The first project I sunk my teeth into was selecting a brand agency and rolling out a beautiful rebrand. Although the business was less than a year old, Bryon knows the value of an excellently turned-out and well-rounded brand. As long as the business can answer important questions about its customers and place in the market, there's little benefit in waiting to do a rebrand, even if the business is young.

When we started the rebranding process, Rise8 had a logo, a set of Google fonts, and a color: red. We also had a team of people who were communicating with customers daily, a Linkedin page with not much going on, and a lot of work going out into the domain in the form of documents, slide decks, and slicks.

We were also about to be awarded a federal contract that was going to set a lot of eyes on us. We had no brand to speak of and a website that didn’t align with who we were. We needed the rebrand to happen yesterday.

Phase 1: Discovery & Positioning

If your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room, how do you know what people say about you when you’re not in the room? You get someone to ask them. And stay out of the room.

The conception phase of this rebrand started with a phase of discovery which informed our choices regarding positioning. Discovery digs up things we have little control over (what people say about us when we’re not in the room) and, armed with those insights, we’re able to then make choices about how we’re going to position ourselves for the future to influence what people say about us from that point on.

We carried out:

• Market research
• Customer interviews
• Brand audit

The end result was:

• Insight about our audience
• Choices for how we position ourselves to meet the needs of this audience

Phase 2: Foundations

With our north star in place and our compass calibrated, we started the longest phase of all: developing the building blocks of our brand — our brand foundation. Time to give this baby a beating heart.

This is important because the results of this work will inform all future brand communications. The output of this phase was our:

• Brand story
• Brand promise
• Brand values
• Brand voice and tone

We co-labored to end up with pages and pages of copy that accurately reflected our story, values, and promise for all different audiences. Something I appreciated greatly about the final delivery of this phase was that Spark remembered that we are speaking to many different audiences including federal customers, end-users, and recruits. All of these points of view were considered in the penning of these words and that really spoke to the empathy Spark promised to bring into our brand.

Phase 3: Identity

This is where labor begins in earnest and we get to see the fruits of the last few months take shape visually.

Building upon our positioning, story, and values, we developed the visual manifestation of our brand:

• The logo
• Fonts
• Colors
• Assets like textures, icons, and other artifacts
• Usage guidelines (aka brand bible)

To describe the visual direction of our brand is to say that the direction utilizes mirroring & pairing to represent our approach to creating impact.

Phase 4: Activation

The final phase is to deliver it all into the world and this is where I, as a brand person, catch the baby and take over. Without me in the picture, Rise8 would have continued working with outside suppliers to activate the brand and turn it into social media interactions, video content, blog posts, etc.

These engagements would require teams of many people and lots of cash. Or one in-house brand & content marketing director. Remember at the start of this epic story that Bryon hired me because he was about to have a sparkling new brand and needed someone to run with it.

At this point, armed with a library of assets and very specific guidelines for how they are to be used, I set out to achieve a number of things:

• I archived all old brand (aka legacy) assets.
• I provided the team with new templates.
• I set out to update slide decks we use regularly, some with an eye-watering 100+ slides.
• I created a Shopify storefront for Risers to access branded items for their clothing and lifestyle.
• I strategized and launched a rollout for our external audience which includes this piece of content you’re currently reading.

We also worked with Spark on the design and development of a powerful new website that housed so much meaningful content and opportunities to connect with our customers and audience who we enjoy spending time with each and every day.

This brand is incredibly honest and masterfully turned out. It’s classy and elevated, inwardly serious and outwardly spirited just like Rise8.