Branding a marketing company: a case study for all
Launching or relaunching a brand, product
or service requires a particular type of brand work, involving choosing a name.
This has struck me over my career as the most pressure-filled and complex
aspect of the brand puzzle.
While a brand is much, much more than a
name and logo, these two elements are the primary connectors to your audiences.
When you’re successful, they’re almost a part of their physical beings: they’re
on the tips of their tongues and in their mind's eye.
As our marketing company has recently
rebranded from The Marketing Strategy Group to Halmyre, we thought it a good
time to share our process and experience with fellow marketers.
Corporate
strategy
The bones of any good marketing strategy is
a corporate strategy. In our marketing consulting practice, corporate level
governance and strategy is where we first look for the foundation of solid
marketing work.
In our case, the corporate strategy was
clearly the driver of the need to rebrand.
Here were our strategic cues:
·
Augment value in the company
through development of intellectual property, including a brand that is
trademarked.
·
Create a more open brand
position to support our service evolution from a simple idea of classic
marketing strategy in 2014 to supporting integrated consultation with customer-centric
service design, data intelligence, creative insight and marketing execution
today.
·
Position ourselves
competitively as a more modern, dynamic company without straying from our roots
in the fundamentals of “4P” marketing.
Halmyre was proposed as an option from my
time studying for a Masters of Philosophy in Edinburgh. It was the street I lived on in the
“up-and-coming” area of Leith. But Halmyre didn’t win the day for this reason.
It only succeeded as our name because of its alignment to our business and
brand strategy objectives.
The
name itself – Halmyre
Naming a company isn’t ever just about
“picking” a name. As with all things in marketing, there actually is a
structured, objective approach to take. For instance, you can:
·
Be descriptive. Think of Band-Aid or
Pizza Hut
·
Create a new word that sounds or pays homage to a key feature or
benefit. Think of Sony (sound), Benefibre, or
Aeroplan
·
Use historical or profile references.
Think of Bayer, Procter & Gamble, and Deloitte.
·
Use an existing word in completely new contexts. Nike, BlackBerry; or you can
·
Use a word or words to convey a feeling or sensation. OshKosh B’gosh or Smuckers
Through our brand
strategy development Halmyre falls in between the last two of these strategies.
It is:
·
A short, rhythmic word which
has a sense of progressiveness, but with a nod to something traditional and
classic
·
A soft-sounding word to convey
the strength and honesty of our personal relationships with clients that makes
us better consultants
·
Something that is a just a little
foreign sounding. We are the “outsiders” to our clients to provide the fresh
perspective, clarity and frankness required in our role
·
Open, providing us a blank
canvas on which to forge our identity in years to come, with all clients and in
new markets
·
Unused in the marketplace, a
true rarity which provides us uncluttered trademark and domain ownership.
Confidence through branding methodology
I am never shy to proclaim the benefits of
trusting your marketing methodologies to lead you to better marketing results.
Our company’s track record of success is built on this very premise.
But this has been a rare chance for us to
experience the benefits firsthand. It was never about what any one person liked
or wanted – or where the word came from. The methodology we went through to
arrive at Halmyre grounded us in sound, objective, corporate-based
marketing.
This is the same confidence we seek to
provide to our clients. Having “walked a mile” in the processes we recommend, I
am more than ever an acolyte for trusting methodologies to guide marketing
strategy and planning.
Halmyre President Christine Saunders is a marketing consultant to service-based organizations, a strategic advisor to marketing executives and leaders, an entrepreneur and a hobby farmer. In 2014 she founded The Marketing Strategy Group, which has recently rebranded as Halmyre. Prior to this, Christine owned a traditional integrated marketing and communications agency specializing in financial services, public services and not-for-profits. Her education is in politics, ethics and philosophy, and she is a proud Maritimer despite living in Upper Canada today.