So we had the new name, now what? Having been part of new office set-ups on many occasions through the years, but a re-brand is a totally new ball game. I admit that there were a lot of sleepless nights and countless prayers, but the key to everything was meticulous planning and re-planning whenever anything headed off course!
We employed the services of Nikkie Warnock, a local graphic designer who came up with a fabulous new logo for the new company, although the arguments over whether we should have an “&” or not was a heated and drawn out debate…! We put together a little task force consisting of myself, Alex and our respective PA’s Michelle & Emily to set about listing all the jobs we needed to do and the run up times for each, so that we could keep on track for the Christmas holiday change-over.
Of course, things never run smoothly, and quotations were slow in coming for starters and then, when they did arrive, of course they were higher than anticipated! When the different designs for the paperwork came in, nobody could decide on the same ‘favourite’ so there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with Nikkie, until we came to the unanimous decision that paperwork really wasn’t the most important issue and we probably had far more important issues to be dealing with.
One of those was the staff photo shoot. Now this was a fun affair with everybody involved and our lovely photographer Patricia from Image2 in Rickmansworth www.image2photography.co.uk had a rowdy bunch to contend with! It is so important for each member of our team to be individually showcased and we always like to come up with fun ideas to use in our marketing and promotional material so at one point Patricia was up on a ladder and at another point all the ladies were in skimpy t-shirts bouncing up and down, a sight to behold!
Image2Photography Shoot
Alex and I also had some great photos taken with our new boards, which arrived on time, thanks to Kevin & Simon @ K&S signs www.kandssigns.co.uk. These guys also had the massive task of going out between Christmas and New Year and replacing 300 Parkheath boards with the new Sewell & Gardner red and white boards, which I think look really striking. It is so weird seeing my own name on the board and I know that my dear departed dad would be oh so proud of me, which makes it all the more special. I admit that some of the boards did go up in very random places by mistake, but the K&S guys were under pressure and they returned to correct the errors as fast as they could. I’m not sure that one lady who chased the van down the road would agree, but our sincere apologies go out to her and hopefully she will forgive us.
The second big task was deciding upon a website. As I mention in my previous blog, this was one of the most important reasons behind our re-brand, and we had been in contact with one of the web-designers we had spoken to at the PPS show last year and they provide bespoke web pages so they came along to do the sales pitch. At the same time, our technical advisor introduced us to a local company who could make our site from scratch, so we also met with Jason from FL1 Group www.fl1group.com. Having spoken at length with both companies, the idea of being able to fully control the content and design of our very own site, we gave the contract to Jason. At the time of writing, the website is still ‘under construction’ as they say, which is probably the most frustrating part of the entire re-brand, but if it turns out to be exactly what we want then the wait will all be worthwhile. Mind you, I seem to have spent the best part of the last 2 weeks sitting glued to my PC all hours of the day and night, writing content for the site, articles for newspapers and now this blog for you guys to read. I hope I am doing ok so far!
TTFN, Letting Angel