A strong brand identity is crucial to connect with your audience, set your business apart from its competitors, and create a sense of unity among your stakeholders. As your business or organization grows, stand back and take a look at its branding to ensure it resonates with target audiences.
“Not only did we love the end result of our rebrand, we thoroughly enjoyed (and learned from) the process. Bringing together two women who threw around partnering for 4 years prior to it becoming a reality, meant the name and vision had to reflect how special it is to at last be together doing the work we love!”
- Donna Curtin, Partner at Tandem Workforce Collaborative
Rebranding for future growth
Tandem Workforce Collaborative is a Vermont-based small business focused on providing services and resources for injured individuals to reenter the workforce. Tandem Workforce Collaborative, formerly known as Vermont Vocational Services, wanted a new name and brand identity that better encompassed the breadth of its services across many regions. This rebrand was an investment in the company’s future growth, focusing on expanding outside Vermont and establishing themselves as thought leaders in the workforce industry. The two co-owners also wanted the branding and vision to reflect their joint force doing the work they love.
The small business approached LONDONmiddlebury to help develop a new name, logo, and brand package that made their online and offline presence easy to recognize.
Matching audience and employee perceptions
Our work with Tandem Workforce Collaborative began with a series of brand discovery workshops with the co-owners, allowing us to dive deeper into the messages and feelings the small business wanted to convey with its new brand identity. Overall, the co-owners wanted the branding to convey collaboration, communication, simplicity, and trustworthiness.
Next, we conducted surveys for the business’ stakeholders to understand perceptions from all sides: employees, loyal customers, and other important contributors. In this process, we uncovered key aspects of the brand that helped us learn how to position it as a leader in its field. With this information, we began our work to create a brand identity that resonated with everyone and passed the right message on to audience members.
Our team worked to brainstorm names and logos that achieved the organization’s goals. We presented several name and logo pairings to give business leaders an idea of what the finished product would look like and give feedback accordingly. Once they found a logo and name combination they absolutely loved, we were able to deliver a comprehensive brand package to tie it all together.
“By surveying our clients, customers and other stakeholders, LONDONmiddlebury tapped into aspects of our brand we took for granted and could not have otherwise communicated. Through multiple conversations and building our relationship with LONDONmiddlebury, they were able to extract key elements and prioritize how to emphasize how our company as a stand out in our industry.”
Impact: a new brand identity that conveys the right message
We anticipated hesitations, like how “tandem” and “collaborative” might seem redundant. But, in the name “Tandem Workforce Collaborative,” they’re complementary.
Tandem: Describes how you work.
Workforce: Describes who you serve.
Collaborative: Describes who you are.
We also intentionally eliminated the words “Vermont” and “vocational” to show the team’s ability to stretch beyond Vermont’s border and make their name more accessible and informational.
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When the co-owners were presented with the name “Tandem Workforce Collaborative,” their response was “we love it.”
The final logo incorporated several shades of green in the shape of Vermont’s Green Mountains, paying homage to Tandem Workforce Collaborative’s home and signifying the peaks and valleys of the return-to-work journey.
Overall, the new brand identity captures the variety of Tandem Workforce Collaborative’s services and resources and allows room for growth outside Vermont and as thought leaders in the industry. It better represents both the brand and its target audience, allowing people to better understand its mission and goals.
“The support by LONDONmiddlebury to develop, from conception, our quarterly newsletter, led to far reaching customer exposure and insight of both our daily practices and the larger perspective of our work and organization. Staying relevant and promoting our value in the field through the newsletter has been a great help to ensuring new and repeat business.
We are fortunate to work in Tandem with LONDONmiddlebury!”