Rebranding for the Digital Age
Kelley Grover knows that brand (and specifically brand governance) isn’t a high priority for many people.
“Most folks say, ‘I don’t have time for brand. I have to meet this goal, I have to meet with this client, I don’t have time to be worrying about that,’” she said.
As Senior Global Brand Manager at Deloitte, Grover takes a different view. “We are all brand ambassadors,” she said. “It is all our jobs to be representatives of the brand.”
Grover worries about brand, so that her colleagues don’t have to. Brand is always top of mind for her – never more so than in 2016, when Deloitte launched its brand identity refresh. The previous rebrand took place in 2003, pre-iPad and smartphone. It was built for print, and its age was showing.
“If a brand identity system does not accommodate for how practitioners do business, people aren’t going to use it,” said Grover. “And that’s going to cause the brand to become diluted, and not as consistent as we need it to be.”
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“We are all brand ambassadors. It is all our jobs to be representatives of the brand.”
Kelley Grover
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In its latest rebranding efforts, the multinational professional services firm aimed to establish a single brand architecture and brand identity system that consistently conveyed to clients the Deloitte experience regardless of geographic location, business unit or device. Deloitte associates needed a brand that was as flexible and dynamic as their business practices.
From brand identity health check to brand identity launch, the journey to a new brand took more than two years. Grover and the Global Brand team engaged with hundreds of people across Deloitte throughout the rebranding process, asking about where the brand was today, where the brand needed to go, and what shifts were anticipated in business and technology. Each time the team made a decision, they asked themselves, ‘Is this what an undisputed leader would do?’
“It’s not about using a logo that’s white instead of blue,” said Grover of Deloitte’s new brand identity. “It’s about getting to the root of what our new personality characteristics are, and matching that with what the undisputed leader would do, to have some consistency and clarity in our visual identity.”
“Brand Space was the epicenter for this brand identity launch”
Kelley Grover, Senior Global Brand Manager, Deloitte
Bringing the Brand to Life
Creating a new brand identity is no mean feat, but communicating it to 240,000 associates is arguably an even bigger challenge – it’s certainly a more sustained one. To that end, Deloitte needed to not only evolve its brand but also its brand center, which meant investing in a platform that was dynamic and representative of an undisputed leader.
Brand Space has been Deloitte’s brand center for more than 15 years, but it’s a radically different entity now than it was prior to the brand refresh. Previously, it was little more than a centralized digital asset management repository. It was chockablock with static guidelines and PDFs galore.
Today, built on Monigle’s BEAM (Brand Engagement and Asset Management) platform, Brand Space is where Deloitte’s new brand identity comes to life. “Brand Space was the epicenter for this brand identity launch,” said Grover.
The platform teems with living, breathing content, like the best practices showcase gallery that’s updated on a daily basis. There’s a training section featuring digestible video modules covering a range of topics from brand voice, to delivering on the Deloitte brand experience captured from live sessions delivered by Kelley and Brian Resnick, Director Global Brand. Much of the content is aimed to make it easy for the people delivering the Deloitte brand– its global army of 200,000 plus associates. There, Consultants go to find the things they need with speed such as templates (more than 400 in all, across applications including a PowerPoint “Timesaver” featuring almost every slide template imaginable, and images (more than 2,500 and growing) filterable by industry or theme. Something they won’t find? PDF documents. In order to ensure the site remains a living, breathing expression of brands, all content is laid out in-page in an engaging way that makes it easy to update.
“Our job is to make it almost as if you don’t even know you’re using the brand”
Continuous Support and Engagement
Aware that a revamped BrandSpace represented a huge change management process for Deloitte, the Global Brand team didn’t spring it on associates overnight.
“We provided support through the local member firm brand teams, and provided a three-month period for all of our global users to be able to transition,” said Grover. “And prior to that, we had a soft-launch period where all brand and marketing professionals around the globe were able to leverage all the materials and kick-start those processes. It was a six-month process of soft launch followed by global launch.”
Cognizant that all too often brand centers are built with only designers in mind, Grover and the Global Brand team conducted extensive user testing with Monigle so that Brand Space would be usable for everyone. The platform is device agnostic, so it features a consistent user experience whether associates are accessing the platform via desktop, mobile or tablet. Additionally, the team has organized ongoing global engagement initiatives, like photo contests, to ensure that associates continue to use the platform to its best advantage. And these efforts are paying off: Brand Space receives about 100,000 unique visitors per month, up from the 60,000 it received prior to the rebrand.
The Global Brand team has not only created a brand that’s in alignment with Deloitte’s go-to-market strategy and business practices, but also one that, thanks to Brand Space, is easier to use and engage with than ever before.
“Our job is to make it almost as if you don’t even know you’re using the brand,” said Grover. “But you are using it, so you’re leveraging the equity and the power of the Deloitte brand.”
Two of your greatest assets are your brand and your people. The success of your brand depends on how well your people can deliver your brand experience. Learn more about how to use BEAM to engage and inspire employees by viewing the on-demand version of our recent webinar How Brand Centers are Empowering a New Breed of Concierge, featuring Kelley Grover from Deloitte and Dipanjan Chatterjee, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester.