Challenge

Is it possible to be so focused on customers and products that you lose sight of why you exist? With your true story being told by others, and not you? It happens. Extraordinary customer service can actually cloud a clear picture of who you are, weaken your NPD cycle, and unwittingly suppress your brand. Our friends at StarTech.com began realizing this a few years ago, and set about developing a new strategy to regain their voice in the marketplace. One that would in no way disrupt their successful climb to global leadership in IT connectivity, with more than 3,000 products sold across five continents. As the strategy began to take shape, they realized they needed a design partner to help visually and verbally communicate their strategy through their products and brand.

Solution

It was a BOLTGROUP whitepaper on developing a Visual Brand Language that established our partnership with StarTech.com. Together we set out to solve these perplexing business challenges, and to discover how to best express the extraordinary work that was going on within the organization. Through qualitative and quantitative research, we dug in to understand the required value propositions of their various customers throughout the entire value chain, and uncovered attributes that would visually guide product development. We also exposed the inspiring brand truths that inform the purpose of the organization. Those truths had been there all along; they just needed to be refocused and given the appropriate voice.

Collaborating with internal StarTech.com teams, we established guiding principles for their new product development path, as well as brand purpose, truths, positioning, and personality. All using a people-centered approach, thereby serving their various constituents. Building on existing brand assets, we focused on the visual element of the “dot.” We developed a visual and verbal strategy to enliven the brand experience in a way that is clear, simple, yet kinetic in nature to adapt to all channels of communication. In short, our team took everything right with the brand and put it in its proper place, and took everything that was not right with the brand and found a way to bring it into congress, reflecting the new strategy.

Result

Every touchpoint of the StarTech.com’s product family and brand will ultimately reflect their purpose—to empower their internal and external customers, the IT professionals and business users, to improve performance by easily creating the critical connection between them and their productivity tools.

Now that is Hard-to-find made easy.