Zeon Solutions | eBusiness Services
Corporate Rebranding Initiative
Corporate Rebranding Initiative
About the Company
With over 350 employees worldwide and some of the top technology platforms as partners, Zeon delivered innovative eCommerce, content management, mobile and digital marketing solutions that improved organizations’ effectiveness to accelerate growth and revenue. Not so much a full-service agency, but an entire eBusiness solutions company. Zeon Solutions was acquired by Perficient in December of 2014.
My Objective
As the brand developer, co-copywriter, and marketing/digital designer:
Transition Zeon Solutions from just a ho-hum logo to an entire branded extravaganza.
Process At-A-Glance
Picture it, if you will.
You’re a designer at one of the biggest retail corporations in the country. High profile, to say the least. One day, however, you enthusiastically announce to your coworkers that you’re leaving the corporate rat race for better, albeit smaller pastures. “Where is this golden opportunity?” your designer friends ask. You awkwardly mumble the name of your new employer, knowing full well that it will simply prompt inquisitive squints and ambivalent nods. Worse yet, when they search the name — if they remember it — they’ll land on a website you, yourself, admittedly winced at prior to your interviews. It needed a facelift, first and foremost. But upon further scrutiny, that was barely the half of it. Enter the Zeon Solutions Brand Refresh Initiative.
We called it Black Moomba in its early days.
Client challenges, which sparked this initiative
“Because corporate websites are under-resourced, they are often neglected for long periods of time. They slowly become out of date with their content, design and technology. Eventually, the website becomes such an embarrassment that management steps in and demands that it be sorted. This inevitably leads to a complete redesign at considerable expense.”
– Paul Boag, “10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites” Smashing Magazine
Goals for the rebrand and website improvement initiative:
Brand is about emotion. Sure, branding can be artfully articulated, but it cannot be dictated. Brand is your company’s personality, its core essence. It is the stuff your company was born with and exudes to the world. Brand is the promise your company makes to its clients, customers, prospects and employees alike. “We do this!” your company exclaims to the anyone and everyone who will listen. “And we promise you, we do it the best!”
When Zeon Solutions was acquired by Perficient, it was very tough to goodbye to our barely-out-of-the-womb brand. Especially difficult because it so immediately permeated our office as soon as it was born — not just on our glass windows and doors, throw pillows and pens, t-shirts and squeezie stress rockets — but in our people. To this day I still receive comments from former co-workers who say things “just aren’t the same.”
And that’s how I knew the brand was a success. Brand isn’t just a logo. Brand is emotion. Brand is promise. Brand IS people.
In order to bring the brand to life, we asked ourselves: If Zeon was personified, how would it look and sound? How would it interact with coworkers and clients? How would others describe it? We used the Flight Manual to tell this story.
[click to open PDF]
For all the blood, sweat and tears we poured into the brand refresh, we had no idea what was in store for the devoted group in charge of building our flagship and our mecca: a new corporate CMS-based, fully-responsive website. And who in their right mind rebuilds a complex company website from scratch in a few months anyway? Insanely determined people like Zeonauts, that’s who.
To view the website: You’ll have to hop into the Wayback Machine
Katie was tasked with leading the charge on Zeon Solutions’ re-branding project. Daunting, as she had to build consensus across every department head, each of which had strong opinions that weren’t always in sync with the vision from the company leadership.
Not only was she effective at “herding cats,” she captured the essence of the company culture and delivered a brand promise that was so inspirational many became emotional when it was delivered. The new brand she created was the touchstone, moral compass, and customer promise that each employee became grounded in.
Katie’s diplomacy skills, raw talent, and “never give up attitude” made a very challenging project one of the most rewarding I’ve ever been part of.
She is a gifted being and is guaranteed to bring value to any relationship she’s involved in.
Sportswear eCommerce
Illuminate History
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