5 ways to refresh your B2B brand

 It's Christmas and a new year is just round the corner, so you and your business might be looking to shake things up in 2017. You've got the cash to spend, and you want to do so wisely. Here's how: 

Positioning

Go through a thorough positioning exercise. Without knowing what your brand is, what it stands for, who you are targeting and why you are different from your competitors, none of your content marketing or brand identity efforts will actually have any impact. Get hold of good B2B content strategist who can breathe some new life into your positioning and messaging. Nail the messaging and everything else will flow. Ideally, involve your lead content editor in this process. Never underestimate the words.

Visual refresh

Now you can begin to take a look at your visual marketing collaterel. This process will involve your lead content strategist, lead senior designer and lead content editor - yes the person responsible for the words. They'll need to understand the visual vision in order to craft the right words to describe your brand identity. 

Website update

With the visual refresh done, you can begin looking at your website. Do take a look at my Content inventory for Drake fans for some initial ways of structuring this process. A huge team is needed to achieve this: strategist, copywriter, designer, developer, content analyst and a project manager to keep it all on track. 

Content plan

Great you have a new website, you love its look and feel, you're happy with how it works, and the copy reads great. What about content? A website is a ravenous never dying oven which needs to be kept warm and its kindling is a content plan that covers everything from lead gen, to SEO to reputation nurturing. Your content strategist and content editor should be able to help with this, and you might want to pull in an ops team to help with the analytics.

Content operations

Tracking and measuring content is still a gnarly science which means it's an exciting time to be a marketer. If you're using platforms like Marketo and Pardot that's a step in the right direction. A content analyst can help define how to set these platforms up on your website and what you can achieve. They can also recommend ways to optimise your website and what analytics can be run in the background. 

That's it - Merry Christmas everyone. Don't worry about work for now. It will all be waiting for us when we get back to work in the new year. Focus on what matters - friends, family and yourself. 

On Uber and the re-brand no one asked for →

I’ll try and separate my personal use of Uber from the rebrand which has got everyone talking.

It’s a service that provokes heated debate and almost every opinion I’ve read on the logo has begun with:

“I like Uber”

“I hate Uber”

“I’ve never used it”

“I lost my Uber virginity on so and so date”

None of that matters. The key question is: Uber had the world’s most famous U and ditched it “casually”. Why? And has it worked?

For a brief overview on the why, do check this great Wired article on the inside story behind Uber’s rebrand.

Reading it quickly reveals why the rebrand has suffered such a disconnect with users of the service and just generally anyone who’s interested in design and branding.

Now, on to the “Has it worked?” part. Hmmm…

CEO driven, not user driven

I’m a huge believer in content and design that puts the user, the audience, and the customer first. If you read the Wired article, you’ll see that Uber’s rebrand did none of that.

The new Uber wordmark is actually just beautiful. The problem is the logo and the process behind creating it. Uber’s rebrand was done entirely by its in-house design team, and from reading the Wired article it seems little or no user research was behind it. You can either see this as bold, innovative, focused, visionary or foolish.

Change direction first, then rebrand

CEO Trevor Kalanick drove the rebrand to reflect his vision of the Uber brand identity — a transportation and logistics giant connected by systems and people. The new rider and partner app logos are meant to reflect this network of local markets, a connection of bits and atoms.

However, pre-empting their journey robbed Uber of a huge storytelling opportunity. The rebrand is a bit like jumping to the last page of a novel halfway through. Because it’s premature the re-design has had to be explained over and over again. I think that says a lot.

Loss of visual equity

The logos take Uber away from the tangible concrete solid U that anchored the brand, and maybe held it too accountable? Maybe.

The Uber U stood out amongst the many apps on my phone. Now it doesn’t and that’s grating and worrying. By cutting the old brand Uber’s cut the link between the company’s name and one of the world’s most recognisable visual assets

What exactly is it?

The new logos seem almost opaque and with a service that already struggles from accusations of poor ethics surely increased transparency and recognisability is the way to go?

A lot went wrong but most importantly, no one asked for it. Like, really, no one did. There are a lot of things Uber’s passengers and drivers are asking for: greater security, openness on data tracking, more money to drivers — I don’t think a rebrand was one of them.

