Waheed came to us with a unique situation of two brands and two websites for his accounting firm. He had AWR Accountants for the compliance work, and a new business model in the form of ForwardLooking, which was his niche focus on GPs, pharmacies, and entrepreneurs.
Waheed’s issue was how – and whether – to connect the two brands and business models. Would he keep AWR focused solely on delivering compliance services, with ForwardLooking being the next step for the ambitious business owners? Would he combine them into one? Was it even a good idea to have two brands at all?
Together, we discussed this issue and recognised that brand was the key issue. No matter what happened next, we needed to confirm whether it was one brand, or two.
Branding workshop
We started with a branding workshop to discuss the dual-branding issue. Normally we recommend that all marketing be done under one brand, but Waheed had a unique situation, because AWR would eventually be broken off from Forward Looking entirely, and potentially be sold or under new management.
For that reason, we agreed that it was right to have the two brands: but they needed to coordinate for brand consistency. So we moved on to….
Re-branding
The old AWR logo was a little tired. It’s jagged font and singular colour didn’t connect well with the Forward Looking brand, which had a much smoother and fresher font, and used two different purple-toned colours.
We brainstormed the idea of connecting the colours between the two companies, and created a logo which used the same font as ForwardLooking, and used a gradient of colours that also matched the brand.
Website design and build
The next step was creating a fresh website for AWR that emphasised their focus on doing compliance work, but also doing it really well.
We agreed the old website had far too much information and the calls to action were confusing. We built a new site that would be focused entirely on the “compliance only” audience: business owners who simply want accounts and tax done on time, and done right.
We ensured that the website design incorporated their refreshed brand, and even had a nod to ForwardLooking, so that the entrepreneurially minded businesses could get what they needed, too.
From a tired accounting site to a fresh and custom look:
