StrangeIM launch and rebrand

A rather exciting project as it’s close to home is a launch and rebrand of the company I work at.

Strange PR has long done more than just public relations; in fact inbound marketing is our primary sphere now.

Feedback from the sales team said that scoring new business was hard because clients said “We don’t need another PR agency” to which we had to explain for the umpteenth time that we are an inbound marketing company.

Whilst our company website is an aptly named inboundmarketing.co.uk, the name Strange PR is still letting us down by confusing potential customers. So we decided that Strange IM would become the face of our inbound marketing, whilst Strange PR transferred to mainly PR activities as an established brand.

With the challenge of launching the rebrand of our inbound marketing company as Strange IM, the first thing I thought was colour! Strange PR could keep its logo and colour scheme, but now was a chance to get a fresher look for Strange IM.

I volunteered a turquoise-teal-bluey palette which my colleagues all agreed with. The director, being colour-blind, said as long as we were happy then he was.

In terms of the logo, the team still love the retro look, so it will be remaining the same, but with IM in turquoise instead of red.

We’ve long wanted to get round to a redesign of our own site, so this seems a good time to do it. I did a competitor analysis and presented the aspects of their websites that we should take to make ours even better. I’ve got our hands on some great CSS with a bold new font for headers which I think will really enhance our image. The next step for me is to fine tune the CSS style sheet to the colour palette, make some more design customisations and then show the others.

More jobs include:

• Make the new logo
  
• Commission some really classy graphics for our Call to Action buttons from Vicky or Marc
  
• Build the PR site for strange PR (inc search engine optimized content)
  
• Rebuild inbound marketing according to my new site map, (inc SEO’d content)
  
•  Make PPT, video, email and document templates
  
•  Business cards for both companies?
  
•  Amend all inbound marketing materials that are branded as strange PR (and get rid of that red!) to ensure consistency

It’s a lot to do considering we’ve landed a new client whilst an existing one has doubled our service hours. Additionally, I’m trying to find a full-time replacement for me and on top of that we’re organising an inbound marketing summit we’re hosting in November.

But once it’s all over, the business will be a lot better off from the rebrand.

Wish me luck!