”.

Whatever your brand promise might be, it has to be authentic to your business offering and relevant to your customers.

Even more importantly, it has to be achievable.

Part snoop. Part janitor.

Because of that last requirement, the first place I look, when helping a business uncover its brand promise, is not at the product or service itself, but within the company. That’s where the promise lies.

It’s there in the messy desk drawers. It’s hiding under the unpaid invoices and in the smell that greets visitors to your premises. It’s in the sound of your voice when you pick up the phone and the turnaround time for managing a customer’s complaint. It’s in the clarity of your sales pitch, and in the structure and frequency of your staff meetings.

All those things tell a story about the business’s ability to deliver against its promise to the world.

There is a closet detective in every good branding specialist. And a cleaner!

In order to ensure you live up to your promise, your company needs to have its house in order, and that usually means some things have to improve.

To figure that part out, I use a process I call the Brand Evaluation, where I analyze a business against the promise it should be making to its customers. This involves asking a cross section of staff a variety of questions that challenge them to think about their business and their brand in new ways.

I ask the tough questions during these sessions and dig hard for the dirt.

I learn what sorts of promises a company can support currently, what it’s getting hung up on, and what needs to change in order to offer a different level of promise to the customer.

The DNA for the look of your brand

Once the workshop is complete, I have the groundwork for an achievable brand promise – and the DNA for the physical look and feel of your brand.

But your brand promise is not just for your customers. It should also drive internal behaviour and give a company something to measure their operations against: their internal processes and communications, their customer touch-points and the business culture.

Then you’ve got yourself an authentic, consistent and achievable brand to unleash on the world.

Christmas card wars: Bell versus Dominos

Last Christmas Bell sent me an e-card to say Seasons Greetings. This year they put one in the post instead. (That’s a strange reversal of environmental culture from an industry that pushes hard for electronic billing, but that’s another story.)

The Bell card arrived the same time as a card from Dominos Pizza.

Guess which one I liked better?

My average monthly business to Dominos is about $25, so $300 a year. It’s easy to be disloyal and use another pizza delivery service, so the $5 gift card is smart. It will ensure my next order anyway.

I use Bell to the tune of about $150 a month. I have contracts so I don’t have much discretionary choice. If I want to switch to another telecom, it will cost me a bundle.

Bell knows this and didn’t reward my $1,800 a year business with anything beyond a “Thanks”.

Now in your mind, “Thanks” might be enough. But an unsigned card isn’t doing anything to earn my gratitude or keep my business. It’s just a corporate card, a cost to the company that goes straight into recycling. It has no value-add, nor even a rewarding idea. It wasted resources, and my time to open it and recycle it.

Don’t say it. Show it.

The Dominos card, while not going on my mantle, delivered something in the way of a message. “We are eager to keep your business”. They didn’t say it – they showed it with the coupon, which will hang around, an ongoing branding reminder, long after the recycled card has made its way back into paper mulch.

Of course you can argue there is a significantly greater cost to Dominos for the gesture for considerably less business potential. But my guess is it will pay off.

You must get corporate Christmas cards. Do you think they have value?

What’s this? A decent political ad?

Yesterday I was hanging with one of my favourite bloggers, Amanda Wilson, when the subject of political branding and advertising came up.

I confessed that I think political ads do the worst job of staying in brand.

They lie. They don’t know how to connect with their audience. They’re grossly inconsistent. Amateur production. Nasty undertones.

They make you sick of the process of public elections, surely not the objective.

As if in response, the universe put this deft and beautifully executed spot for Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne in my path.

This is political branding in good hands. Believable, straightforward, human, decent.

Wrapping it in the metaphor of running uphill manages to just catch the bleeding edge of any public discontent with her tenure thus far.

This isn’t meant to sway the head, but the heart.  She’s inviting you to get to know her outside of politics to understand her strengths within it.

Enjoy this positive interlude. We all know the Liberal Party machine will take over come election time and it won’t be pretty.

