Ventera Rebrand & vSTART Overview

Ventera Rebrand

As we began the vSTART branding project, there was a parallel rebranding effort that was happening simultaneously. Ventera was going through a rebrand, so it was important to understand its vision and brand messaging to make it pair well with the company brandmark and make it feel like a family.

vSTART Overview

• vSTART is a product that encompasses three verticals, playbook, design and platform and will be utilized in sales, so it’s easier to “brand” as a product

• vSTART will be referred to in proposals, sales deck, sales 1-pager or brochure as vSTART’s flagship product

• vSTART encompasses Ventera’s future vision

Competitive Research

I wanted to understand how other companies who have similar products are carrying out the branding within the company. I quickly realized that most companies were using the main branding for similar playbook products and did not treat them as a separate distinct product. The difference was that Ventera wanted to sell vSTART as a separate offering and it encompassed more than a playbook so a separate brand mark for the product was necessary.

Understanding

The next step was to hold a one hour workshop with the broader vSTART team to get them aligned in their vision about vSTART. I wanted to hear from the team members who were involved in vSTART what they knew about the product and ask the following questions:

• Who is the target audience for the product?

• What do you know about the product?

• Where will it be used?

• How would you describe the product?

• What is the benefit of the product?

We did a 15 minute Mind Mapping exercise to lay out all of our understanding of the product so that everyone could be on the same page. This was important in defining the key messages of what we wanted the brand mark to communicate.

Messaging

After the Mind Mapping exercise with the broader team, I had everyone write down on stickies what message they wanted vSTART to communicate. We spent about 10 minutes jotting down our ideas then grouped them by category and voted on our top 3 key messages. There was a tie between two categories, so we ended up with the following 4 key messages:

• Speed/Agility

• Ease of use - plug and play, building blocks, foundation

• Forward thinking, dynamic, empower

• Education and learning

The 4 key messages will serve as a basis when ideating on the brandmark.

Mood Board

As a last step of our workshop, I wanted the team to create a collaborative mood board of visual representations of the key words they came up with. I had them take screenshots from various sources and paste on the board for inspiration for the designers to ideate on. This was a chance for non-designers to exercise their creative freedom and envision what the brand mark represented to them.

Sketching & Voting

The next step was focused solely for the designers. I wanted them to take the traditional approach of using pen and paper to sketch out their ideas based on the key messages that were identified by the team and inspiration from the mood board. I asked them to explore the following:

• Symbol

• Graphic Image

• Typographic treatment

• Or combination of both

We gathered all the sketches and put them on the working board and had a collaborative working session. Everyone was given a chance to go through their thought process and give feedback to each other. And then with the remaining time left, we had another sketching session to sketch out more ideas. We were allowed to expand or improve on other ideas or come up with something completely new.

Some of the concepts that we gravitated towards were:

• the roundedness of shapes that tied back to the Ventera word mark

• simplicity of shapes

• arrows that communicate forward thinking; directional; fast forward

• north star - compass metaphor

• check mark

• building block idea

• speed, movement

• concepts that would play well with animation

After discussing more, we had a voting session to narrow down on the concepts we wanted to take to the next step.

First Iteration & Voting

In the next phase, I had designers look for logo inspirations and research current design trends and styles. I wanted them to ask the questions like what was working and not working and what they liked about the ones they found. I also had the designers start on the digital renderings based on the concepts we narrowed down. They were also free to explore something new that inspired them along the way.

We went through the same discussion and feedback session we had previously and designers gave further feedback by putting stickies on the ideas that resonated most to them. These comments were to be used as a guidance to the stakeholders when they did their super voting.

Super Voting 1

I didn’t want to wait too long to involve the stakeholders and get their feedback. I shared the board with the Head of CX and Design at Ventera and the Product Owner of vSTART to narrow down on the direction and provide feedback to move forward with.

The clear winners that paired well with the Ventera brandmark were:

• The building block concept

• The double arrows concept

• The simple abstract card concept was the wild card

Second Iteration

In the second iteration, the building blocks, double arrows and abstract card concepts were explored further. For this round, I wanted the designers to experiment more with the colors that pair well with the Ventera color palette and bring some of the gradients into play when exploring colors. Some of the question I wanted them to ask along the way were:

• Is it appropriate? – fits well for Ventera and their business

• Is it distinctive? – stands out, but easy to recognize and memorize

• Is it flexible? – works in different sizes and in various contexts

After more discussion and feedback, the building blocks and the double arrows were emerging to become two of the strongest concepts.

Super Voting 2

The stakeholders had similar feedback. The final concepts were nailed and we just needed to finetune some aspects of the logo. Here are some of the observations and feedback.

• The thin gradient outline gave a very modern feel and was in trend with what was going on in the industry

• The symbol needed to have softer corners to pair better with the Ventera brandmark

• The double arrows and building blocks were in target with the key messaging we wanted to communicate

• The lower case “vstart” wordmark was preferred but the color could be further explored