They say that beauty is skin deep. But, from a brand perspective, your ‘look’ should embody who you are, what you stand for and how you want to be perceived.
For Reachdesk, it became clear in 2021 that the time had come for a new skin. We wanted our branding to reflect the company culture and everything that truly makes Reachdesk unique. We started this rebrand project, with an aim to create a brand that represents the company that our team is working hard to build, as well as our commitment to our clients and the bright future of direct mail and corporate gifting.
The Challenge: Realizing who we are becoming
As an innovative company that’s experiencing phenomenal growth (600% year-on-year), we wanted our brand to convey this. However, as it stood, there were a few problems:
- Our old look and feel didn’t reflect our spirit or our focus on building human connections
- We needed a brand that could adapt and grow with us
- Our old brand didn’t reflect our company values or company culture
Having identified the gaps, our mission was to work out how to distill everything unique about our company into our new brand. Our values were clear:
- Deliver happiness
- Win as a team
- Be bold, learn fast, get things done
- Treat people like people
The challenge was to translate these values into the way our brand looks and feels. We knew that we wanted our brand to reflect our truly unique company culture, which is what sets us apart from so many others. But we needed to establish how we could stand out from the crowd.
The Solution: How did we land on the new brand?
The process of arriving at our new brand involved several steps:
1. Research
In the initial research phase, we looked for inspiration from the brands we admire. We turned to the key leaders in multiple industries who we felt were pushing boundaries and inciting creativity.
These are just some of the brilliant brands that inspired us:
- Nike -We found their practice of showing real people and real experiences with a diverse representation so exciting.
- Gong - We loved their confident and clever messaging.
- Stripe -We found their daring nature inspiring because they created a brand that challenged the norm in their industry.
- Airbnb -We admired how they built their branding on the experiences that they create.
- Mailchimp - We loved how they’re a B2B company that treads the fine line between B2B and B2C branding. They’re bold, playful and memorable in everything they do.
- Invision -We respected their innovative nature, as well as their creation of a knowledge hub that brings together a community of designers, challenging them to be better and do better design.
From these brands, we got a better sense of the kind of values we wanted to represent, as well as the kind of company we wanted to be. We are innovative, energetic, and human.
2. A company-wide survey
To get closer to finding our new look, we decided to ask our team how they felt about Reachdesk’s company values and culture. So, we created an anonymous survey to collect qualitative data. We asked questions like “If Reachdesk were a person, how would you describe them?” and “Provide 3-5 words to describe the culture at Reachdesk”.
The results of the survey were enlightening. We learned that the words that our team identified with when describing Reachdesk were ‘knowledgeable’, ‘unified’, ‘transparent’, ‘human’, and ‘trustworthy’.
These adjectives proved powerful when reimagining how we would represent Reachdesk’s culture and spirit with our new branding.
3. Teamwork
Every team was considered in our rebrand. From customer success to product, we worked with teams across the business to make sure we were creating a brand that resonated with the entire organization
What does our new branding represent?
A lot has changed from our old branding to our new. However, one constant throughout the rebranding process was our design principles, which guided each decision we made.
Our design principles are:
Human
We help our customers build deep and meaningful human connections. We do this by delivering happiness. We must always be human first. Through photography, tone of voice and fluid visual styles. Design should provide an experience. Journeys should be easy to navigate, stories should be relatable and evoke emotion. Design should never feel mechanical or static.
Innovative
We aim to be leaders in our market. We are continually improving, pushing the boundaries and daring to be different. We are driven and creative, and by living in the moment, we inspire our customers to do the same. Our branding should reflect that same daring, innovative, energetic and fearless streak.
Building trust
We are a knowledgeable company that support and guide our customers. We understand that trust is earned, and by being genuine, humble and honest we aim to earn that trust. We back this by being transparent; providing data driven results and real-life examples with real people.
Expert
We are thought leaders. We are experts in what we do. We do not make claims, we provide data and real-word examples in a humble way. We are relied on by our customers for guidance and we provide value with our insights.
When it came to the visual changes to our branding, we considered each adjustment carefully and each creative decision was made with meaning:
The logo
The new logo is a fresher, updated take on the old logo which was always uniquely Reachdesk.
The colors
To accompany the refreshed deeper Reachdesk purple, we have a new color palette which introduces warm, bouncy and energetic tones (coral, pink and yellow). These were of course tested to make sure our meets AA accessibility rating standards.
The font
Our new font Lexend, is designed with people in mind. It was designed specifically to improve anyone’s reading proficiency. With a perfect balance of curves and straight lines, this friendly typeface shows both our approachable and professional sides in equal standing.
Imagery and graphics
Where previously our branding was dominated by stock illustrations, we have introduced photography as a real focal point for the new branding. Reachdesk isn’t just about talking up potential and selling fairy tales, we talk about real people, real stories and real data, in real life. In fact, we photographed our own people, using them as models to our storytelling.
What's next?
This is just the beginning. We have built the foundations for a brand that can grow, scale, and evolve with the company.
Our number one goal has always been to help our customers build stronger relationships with direct mail and corporate gifting. To keep up to date with our journey, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
