businessDEPOT
A decade long partnership that continues to grow
Branding +
Messaging +
Website +
Ongoing Support +
Putting the power in powerhouse
After years of communicating themselves as an accounting and advisory firm, businessDEPOT was ready to embrace their new identity as one place for business.
Creating one place for businesses to trust, collaborate with and lean on has been a long-term goal of the businessDEPOT journey and we were stoked to partner with them to bring this into reality.
This bold vision needed a bold execution to match that still paid its respects to the older brand but with more vigour and passion than ever before.
Brand Strategy
Building on a strong foundation
The first phase involved strategising with businessDEPOT on the new brand and messaging direction. The challenge here was explaining the concept succinctly while still tapping into the innovative and refreshing spirit of the team through supporting content and imagery.
This phase resulted in a strategy to retain the existing brandmark (which was still much beloved) and instead build out a significant brand language to further distinguish bD in the market.
businessDEPOT was ready to embrace the value of creative visuals, so we were able to define a unique illustrative style as the cornerstone of the new brand.
Web
Making the complex
simple
Cutting through the robotic mumbo-jumbo and making things simple for clients is one of bD’s key values; a great fit with our ethos for creating simple and useful websites. With bD offering several services, sub-services and specialised teams, simplifying this became an exciting challenge when looking at the user journey for the new site.
One of the key goals was to get users where they need to be as quickly as possible. To do this, we implemented an easy way to access the services from the homepage, quick links on single service pages and fed events and blog articles through to most pages.
The team at Ply were both creative and strategic – an extremely valuable combination. I very much appreciate your help, consul and creative juices! We are very happy with the final product.
John Knight
MD of businessDEPOT
Morals of the bD story
Brand is a journey
Creating a powerful brand is a slow climb. As you keep working towards the summit, you learn things that might change your path and strengthen your stance.
It's been over five years since we designed the first incarnation of the businessDEPOT brand and website. The first time around we were working with their team to communicate accounting and advisory in a uniquely powerful way and slowly over time the business has evolved into something even bigger—one place for business.
Watching and working with bD on their journey as a creative partner has made it clearer than ever that brand is never static—it's a living, breathing beast that continues to transform as a business grows.
Trust breeds great work
This project uncovered the true value of a business relationship spreading across several years. Because of this trust, we were able to push the envelope even further when creating concepts that embodied the down-to-earth and passionate energy of the bD team.
Beauty and brains
The website pairs the striking visual identity with clever functionality. There is a significant amount of logic which is hidden to the naked eye, but improves the overall user experience while making things easier for the bD team.
To reduce the need for manual tampering, we set up articles, team members and collective members to automatically pull through to the relevant service. We also set up custom filtering for the team and collective, as well as deeper Hubspot integration with on-page triggers to open Hubspot chat.
It's this extra layer of development that makes the site run like a well-oiled machine.
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