Overcoming brand adversity with fundamental changes.
The company formerly known as WhyNotLeaseIt was facing some challenges. Their industry was changing, their business model had reached the end of its framework, their name had a damaged reputation, and the competition had caught up. It was time they made sense of these obstacles and prepare to make a change of their own.
From Humble Beginnings.
WhyNotLeaseIt was founded in 2009 when one man and a few employees spent countless hours in a basement creating a new way for people to take merchandise home with a simple approval process and no credit required. In less than a year's time, they had over one hundred retailers offering the service and over one thousand consumers signing up for it. In rapid fashion the company grew from a home-based operation to a national corporation and in 2013 WhyNotLeaseIt was purchased by CNG Holdings.
Invest in your people and your people invest in you.
When going through a complete rebrand, getting internal alignment is extremely important. You can't just slap a new logo and a tagline on all of your employees' business cards and say, "ok, this is who we are now so act accordingly." It just wouldn't work. In the case of WhyNotLeaseIt the shift that was required was going to be so big that it really only made sense to bring everyone along for the ride. We worked through the first phase of the project establishing consumer segmentation, brand equity, a laundry list of naming options, and exploration of how the new brand could come to life including tone of voice, color and photography. Then we packed it up, jumped on a plane and flew up to the client's office in Manchester, New Hampshire where we held a day-long, twenty person workshop to collaboratively build the brand together – invaluable to move the project forward.
Follow the compass and move forward.
Guidance, rhythm and stability were a few of the ideas that inspired both us and our client throughout this journey. These themes were ultimately what drove the decision to choose TEMPOE as the new name for the company and provided the inspiration that would fuel the development of the visual identity for the brand. Pointing both retailers and consumers in the right direction and helping them advance at a steady and predictable pace is the essence of the brand.
Setting them up for success.
Their internal design and marketing teams would be responsible for taking this new brand and implementing it internally and externally across the nation. We wanted to make sure that we handed off a solid road map to successfully achieve their launch. We delivered a detailed style guide and website to help get them started and allow everyone to represent the brand consistently. Whether they are onboarding a retailer, creating a presentation, or assisting a customer, we wanted them to present themselves as a united front, in a consistent manner.
Taking it online.
The new website provides both retailers and consumers a clear and easy path to program enrollment as well as a number of financial tools to help calculate payments. New mobile accessibility makes it even easier for all users to access information and enroll while in-store and opens up new possibilities for future mobile transactions.
Bringing everyone along for the ride.
Launching a new brand requires the alignment of a lot of internal pieces. To bring the entire organization through a snapshot of the brand evolution process from start to finish, Hyperquake created a temporary immersive installation for a launch party to walk people through the story of the brand—beginning with why this process needed to happen in the first place, and ending with the final brand identity. Hosted at Stir in Montgomery, Ohio, employees, investors and guests from every location gathered to experience the brand and celebrate its reveal. When it was all said and done there was a room full of people with a clear understanding of where the company was heading, and most importantly, why.
Tempoe's flexibility is flexing in market.
So what have the internal teams been able to do with the foundation that we created together? Well, quite frankly, a lot. From trade shows to in-store signage and brochures, the brand assets have proven to be flexible enough to cover all of the business's internal and external needs. It has been nearly six months since the brand has launched and everything from enrollment to web traffic has been on a steady increase. Hyperquake continues to be involved in the development of sub-branding initiatives for various products under the Tempoe parent brand. After seeing the positive responses of the initial launch, it is clear that the brand is now strong and innovative enough to represent a business which continues to evolve.
