The Rebranding of a Company – A Case Study

Sam Dunn on July 2nd, 2009 Posted in Articles

Over the past few months, I’ve been part of the rebranding process of Cazzu Media to One Mighty Roar. It’s been quite a lengthy journey, but I came out with some new insights regarding the reinvention of an identity.

I’ve put together the three main steps of rebranding, outlined some of my experiences with them, and included some general thoughts/personal discoveries within each. With that being said, let’s start recreating ourselves…come along won’t you?

The Name

Goals

• Unique/Memorable enough to only say once
• Fun/Quirky
• Reason behind it

Whenever I introduced Cazzu Media in a conversation I could almost guarantee two questions followed by a mispronunciation- How do you spell that? or What does that mean?

Besides this becoming a nuisance, it brought up an important point – the name really didn’t stick. The pronunciation was open to interpretation when on paper and it wasn’t a relevant. Sometimes creating a brand around a made up word works, but in this case we didn’t have one product to attach to the name, we had our services.

The brainstorming process went through many stages but ultimately arrived on the fact that we liked short phrases as names (Examples being companies like Big Red Tank or Big Spaceship). After coming up with a bunch of phrases that followed the Adjective Adjective Noun/Verb pattern, we settled on One Mighty Roar.

Our tagline – “Join the internet” is one aspect we carried over, it is applicable to both clients and potential blog viewers, flexibility is something to strive for.

To us a website is someone’s one shout out/proclamation to the world, so it should be powerful. One Mighty Roar if you will.

The Logo

Goals:

• Not ambiguous
• Versatile for print and multiple color schemes
• Avoid fluff

Cazzu Media had a logo which looked snazzy because of some Web 2.0 effects that added some shine and pop. It was relevant only in that it was used sets of 3 in its design – the number of people in the company. This was something we weren’t really questioned on, but it’s not a message that is either relevant or apparent.

Going in, I knew that I wanted a logo that broke the mold. What better place to start than by throwing text alignment away — no parallel lines here. I continued this idea by modeling the three words after a common comic use for noise:

After a fair share of tinkering I came up with a sheet of logo variations.

Initially settling on the blob background with the shades of purple, we decided the best move be simply the text version because of its versatility in print and regardless of color.

This stage cemented the idea that we wanted to use a royal purple, it is a sleek color and fits nicely with the blues we use for Build Internet!

The Website

Goals:

• Large Banner to showcase work/messages
• Use a watercolor/paint theme combined with a minimalist look
• Provide a hub for both our client work and our blog network

I ended up doing quite a few Photoshop mockups that didn’t quite have the flair I wanted. I’ve put together an album with each revision for your viewing pleasure, some insight into the design process if you will.

One particular dark themed design almost ended up being our final design, to the point where we coded two pages, but we found it too plain in the end.

In the end we chose the bright royal purple design you see today on the live website. Check out the final product and see where this journey took us.

Looking Back

The most important part of this process was the ability to remain objective when it came to designs, always looking for improvements. Sometimes that took walking away for a few days to come back with a fresh set of eyes. Additionally, playing around with different shades/saturation of purple really helped us get that “pop” we were looking for.

So there you have it, One Mighty Roar (Formerly Cazzu Media), I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the final design, as well as the rebranding process in general. Have at it in the comments. And on that note…