Challenge
Formerly two competitors, the newly merged company was struggling with ambiguous positioning and internal cultural tension. They needed to align on their core brand and build their culture around it.
Solution
Through an in-depth branding process, Crowd Favorite renamed the company “Vixxo,” established a solid foundation for their brand and culture, and developed a strong new corporate identity. Our efforts helped unite the company and strengthen their market presence.
Following the merger of two major facilities maintenance companies—formerly competitors—the new company struggled with internal cultural tension, ambiguous positioning, and uncertainty about its identity. They engaged Crowd Favorite to develop a strong, cohesive brand that would unify and reposition the company, helping them bring together their company culture and strengthen their presence in the marketplace.
Our process began with a discovery phase, during which we interviewed leadership from both former companies and surveyed over 600 employees. We explored their perceptions of the company (which differed significantly between departments and business units) and compared them against the executive team’s cultural goals to identify which areas needed the most realignment and establish the fundamental building blocks of the brand.
The responses pinpointed areas of clarity (consensus) and ambiguity (dissension) within the organization, and helped us identify the company’s real underlying values. With these findings in mind, we were able to help the new company understand where they were relative to where they wanted to be, and the identify the internal challenges they’d need to address to get there.
Armed with our findings from the discovery phase, we worked closely with the company’s leadership to flesh out their purpose, values and style. With this brand foundation in place, we then crafted a verbal strategy in which we outlined the company’s voice and tone. We provided sample headlines and vocabulary to help them to start communicating consistently across all platforms—their website, emails, marketing materials, etc.—in a way that would express their personality and cultivate a brand experience for customers. We also worked closely with the company’s executive team to develop a new visual style, including typography, colors, patterns, and treatments, that evoked the company’s history and values.
Having established the company’s voice and tone, our next priority was to develop a new name that would help the newly unified company move past its historical rivalries. We brainstormed a list of hundreds of possible names based on the company’s new brand foundation, then narrowed the list down to only the strongest competitors. After much debate and discussion, the company’s executive team decided on “Vixxo,” an abstract name with a memorable sound and striking visual presence that could serve as a highly-effective vehicle for communicating the company’s new message and culture. We then designed a new logo that took advantage of the name’s strong letterforms, conveying a sense of authority and permanence while retaining a distinctly human touch.
Once the final logo was selected, we compiled all the brand deliverables into a brand handbook outlining the brand foundation, visual and verbal strategies, and other key elements of the brand. This handbook served as an internal reference for Vixxo’s staff, helping them to understand and reinforce the company’s new brand and company culture.
To further help reposition the company within the market, we also conducted an online reputation analysis, reviewing social media and discussion boards to get a sense of public sentiment toward the two previous companies. In doing so, we helped Vixxo identify areas for improvement, make key operational changes, and work to shift the conversation about the company in the future.
Perhaps most importantly, our branding efforts were as focused on Vixxo’s internal staff as they were the company’s target market. By helping them align around their core values, articulate what they stood for, and define a strong company culture, we helped renew their employees’ dedication to the company and positioned Vixxo to become more successful than ever before.