So what can be done?

Content can save the day

Reversing the rebrand is absolutely not an option, and undoubtedly not one the business is even remotely considering. Uber’s made its bed and now needs to think strategically about how to lie in it. What they should do now is what they should have done — get their employees and partner drivers internationally to tell the story on why change is happening and let them be the ambassadors of the Uber story.

On the day the change happened, my Uber driver couldn’t care less. “I have no idea why they did it. Didn’t even know it was happening. What route would you prefer m’m?” Where’s the connectivity in that?

Content inventory for Drake fans

A content inventory is a bit like that first dip into a cool lake on a hot summer’s day - at first you think, “AARGH too cold, too cold!”  

The water feels like a shock, but as you immerse yourself in it and wade through it, you warm up, splash out, mark your terrain and even deep dive.

I don’t know about you but this is what content inventories always feel like for me at the start of every website project. 

The content inventory - What do we have?

At the start of every website project be it a content migration to a new CMS or a website redesign, the inventory and audit are possibly the most important tools you can use to keep your project on track. 

So what is it?

A content inventory is a quantitative assessment of all the content on the website - this includes:

1. URL location for all your pages

2. Images

3. Data files

4. Any documents e.g PDFs

5. Video

6. Audio

7. External links

Basically the content inventory helps you:

• establish the scope of the project and the journey ahead,

• reveal patterns in your content quality and identify the types of content you have.

• know the size, scope and state of your content which puts you in a better position to evaluate new platforms or CMSes.

• send out targeted RFPs (request for proposals) to content agencies

The content audit - Do we need all this stuff?

Your audit is more qualitative - it’s the stage where you decide the quality of the content you have, and it’s the stage that answers this question. Do we need all this stuff? The answer should be, “No.”

Your content audit combines the inventory with analysis on what value your content provides its business and its users.

The audit will also address issues - should you assess your content against the organisation's goals (whispers - yes), against competitor sites (again - yes), how much say should user research have (a lot). 

Content strategy - Is it any good?

A great and thorough content strategy is built on a solid understanding and analysis of the content you currently have.

Without an inventory and audit, during your redesign or content migration project you won’t know what needs doing, what’s wrong with your content or how to fix it.

If you skip the inventory and audit, you won’t get very far with your web project until you address it. Simply because it’s the foundation for putting together a cohesive content strategy. Ideally, after the redesign project is complete you’ll schedule quarterly inventories and audits to stay on top of things.

7 ways (not 10 bands)

So here are 7 quick ways to make that all important content inventory feel less like a cold dip in a communal gym pool, and more like stepping into the heated marble floored pool in Drake’s condo:

1. Start early - the content inventory and audit needs to be the first thing you do before contemplating a site redesign. Why? So you can incorporate your finding into the information architecture, design of the new site, page templates and the configuration of the CMS.

2. Define scope - Why are we doing this? You have to be able to clearly say, “It’s for our web migration” or “We are considering a website redesign” or “We need content strategy but have no idea what it should be“ Knowing the reason helps define your object -

3. Manual or automated - spreadsheets will always be a content strategists frenemy but for large sites over 300 pages, you might want to consider a site crawler like Screaming Frog or CAT. Google chrome also has multiple URL extensions which can can copy tabs and paste in one click to your spreadsheet.

4. Context - if possible carry out user research during this discovery phase. Questions aimed at your site’s users on how your content is performing will provide some much needed context to your inventory and audit. And please hire an agency to do this - no one clicks on those “please rate my site” polls on your landing page.

5. Decide on your audit criteria e.g editorial issues (is the content consistent with your brand and messaging? is it relevant to your audience? Is it user focused? Is it consistent? Is it out of date?SEO friendly and accessible?)

6. Woo - every content project needs allies - with your inventory and audit done, you’ll be able to bring content project managers (want scope, timelines & budgets), the project’s techies (need to know system needs & requirements), the business content owners and managers on(tells them why the changes are needed), designers (UX & UI) on your side.

7. And finally create a playlist, preferably all Drake songs, find a quiet space, take some breaks.