 

Why YouTube is a small business owner’s new BFF

It’s understandable that some small business owners would agree with advice to blog and engage in social media and other sound digital practices, but do nothing about it.

They won’t argue the benefits of these tactics, from the perspective of branding, SEO, authority and community building.

But many are already pushed to the limit managing their businesses, and the digital marketing world, with its hashtags and dashboards and keywords, can seem too daunting. The most common strategy is avoidance.

Fortunately, digital novices can turn to the digital world itself to help them get over the newbie hump. Every instructional step-by-step video you could ever need is already waiting for you.

Want to learn how to get started on Twitter? There’s a YouTube video for that. Dozens, actually.

Want to learn how to write a good blog post? There’s a YouTube video for that.

Want to set up a Facebook business page? YouTube video.

The list is inexhaustible. If you need to get your head wrapped around something and you don’t know where to begin, YouTube is your new best friend.

So how do you know if you can trust all these videos to give you good advice? There are a couple of ways. Before you start watching, check the number of views. Good old popularity is often an indication of value. Also, read some of the comments. It’s hard to put out a crappy video and not be called out in the comments section.  If you’re not happy with the one you picked, there are invariably a dozen more to choose from.

With all this free instruction out there, there should be no excuses for not giving your business the digital traction it could have.

What, you don’t have enough time? S’alright. There’s a YouTube video for that too!(Love YouTube image by HijackDesign)

Brand Intervention on the 5:00 news

Occasionally I get asked by the media to comment on a story related to advertising or branding.

This piece, which aired yesterday, was about the Vancouver Island Health Authority opting to change its name and not tell the public. Click on the pic to watch the story.

I’m sure you can imagine the confusion this might cause.

While I think the change is a positive one, the lack of an announcement is a bit of a cock-up.

A brand, like a person, has a history, an identity and core values. Some of those you can change and some you can’t – but a company should always think about its customers and bring them into the loop when rolling out something as significant as an identity change.

Otherwise you may end up on the 5:00 news.

 

Competitive tactics: fair or dirty?

I recently called one of my clients on an old phone number. Surprisingly, a competitive business answered the phone, having taken over that number.

The competitor told me that my client was now out of business and he could handle my request instead.

If I hadn’t known better, I might have bought that line. I’m sure some of my client’s customers have fallen for it too.

My client did undergo a slight name change but there’s a difference between adding an extra word onto your name and going out of business.

From a business perspective, the play is proactive, clever and opportunistic. It might get this other business some short-term wins.

From a branding perspective, I strongly discourage this kind of tactic.  Unless of course “devious” is part of your brand personality.

What do you think? Fair or dirty?

(Image here)

Is this any way to find a client?

Referral marketing is the act of seeking new clients through the people who know you. People listen to their friends, respect their advice, and act on it.

All of the current Brand Intervention clients have come to me by way of referral.

 

With the impact of social media, the scope of a referrer’s network has really exploded. Today you can pop a request to your LinkedIn contacts, your Facebook friends, your Twitter followers – or write a blog post like this – and your request can drift off to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who know what you’re about and may have valuable connections.

 

I am looking for a new client – a specific one.

 

While I continue to provide ongoing branding and marketing services for a number of businesses, one of my clients has now completed their work with me and I am ready to take on a new one.

 

My ideal client is a small to medium size enterprise looking for change. That might include more authentic and compelling branding, a differentiated value proposition, a more effective website, stronger presence on Google, a better grasp of the most effective marketing tactics, and internal alignment with their external goals.

 

Even more important to me – and it’s my company so I can say this – I have to like the client. The way I see it, you plain work harder for the people you care about.

 

If you review my client list, you will get a snapshot of some of the best people you could imagine working with.

 

I would like to add one more. Can you help?

 

(My apologies for the formatting of this post. WordPress has decided to italicize most of it, whether I want that or not!)