Successfully Refreshing Your Tech Company’s Brand Messaging While Staying True to Its Core
For how many years your tech brand has been alive? Have your visual brand and written messaging essentially remained the same? If so, that may not be a bad thing – especially if you’re enjoying a relatively steady stream of success. But the longer you’ve been in business, the greater the chance your business model and offerings to clients have had to evolve. Markets and sectors have expanded and technology itself matures consistently. No matter the size of your firm, staying current while still referencing your core mission in your brand identity is a challenge we all face.
How important is trendiness versus communicating in a way that your brand continues to be perceived as the real deal?
All tech firms want our companies to be perceived as:
- Intelligent
- Nimble
- Dedicated to delivering the services and/or product(s) as promised
- Up on the latest trends and technologies
- Solid and stable
Tweaking a brand story to be more current and more compelling than before while simultaneously keeping your core messaging intact is a challenge. You want your new messaging to say,
“We’re the same company you’ve always known but now we have more to offer you!” in a better-than-just-believable way. But while your brand may need updating, that messaging must resonate with trustworthiness to avoid the perception that you’re just jumping on some buzzword bandwagon or fleeting graphics trend.
The world has to know it’s still YOU doing the talking.
Here’s a look at how we’ve handled several years of updates to the IPS website homepage as we expanded our client base, originally largely comprised of east coast, older industrial firms to include younger west coast, tech-oriented firms:
The IPS homepage from 2012 until Q3 2014.
This iteration of the IPS was a significant departure from what had come before; design language is more elegantly conservative and brand message is that of a comprehensive, unified product design offering rather than previous language which largely featured our capabilities as separate entities.
IPS’ homepage as of Q4 2014
This new website featured what would become IPS’ significantly more colorful palette; our red PMS signifies our passion for the work we do. Additional colors were used more sparingly throughout the site. Note that tag line now cites “Product Design and Development” rather than “Product Design Consultants”
Our homepage REFRESHED as of Q1 2017
In addition to our new, deeper red and the change to imagery evoking the collaborative process, we have included our broadened IPS icon instead of the full company name as we move towards becoming known and found via search engines as IPS as well as Intelligent Product Solutions. An even more colorful palette is now part of our design language including green, slate blue and yellow.
The more technology matures, your core values, value adds and differentiation messaging must remain rock solid. They are the foundation of your business and are the constants that will keep your customers coming back and attract your new ones as well. That leaves tech marketers in the middle of the continual push and pull between the already established versus what’s new.
This past January, IPS was acquired by Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FORD) We’re always growing, and evolving so stay tuned to see what we come up with next!
