5 Big Signals It Was Time for a Bold Brand Refresh

Sometimes it's time to take your own medicine.

Cristina Schuett Ferreri and I have been building brands together for 16 years(!). We have spent the vast majority of that time working under a few evolutionary iterations of our own brand: First as The CSK Group starting in 2009, then as SIGNAL.csk Brand Partners starting in 2015.

We have been, in essence, the cobbler's shoeless children. While we invested in establishing our SIGNAL.csk brand in 2015, we quickly went into a "set it and forget it" mode as we busied ourselves with building our team, our business, and our clients' brands. But in the second half of 2022, we looked around and realized we weren't the same "us" as we had been in 2015 — not by a long shot.

We had matured as client partners, strategic advisors, and leaders. We had developed new strengths and skills in brand storytelling and creative implementation across a wide variety of channels. We'd cultivated new expertise in experience branding and leveled up in brand architecture and building complex brand linkage systems. We had evolved, fine-tuned, and stress-tested our brand strategy, creative, and implementation processes. We were serving new types of customers and deploying brands in new categories and on new continents. We had guided whole new teams of beloved clients in how to be great stewards of their brands as strategic, value-creating business assets.

We were doing the best work of our careers — but we had not taken the time to honor our growth or showcase our work where others could see it.

We realized it was time to refresh our brand. And, like most of our clients, our brand needed more work than we expected.

Upon examination, we realized five important things:

1. It was time to drop the legacy "csk" from our name. We kept it in 2015 as a connector to our previous brand equity, but we didn't need it anymore. We now stood on our own strong identity, SIGNAL.
2. We needed to take a stronger stand in our brand descriptor. "Brand Partners" was a nice modifier alluding to the quality relationships we've always strived to build. But it was pretty generic. We needed a new modifier that would do more heavy lifting for us by bringing clarity to who we are and what sets us apart.
3. People still didn't truly understand what we did. We were great at telling other people’s brand stories, but not our own. We got a lot of, "What is it you do, exactly?" even after people read our website. We simply weren't good at packaging our process or reporting on our results in a digestible way. The real value we create for our clients only came alive once they started working with us. It was time to take our own advice and bring clarity to our message.
4. We weren't making it easy for our dream customers to find us. Over the years we've become good at serving two distinct customer groups: 1) Our longstanding core customer: established brands looking to take their next great leap forward, usually with a complex set of issues and people to consider in the process. 2) A newer segment for us: what we call "emerging brands" — young, fast-growth, usually founder-driven brands that are ready for major league success and scalability, but usually wait too long to establish a brand strategy that could empower them to grow and scale faster, smarter, and stronger. We've become more nimble and efficient serving customer number one and introduced offerings to meet the needs of customer number two, but our perceptions and messaging didn't signal that shift.
5. We were hiding our "true." We had an awesome portfolio of "wow" solutions that we weren't showing the world. And a whole roster of happy clients ready to share how we had transformed their businesses, their results, and their understanding of what a killer brand strategy and razor-sharp implementation could do for them.

It was time to write a new story. Today, we're doing that.

SIGNAL.csk Brand Partners is now? SIGNAL Brand Innovation .?We are a brand consultancy and strategic design firm that empowers B2B, B2C, and nonprofit organizations and their leaders to align their brand with their business strategy to take great leaps forward. We do so by?creating and activating brands people love that drive results.

• Brands that are loved by their leaders because of their market strength and impact.
• Brands that are loved by their employees because they are worth believing in.
• Brands that are loved by their customers because they are so magnetic and meaningful that they can't resist.

You deserve a brand your leaders, employees, and customers love. Learn more about SIGNAL Brand Innovation and what we can do for your established or emerging brand online at?signalbrand.co.

Reach out to us directly at?[email protected] ?or?[email protected] ?to learn more about what we can do for you. Or click?here ?to schedule a 45-minute strategy session at your convenience.

We can't wait to work with you to create and activate a brand people love!

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