Mitzie Hunter: A familiar brand reimagined

Strategic brand transformation

Client backstory

Mitzie Hunter, a known figure in Ontario’s political and business landscape, needed to significantly modify her website to promote herself as a public speaker and thought leader, and introduce her new venture, a consulting business. For this, she asked us to guide a strategic rebrand that would inform the changes, from the design to the copy and explore a tagline to convey her present work succinctly.

The challenge: a multi-dimensional brand puzzle

Our starting point was a three-hour workshop that served as a strategic exploration of Mitzie’s professional past, present, and future. The first hurdle was distilling Mitzie’s multifaceted experience into a cohesive brand and logical offering. We tailored our framework to suit Mitzie’s unique history, from her experiences in housing, policy-making and technology, to her work in environmental social and governance, and diversity and inclusion. As we always do in our workshops, we led a series of activities and discussions that got ideas onto paper and then challenged them in order to arrive at new revelations and concrete decisions. We went beyond her achievements to the narrative and brand personality, eventually landing on one that was bold, innovative, and reflective of her aspirations. We also discussed buyers, their perceptions and how best to present her new services.

Business cards and other collateral—fast!

Following the two-hour workshop, we summarized the new key messaging and brand strategy. We then developed a brand palette and a design system of shape, line and image treatment that would soon be applied everywhere. Our team worked quickly and Mitzie was responsive and decisive, allowing us to deliver print and digital business cards, complete with a QR code, that same week. Next, we created banner images for her social media profiles and newsletter to infuse the same look everywhere. Consistency like this is very impactful.

A major website refresh

A significant element of Mitzie’s brand transformation was changing her website. The website became a digital embodiment of her professional ethos, encapsulating her strengths, vision, and bold and innovative spirit. Beyond design, our team also worked hard to create a smooth user experience through thoughtful page layout and overall site performance. We also aided with domain redirection and email systems.

From start to finish it took four weeks to go from workshopping the brand strategy and business offering to all new collateral and the updated website. This is an unusually fast speed for this scope of work and we’re proud to have made it happen for Mitzie. Since then, we’ve designed additional collateral for Mitzie.

Would the results have been the same with AI and DIY tools?

The rise of highly accessible tools begs the question “Why not just DIY?”
Sure, Mitzie could have produced her collateral and even created a simple website using online resources and AI tools. While these tools are awesome and we use some of them ourselves, the differences are:

• There would be a lack of strategy, which is the glue that holds all of the parts together and makes them really impactful and unique to her voice. The business clarity Mitzie derived from the workshop was helpful to her in ways that extended beyond the creative work.
• There would have been no sounding board nor external expertise regarding how to present and encapsulate a mixed and new service offering that spans multiple buyer types.
• Having design expertise leads to more polished, professional work. A great analogy for this is anyone can paint, but an experienced, trained painter will create a much better painting.

Quality and speed

Our workshop gave her clarity on how to present her offering in an authentic, competitive way. Then we moved quickly through the stages of design, creating for her a suite of collateral and a great-looking B2B website in a few weeks. This brand transformation is an excellent example of what our team of experienced marketers can create quickly and on a modest budget by asking the right questions and leveraging our experience and tools.

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