As a veteran-owned company, service is woven into iResQ’s foundation. But when the job is as big as prioritizing an entire community, there can be little room left over for thinking about how to create a cohesive approach to brand voice. That’s where our team at MAKE Digital Group comes in.

Challenge: Take a 30-year-old brand and revamp it to the modern age. Our client bought the brand, which had a solid customer base and a team of dedicated employees, but saw flaws in the way it presented itself both internally and externally. They wanted to work with us to develop a cohesive brand voice that would set the foundation for their website redesign and marketing strategies moving forward. 

Solution: Using competitive research and industry specifics as a starting point, we worked with the iResQ team to gain an understanding of what makes them stand out in the marketplace and why customers should (and do) continue to choose them for service. Putting it all together, we created a cohesive brand document that outlined their mission, vision, values, tone, brand promise, channel archetypes, logo uses, and more.

In this blog, we’ll review our brand voice process, including research and insights, brand voice workshop, the definition of mission, vision and core values, and more. 

“Michelle and I were honestly speechless, which does not happen often, after seeing the video and presentation.”

— Nick Crosby, iResQ Owner/CEO

RESEARCH

Research is the only place to start when it comes to building a brand voice. We researched local and national competitors, looking at things like their tone, key differentiators, values, and mission to see if we could find the opportunities and barriers to entry in this landscape. 

Over the course of 140 minutes, 5 phone calls and 7 emails, we also talked to our customers and employees to find out what types of factors play a role in how they choose a company. These interviews proved to be an essential part of our process, allowing us to start to find meaningful connections between what a client is looking for in the industry and how the company can fill that gap.

Here’s what we found to be true:

Our overall takeaway from our research is that the market is huge and open, with many avenues for opportunities and success for our client—but not only that, the services are desperately needed by customers. That means that a company that comes into this space and does good work has the opportunity to succeed. The hard part is gaining credibility from an audience who may already have another vendor they’re working with. 

CLIENT WORKSHOP

We then hosted a client brand workshop, where we white boarded, sticky noted, brainstormed, and dove into the things that are important to the internal team. This gave us an opportunity to gut-check their team on industry and consumer findings, working to find that sweet spot that brought it all home.

CORE VALUES 

After listening to what our clients, their employees, and their customers had to say about the business, we realized that there was a sweet spot, and it was in these six values: honesty, service to others, collaboration, compassion, reliability, and efficiency. 

Together, these values prove that iResQ not only has the skills needed to do the job right the first time, but also understands the power of their business and how it can be used to help people in their daily lives.

BRAND VOICE

The mission, vision, and brand promise we delivered was an all-encompassing look at the things that made iResQ and its customers tick. 

Our approach was to lean into the idea of compassion, setting the foundation of creating a thoughtful partnership with the consumer, before hitting it home with the expertise and technical aspects of the business.

BRAND TONE

It was clear through our research that customers want to feel taken care of when handing over their digital devices. Using that as a starting point, we created a tone centered around the idea that next-level + compassionate service is a key differentiator for iResQ. 

VISUAL IDENTITY

We delivered a visual identity that combined iResQ’s resourcefulness in the technology industry with their new modern approach to customer service.

There’s too much to say about that in this blog, that’s why we wrote an entirely separate one just about MAKE’s logo design process. 

And to just bring it all home, we made them an awesome sizzle reel — 

“Michelle and I were honestly speechless, which does not happen often, after seeing the video and presentation. It fully captured the essence of what we have been saying and thinking throughout this entire process – You guys rock! Thank you very much for taking us down this path, our expectations have been exceeded every step of the way. We are looking forward to the rest of the journey with Make Digital!” — Nick Crosby, iResQ Owner/CEO