The client
The client (“Inexora Media”) was a boutique video production company that specialized in commercial video, branded content, product & influencer promotions, and music video production. The resulting outgrowth of a prior company whose client pipeline had scaled beyond the previous corporate structure and brand, Inexora Media faced a unique situational challenge in positioning, as the company’s intended goal was to pursue new client markets (given their larger structure and capacity for fulfillment) in which they had fewer industry contacts and required a completely overhauled brand presence to drive appeal.
The company brought me onboard to quickly assess, analyze, and reposition their marketing efforts, in an urgently needed “re-brand” which would include the creation of entirely new company copy, content decisions, “brand voice,” and broader strategic direction.
The Problem
While the company had developed substantial industry contacts and customers from the prior production house business that its founders ran (and folded into the new company, referred to as “the client”), they faced certain obstacles in scaling the new endeavor and appealing to its newly desired client base. When analyzing the client’s current brand presence, it became immediately clear to me why this was so.
The client’s online resources were wildly incommensurate with the quality of their work and left a rather “amateur” impression of the organization. The copy was dull, predictable, and did nothing to individuate the company from its peers. The assets were unpolished, unrelated to the copy, lacking any addition to the client’s “story,” and thoughtlessly scattered about. The brand “voice” was virtually non-existent, as copy had no unifying theme, vision, or tone, and often undulated from extremely casual, peer-level communication, to highly impersonal, corporate-sounding copy which, ultimately, would sow doubts about the client. After all, if the client appeared confused about who they themselves were, how could they be trusted to tell your brand’s story?
The client had incredibly impressive work, extremely positive referrals, and a highly-capable team, however, the “package” that this was all bundled into wasn’t doing the client justice and was turning-off the new types of clients they sought. They needed a persuasive brand story.
Prior Presence & Pre-Existing Assets:
01. Homepage layout
02. Homepage Layout (continued)
The Process
I began by analyzing the market and their current business operations (successes and failures) to identify key markers which would determine my strategic direction. Given the company’s stated desire to shift from mainly independent brands to a broader focus on mid-level enterprises, I considered the qualities that these organizations desire in their vendors.
While larger corporations were most concerned about minimizing risk—doing so by partnering with agencies that had a long-standing track record—and smaller organizations remained focused on achieving the highest potential impact—selecting highly-creative vendors to deliver unconventional campaigns that would generate “buzz”—sitting between these two, the mid-level enterprises that the client intended to target were less clearly-defined by either of the two contrasting priorities. Rather, these organizations seemed to float between both, desiring an ambiguous mixture of the two.
From my research, what stood out was a desire for a flexible, creative, but professional partner who exuded their own unique commercial vision while also providing a sense of assurance in their capabilities to fulfill project-specific needs. To address this, I built the company brand around the simple concept, “expert storytellers in every medium” and then, from this core germ of an idea, I allowed the resulting outgrowth to serve as an organic-feeling framework to layer upon. By telling the story of the company’s creativity, through the lens of expertise, we were able to “kill two birds with one stone,” establishing a brand presence that directly tackled the two key traits that their customers desired (creatively flexible & operationally experienced).
01. New brand messaging strategy
02. Homepage Layout (continued)
The Solution
Now, we had established an idea of “what” Inexora was, but I still needed to establish “how” this would be properly conveyed. I gave strong consideration to the customer experience process and how they would be best guided through the sales pipeline. The result was an entirely redesigned website structure, engineered to take potential clients step-by-step through a premeditated process, composed specifically to address potential areas of concerns, instill confidence, spark excitement, and immediately drive action based on that excitement.
Specifically, I wrote copy for content sliders highlighting select completed projects and clients in a way that added details to further increase transparency (and minimize conceptual risk for customers). I wrote short summaries on broader company offerings to provide more clarity and give customers a tangible sense of the client’s work. Finally, short bios were created for featured team members, providing a more “human” relationship with the brand that would (quite literally) give “a face” to “the name” that is the company. Beyond “humanizing” the brand, it also served to strategically provide reassurance in the company’s ability to fulfill on projects, by spotlighting the experienced team and their qualifications.
Once all of this was in place, the site was engineered to guide users through an experience that would illuminate, excite, and then quickly drive one to its “Contact Us” section to request a quote (generating an actionable result).
01. Homepage layout — Storytelling Brand Message
02. Homepage layout — Reassurance & Value Demonstration
03. Homepage layout — Drive to Convert
The Results
By considering the end-to-end experience of potential customers—and having the freedom to completely overhaul all prior brand presence and online structure—I was able to get potential customers perfectly positioned to make actionable decisions on the client’s brand (for example, to request a quote). As a result, for the first time, the business was receiving unsolicited requests for project quotes by brands with values exceeding $50M, through the website alone, and successfully engaging companies with annual ad-spend budgets in excess of $5B (a figure >10x the previous client pipeline potential value), via direct contact.