Note: This post is the 1st in a series on Brand Building that highlights the approach that WhitePages has taken over the past 15 months to build and reposition its brand.
In January, 2008 I wrote a blog post highlighting the key reasons why I joined WhitePages. In that post I mention the brand-building opportunities at WhitePages as one of the big influencers of my decision. And a few months ago I teased you with a post on the launch of our new corporate site, which highlights WhitePages new colors, logo and personality. Now, I’m excited to share a sneak peek of our new site redesign which represents the most radical changes to our website since the inception of the company over 10 years ago…all in the name of repositioning WhitePages brand.
If you think that repositioning a brand is simply a matter of figuring out some new colors and logos to throw on your products, you’re dead wrong. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about your company. It’s an emotion, a sensory understanding of what your company is, rather than an intellectual, rational memory of your tagline or logo. Given the number of options consumers have these days, it’s not enough to simply have the ‘coolest’ looking or best priced product. You have to have a phenomenal customer experience that invokes an emotional connection. And getting to that connection, much less knowing how to get there, requires a ton of hard work.
Figuring out how we wanted to define the WhitePages future brand was challenging. We went through numerous interviews with employees, partners, customers and analysts to garner their feedback and insights on the company. We brought in an outside brand agency to help manage the process of defining the new brand and to help explore our visual identity and personality. We conducted customer focus groups, had heated internal debates and constantly had to balance needs and desires across all the different organizations within the company. It took time, it took commitment and it took dedication from everyone involved. Bottom line: if you’re thinking of redefining your brand, think again. Taking on a project this size will require tremendous commitment across every organization within your company. It will also require patience.
Through this process, we learned a ton. We learned about our brand identity (i.e. who we are) and how to communicate this identity to all employees in the company so that each organization could ‘live the brand’. Ever tried explaining ‘brand’ to a company of 140 employees and asking them to change their habits, processes, and in some cases, the way they think? Much more difficult than it sounds. We also learned that the WhitePages brand is our heart and soul; it drives everything we do and represents all that we stand for as a company. As a company, we’re dedicated to being Stewards of Trust, to driving relevant innovation, to providing consumers with intuitive experiences and to being the absolute best data source for people’s contact information. Each of these pillars supports our mission to make it fantastically simple for everyone to connect with confidence.
In the next month or so, we’ll be launching our new brand. Honestly, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to hear feedback from our customers and advertisers and can’t wait to feel that sense of overwhelming accomplishment throughout the WhitePages Team. So many people, so much effort, so much passion…..such an amazing accomplishment! In the meantime, and in an effort to curb our enthusiasm, a number of key individuals across different parts of the company will periodically provide insights and commentary on their experience with rolling out the new brand. Call it ‘closure’ or call it a crash-course in brand building, but given all the work that’s gone into launching the new brand and site, some of us felt compelled to ceremoniously summarize all of our efforts.
So, sneak a peek of the new site and let us know your thoughts. Feedback, criticisms and even questions about the brand process are welcome. Bring it on!
And keep checking this blog over the next 6 weeks for follow-up posts on our brand building efforts. Should be great insights for anybody interested in brand building, brand repositioning, brand platforms, brand architecture…you get the picture.
John
Other posts in the WhitePages Brand Building Series
Tagged as: Brand, brand identity, brand pillars, Marketing, new site, repositioning, site redesign
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great John – i learn so much from you blogs and posts.
John,
Excellent job on the redesign. You’ve really managed to make the myriad features seem easy to grok. Kudos.
One piece of feedback, The ‘WhitePages member’ mark reads like WMember. It may just be the W and M right close to each other, but it just felt awkward (in a page that is awesome).
Again, great job.
Shannon…thanks for the comment. Very much appreciated! We’ll keep the blog rolling…lots to talk about in the coming months.
Dave, ditto to you as well. And thanks for the feedback. I’ll look into it today and forward along to our design team. I know they’ll appreciate the feedback and the kudos!
We’re working our tails off to launch the new site within the next 4-6 weeks. Amazing how much effort is involved in redesigning and repositioning a top 50 website. Looking forward to seeing us pull it off.
Thanks again for comments.
John
It’s illuminating to hear from a Marketing VP about how hard it is to refresh a brand. I wish more veeps did this, but you are busy people! That sets you apart, John. Your posts always balance the reality of the endeavor with authentic optimism. Cheers! britt
Britt,
Thanks for the comments. Very much appreciated. We’re trying to hard to wrap everything we’ve done with the ‘brand’ into a series of posts. Tough narrowing it all down, but pretty good response thus far. Hopefully, we can keep you entertained!
John