Will Farnell is doing amazing things for the accountancy industry. He’s spent years shaping Farnell Clarke as a digital practice, with his firm being one of the first to fully embrace cloud accounting.
Other firms have begun to look to Will for advice and support to go on their own “digital transformation” journey.
We previously worked with Will and his team on restrategising the Farnell Clarke website, and he was keen to work with us again. As we already had a good understanding of the Farnell Clarke brand, it was time to build a new site but with a unique spin to our usual projects: This site was to be for Will’s personal brand. Not only that, but he needed it fast… ready for the launch of his new book at Accountex London in May 2018 (a mere few weeks away at the time!).
Brand identity for a person, not a firm
Before building the site, we needed a brand identity for Will himself. Farnell Clarke has a solid and clear brand (which makes their marketing consistent), but Will himself didn’t have a brand or logo. We talked to Will about the importance of his brand sharing similarities with the Farnell Clarke brand, but still standing on its own.
Due to the urgency of the project, Will reached out to the agency behind the Farnell Clarke rebrand, and they put together a few options. Will discussed these with us and we chose the one that gave it a personal touch, but fit with the FC brand. It was great to discover that the brand the PF team felt was strongest was also the one Will preferred!
Will’s website focused on the person, not the firm
With the brand ready, we set about strategising the site and the pages it required. Since this site was for Will alone, the focus had to be more on him, what he’s accomplished and how he can help fellow accountants.
We agreed the site would tell Will’s story, with separate pages for the book he was in the midst of writing, and the types of support he offers to other accountants.
It helped immensely that PF are well familiar with the audience of accountants, since that’s our audience as well!
Build and design
With the pages agreed, it was time to designing and building. We decided to use Rocketspark as the website platform so that Will could edit the site easily, whilst still having the capability of custom design work. (A Rocketspark build is also much faster!)
We wanted to incorporate his brand into the site as much as possible, so we custom designed the site so the script font appears in headings, backgrounds and more. This carries the personal touch throughout the whole site.With the site launched, Will is now ready for the launch of his book, The Digital Practice, which is his playbook to change your firm to remain competitive. To get notified when copies are ready to buy head over the website and take a look!
