Re-brand for local Accountancy Firm
MA Accountancy Group needed a rebrand to realign the brand to a new target audience. See how we helped them do this as well as improve the brand culture aligned to their shared values.
The problem
MA Accountancy Group (formerly Mad About Bookkeeping) are a bookkeeping and accountancy practice in Bordon, Hampshire.
Their previous name tied them to their core service that the business was originally built around but as business grew over the past 10+ years, so to had their service offering.
They had the task of wanting to retain their existing client base that were used to their fun and friendly approach to quality bookkeeping at great value, whilst also appealing to larger businesses with more 'grown up' accounting and payroll needs.
The business was full of personality from how they presented themselves to the way leaders Nicky and Michelle approached business. It was a big part of their DNA and although they knew they had to come across a bit more serious in order to attract new audiences they did not want to lose their identity.
How we helped
Through an in depth discovery session we helped them re-discover the foundational elements of the brand and identified 3 key target audiences and set about how we could bring their unique personality to these 3 audiences and sectors.
From this a group brand and identity was developed and created and the 3 audiences were served by creating 3 sub brands, meaning they could tailor their messaging depending on the individual audiences.
Key deliverables were:
-
Repositioning the brand with new statements and value proposition
-
New logo identity for core brand as well as sub brands.
-
Colour palettes - completely new colour palettes sets.
-
Typography - updated brand typefaces to new modern typefaces
-
Brand imagery - created a mood board to show specific images styles that would best compliment the brand
-
Graphic devices. - Designed additional graphical elements that would enhance the overall brand image.
-
New website
All of this was then delivered in a concise set of brand guidelines that clearly showed how all of these elements should come together and be used so that they could roll out the new brand consistently across all their marketing.
"The process from start to finish with BrandStorm was interesting and insightful. It was particularly interesting to hear the whole team’s views on the business, what they believed we stood for and hugely reassuring to find out that we all held similar values. I think we have become a stronger, closer team as a result!
We continue to achieve what we set out to and now continually attract to the more discerning accountancy client and grow that particular arm of the business with little effort.
The response to our rebrand has been hugely positive and the investment has already paid for itself - we couldn’t have asked for more than that"
Michelle W - Director
Working on the brands culture
A key area MA Group were keen to address was the recent high turnover of staff they had faced recently. We identified throughout the process that there was a potential misalignment of values across the teams that worked there.
As well as including all key team members in every stage of the brand process, we also conducted a series of 121 interviews with all staff members to get individual and honest feedback on how the staff felt valued by the leadership team and their top set of personal values.
Following this we presented and reported our findings to the entire company and opened up discussions that led to some key breakthroughs.
Aligning growing teams behind the core brand foundations such as values is key to the success of any brand and staff retention has been greatly improved.
The result
This was the first time as a business since they started over 10 years ago that they had underatken this kind of financial and time investment into their brand. As a still relatively small business the scope of the work outlined by BrandStorm initially seemed a little overwhelming but after understanding the process and what the rebrand meant to the business beyond simply designing a new logo and colour scheme we guided them through every step.
The result has been transformational for the business as Director Michelle explains:
"Our previous identity was successful for us in the beginning as a small bookkeeping practice, but as we grew and started providing other services, we outgrew the name and found that many people did not know that we also offered these additional services, so we decided it was time for a rebrand.
We not only wanted to smarten up our image, whilst still retaining our personality, but also reminding our clients and informing a wider audience, that we now provide full bookkeeping, accountancy and payroll services. We were also aware that since we started their has been more local competitors cropping up and we needed the brand to reposition us as established market leaders in the local area.
The process from start to finish with BrandStorm was interesting and insightful. It was particularly interesting to hear the whole team’s views on the business, what they believed we stood for and hugely reassuring to find out that we all held similar values but learnt there was a small amount of misalignment which we have worked on to fix. I think we have become a stronger, closer team as a result!
On the whole we received a hugely positive response to our rebrand. We also continue to achieve what we set out to, which was to let everyone know of the services we provide, appeal to the more discerning accountancy client and grow that particular arm of the business, without having to put in a huge amount of extra money and time to market the new brand.
The investment has already paid for itself and most importantly to us, our clients understood the change and agreed that we had made the right move and were impressed with our new branding, we couldn’t have asked for more than that"