Rebranding Representing All Women: A Case Study

Rebranding Representing All Women: A Case Study

A few years ago I started working with seminar speaker and dream coach Stephanie Beattie, owner of Representing All Women (RAW), a company dedicated to helping people reach their goals through insight and motivation.

When I started working with RAW, their corporate identity consisted of a background of baby blue sky with fluffy clouds and a pair of hands unclasping to release a butterfly. My client felt like it expressed her passion to help women learn how to have it all as they discover what they really want from their lives.

The Book

When Stephanie asked me to design the cover of her first book “You Can Have It All: Unleash Your Inner Diva”, we discovered that her existing brand image wasn’t really the strong, powerful image she wanted to portray. She likes strong colours and “a lot of bling”. She is a powerful woman with a lot of personality, so we needed to revise her brand identity to reflect that.

The cover design we settled on for the book consisted mainly of deep magenta and black–a clean design with colour that really popped. The text at the top of the front cover appears to be diamond encrusted, complete with sparkles to add the bling.

Corporate Identity

To carry that look through the rest of RAW’s identity and marketing materials, we updated the logo. The “Representing” in the company name was changed to a slightly different script font, and the colour was altered from a muddy red to 100% magenta, with the words “ALL WOMEN” modified to an updated san serif font. We wanted to update the logo yet not change it so much as to make it unrecognizable to existing clients.

With the logo redesigned, we then revised her business cards. A simple two pms colour printing process with an added spot varnish on an extra heavy stock made her business cards fit for a diva! The cards have a black background on the front, with a solid magenta background on the back. The all-over gloss varnish, with a diamond patterned matte spot varnish really made the cards look and feel impressive.

RAW | Representing All Women magazine

Our next project has been the most fun of all! Laura, my new business partner, and I recently launched Expressions Custom Publications. Since I’ve worked with Stephanie for the last few years, I knew she was the perfect person to approach about creating her own magazine.

As I expected, she jumped at the idea and committed instantly. Now that she and I are both comfortable with her new look, designing the quarterly magazine was easy. We kept the same colour palette and clean design of the book and identity, and created a new logo for RAW. We’ve designed the media kit and the first issue of the magazine is well underway, to be available in early February.

Website

I’ve already updated www.representingallwomen.com to reflect the new style and provide online registration for Stephanie’s workshops. Within the next few months, I’ll continue to revamp the look and add more features that incorporate the magazine and book such as excerpts, articles and some fun, interactive quizzes.

We need to create an effective website with quality content that has the functionality we’ll need to inform people about workshops and coaching services, sell the book, allow people to subscribe to or advertise in the magazine, and capture contact information from visitors.

We have created Twitter and Facebook accounts with Stephanie’s voice, and are also working on adding videos from her last workshop to YouTube to help people build a connection with the brand and Stephanie herself.

It’s not the end

Developing a brand identity is an ongoing thing that will continue to evolve. The Representing All Woman brand will continue to grow and add new products, services and events, so the brand will have to grow along with it. We’re ready for the challenge.

The web has its own place in content marketing

While print definitely has its role to play in a successful content marketing strategy, so does the web. With options that seem to be expanding daily, companies need to figure out the best way for them to reach customers across all platforms efficiently, while staying true to their brand.

What is content marketing?

Whether you call it content marketing, custom publishing or branded media, these marketing terms refer to the development, production and delivery of information designed to build a relationship of trust and loyalty with the sponsor’s customers, so they regard the sponsor as the vender of choice when they make purchasing decisions. This is accomplished by providing content that meets the needs and suits the tastes of the sponsor’s target market. It serves the interests of the audience, rather than overtly plugging products and services the way ads do.

The benefits of the web

Web content marketing generally involves providing information that is interesting and relevant to a specific demographic on a corporate website, social media, blogs, microsites, ebooks, white papers, webcasts, digital magazines and enewsletters.

The main benefits of incorporating the web into your content marketing strategy are interactivity and flexibility. Creating a web presence is relatively easy to start and frequently update, and it enables you to begin an ongoing dialogue with your prospects and customers.

By providing online forums, allowing people to post replies to your blog posts, and becoming active on social media sites such as twitter and facebook, you add an element of interactivity that isn’t available in print mediums such as magazines. You can display your personality, create a dialogue and establish bonds with your customers in a unique way.

Because there are no printing costs associated with adding content to the web, there is a greater flexibility in being able to update your content more often. You can do more testing and make changes as needed, thereby keeping things fresh and encouraging customers to visit your website more frequently.

Enewsletters are a great way to keep in touch with current and future consumers and drive traffic to your website and generate feedback. They can also be tracked to display behavior patterns and capture data.

As with printed elements of content marketing, the sales aspect the majority of your web content should be somewhat subliminal and the editorial overtly valuable. While product descriptions and sales pitches certainly have a place on your website,  genuine efforts to entertain or educate your client base with blog posts, enewsletters and twitter posts will be rewarded in a more loyal and profitable following.