Driving results through strategic brand evolution: CCi’s brand refresh
The client
CCi is the global leader in business performance improvement, combining tech-enabled solutions, with deep sector expertise to enable the world’s leading supply chains to drive and sustain operational excellence.
Trusted by some of the world’s most iconic brands like Diageo, Suntory Global Spirits, Cargill and dsm-firmenich, CCi’s footprint spans more than 75 countries, and 3000+ operations across the globe.
The challenge
CCi are on a growth mission – by broadening their solutions, integrating strategic partners, deepening customer relationships and expanding and diversifying their client base. To support their goals, the leadership team recognised the need to invest in a strong brand presence. It was essential that they could effectively demonstrate the sustained value that CCi provides to clients and establish a solid foundation for market differentiation to meet their ambitious growth targets.
The existing brand was dated and confusing, featuring a disconnected user experience across multiple websites, names and visual elements. This poor positioning failed to effectively highlight CCi’s expertise, products and services, thus adversely affecting its reputation.
Jay Milligan, CEO, knew that he needed to elevate the brand, if they were to meet their growth targets. He set out to find a marketing firm that would be able to bring the agility and pace needed for the rebrand. Bright was identified as the ideal partner, combining deep expertise in marketing effectiveness and agility with B2B marketing know-how.
The Bright team challenged us to modernize the CCi brand and the result is phenomenal. The feedback from both internal employees and customers has been overwhelmingly positive. It is a significant step forward for CCi and helps to position us as market leaders.”
The rebranding process
The solution
Beginning the journey
To begin with, Bright conducted an in-depth marketing audit to understand & evaluate CCi’s current state including reviewing its existing brand and marketing activities. Rapidly identifying strengths, weaknesses, and barriers to success. Bright then defined a marketing strategy that supported the primary goals of CCi’s leadership team, a critical component was the rebrand to build reputation and market share. The implementation plans put agility at the heart of the process to ensure that outcomes were achieved with pace and impact.
Bright’s agile marketing methodology and marketing expertise in B2B focused on how to leverage continual improvement through a test and learn approach to maximise marketing ROI and impact. Bright embarked on establishing the foundations that would underpin the future brand positioning and brand strategy.
The brand refresh
The brand strategy
The new brand was crucial, the faster we could launch the new identity and build CCi’s reputation the better. The brand would underpin successful market outreach to not only acquire new clients but also expand and retain the existing base. We needed to be nimble with tight time frames to deliver the refreshed brand into market which meant taking an agile approach was vital. It was essential to work closely with the leadership team to understand their vision and purpose to distil the essence of CCi for the new brand.
Insights from the marketing audit helped to clarify customer needs and priorities. Spanning a diverse audience, including technical middle managers and supply chain and operational excellence business leaders. The insights were used to inform the process and help accelerate decision making in workshops, directly feeding into the development of CCi’s new brand positioning and messaging.
Interactive workshops facilitated the transition from product-centric positioning to solution focused messaging, bringing together both products and consulting services under the banner of tech-enabled solutions and placing more emphasis and the value CCi enables businesses to generate. We conducted further competitor research as well as validation of the proposed new positioning with employees and customers to ensure the new messaging resonated with key target audiences.
Close engagement with the CCi leadership team as well as the global employee base along on the journey was a key part of planning for success. Ensuring key stakeholders were involved during this important strategic change was vital to maintain buy-in and engagement. Using our experience in change enablement, we developed a change communications plan to support the roll out to ensure understanding of the messaging and generate buzz around the new brand across the CCi team.
The brand design
In our experience, brand identities work best when messaging is clear, simple, and visually impactful. To create the new visual identity, positioning and brand rollout strategy, we took an agile approach to project-management, forming a cross functional team including a graphic design team as well as marketing specialists at Bright and key functional areas at CCi including revenue generation, consulting, product, customer success and HR.
We leveraged agile marketing to rapidly conduct our brand development and internal preparations including research and ideation, validation and iterations to refine the brand and launch within 9 months, this is a significant improvement on average rebrand refreshes [1]which on average take 12 to 18 months.
We further increased efficiencies by collaborating closely with the CCi team to review of all existing branded assets across the business, creating a backlog and prioritising what was needed to ensure a consistent and professional look and feel at launch. By leveraging the backlog to optimise existing content and make sure we only redesigned or repurposed those assets that aligned to the tech-enabled solutions focus whilst retiring irrelevant or underperforming content.
Internal preparations were key to ensuring CCi’s refreshed branding rationale was communicated in a straightforward and easily understood way to both clients and all CCi employees. We also listened to feedback and considered where future enhancements might be needed and backlogged for future phases.
The website relaunch
CCi wanted to streamline their online presence by merging two existing websites – ccitracc.com and traccsolution.com into one website. The aim was to create a streamlined and much improved user experience, aligning CCi’s TRACC solution with the organisation’s overarching corporate messaging and branding. This created a unified approach for introducing new products and services in the future.
A new website was scoped and tailored to meet the needs of CCi’s target audience. We worked closely with Bright’s trusted web development partner to deliver an engaging user experience built on a robust, easy to maintain and future proofed architecture. Extensive content mapping was conducted to ensure seamless navigation and coherence across every page.
SEO-optimised content was core to support CCi’s success in the digital landscape going forward. We focused on ensuring a friction-free browsing experience for visitors. We also implemented seamless automation processes for all forms on the website, ensuring a smooth journey for users from submission to receipt of communications in the new branding.
Throughout the project we were continually testing and validating content, design and functionality to optimise the user experience.
The project had to be completed at pace with tight deadlines for launch. By taking an agile approach we were able to rapidly replan, overcome barriers and work collaboratively with key stakeholders to meet the launch date and get ccitracc.com live!
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2023/10/05/how-long-does-it-take-to-successfully-rebrand-a-business/#
The results
The refreshed brand positioning and identity launch created a phenomenal amount of positive energy and sentiment, reigniting interest and awareness that has already enhanced the reputation of CCi across employees, clients and other key stakeholders.
Commenting on the brand refresh, CEO of CCi, Jay Milligan, said “The Bright team challenged us to modernize the CCi brand and the result is phenomenal. The feedback from both internal employees and customers has been overwhelmingly positive. It is a significant step forward for CCi and helps to position us as market leaders.”
The refreshed brand messaging, design, and tone of voice has provided clarity on who CCi are as an organisation and who it can serve. The website is an easy to navigate shopfront for both new and existing clients, employees and partners to get to know CCi better.
Impressive early results in the first quarter post-launch, include:
Improved audience engagement: website dwell time increased by 17%
Longer time on site: Decreased bounce rate by 4%
35% increase in C-suite LinkedIn page engagement
Over 50 assets rebranded or created to support the new identity.
With the brand now in market, Bright and CCi are continuing their journey to meet CCi’s growth targets leveraging the new brand to support demand generation, client acquisition, and expansion.
“The brand refresh has been transformative, positioning CCi at the forefront of our industry. Working with Bright as our agile marketing partner has allowed us to prioritise what matters and drive our marketing forward with precision and impact.” Head of Marketing and Brand, Robyn Macé added.
Bright remains a key partner for CCi, providing the agility, pace, and results of a world-class agile marketing approach. Our expertise in B2B marketing and commitment to continuous improvement ensure the most effective strategies to support CCi’s business goals.
