When a marketing firm has to brand itself, a few challenges can arise. The way Imagine Communications streamlined its process might seem unusual, but it works.
LAS VEGAS, May 2, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- As a marketing firm, we've helped hundreds of clients define their brand and deliver a consistent voice. When it came time to revamp our own website and voice, though, we realized we'd need to approach things differently than we had in the past.
With many creatives on board, it's easy to get caught in the trap of "too many cooks," with everyone weighing in and the end product being an imperfect mosaic. There's also the problem of seeing too much. Data overload can result in a Gestalt picture that's impossible to distill into a simpler, concise brand.
"Branding something you're really close to is so hard," explained Cynthia Hartness, Imagine's Art Director and Webmaster. "You see too much, you know too much. It's the same reason I've never painted portraits of my children!"
Our solution was to step back and treat ourselves like a client. That meant not having the whole team involved, and only showing leadership progress on the new campaign at determined intervals. It also meant conjuring up a consistent brand voice that could represent us without being us.
It's hard to say when Gene, the voice of our new website, materialized. Hartness worked closely with Account Director Bobby Long and Designer Montana Black, first deciding what they liked about how certain people they knew communicated. As they focused on certain traits, "Imagine" became "Gene," and they started asking themselves WWGS (what would Gene say)? And what is Gene like?
Gene is friendly, honest, straightforward, serious but a bit funny — Gene's the person in the office who always has a joke on hand but also does the best work. Gene puts you at ease, and you can trust Gene.
A brand voice must speak for a whole team collectively but not seem like it's coming individually from any one of the team members. A persona like Gene helps content come alive, with a consistent and engaging personality, as opposed to a wall of text that sounds written by committee.
"We were trying to figure out how to do this and we said 'wait, let's not try to guess what real people would think, let's make up a person,'" Hartness said. "If you look at Imagine as a whole, thinking of something absolutely everyone would like is kind of impossible. Gene allowed us to have a filter to just run things through."
Long said Gene's personality was shaped by current trends in web development, too: Gene favors short, social-media-length bits of information over lectures. A dash of humor complements all the expertise and data Gene can offer. And being on the client side of this process was also eye-opening, he said.
"When trying to develop a brand voice, clients sometimes say they won't know until they see it, and now I get what they mean a bit more," Long added.
The true test was when company founder Alex Raffi checked out the website's refreshed look and voice. Raffi founded Imagine Communications in 2000 and hand-picked each employee over the past two dozen years — but he'd purposely not involved himself in this new rebrand. Would Gene's authenticity hold up?
"I'm looking at the work and it's giving me nostalgia goosebumps, because it 100% makes sense to me," Raffi said. "It called back to discussions and philosophies we've shared over the years…a lot of what I really believe was in there, and yet I wasn't involved. It felt like that old show, 'This Is Your Life.'"
Raffi has described the magical moment in marketing when a client sees what you've come up with and it clicks. You can see it in their eyes, he said, and it can be quite an emotional experience for a business owner when the ideas are on target. Like Long, suddenly Raffi knew what things felt like in the client's seat.
We credit Gene with the win, and we plan on keeping him around for a while. Luckily, imaginary friends work for peanuts!
Media Contact
Celestia Ward, Imagine Communications, 702-296-6792, [email protected], www.marketingwithimagine.com
SOURCE Imagine Communications
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