If You Can Transform a Brand, You Can Transform Your Agency

Yes, I borrowed that line from the title of an article published in AdAge. Truth be told, it's the platform for this post.

Right now we (Renegade) are in the trenches of re-branding ourselves. And I would be a liar if I said it was the easiest thing we've ever done. It's surprising how difficult the work becomes when it is no longer directed towards your clients and suddenly becomes all about you. Case and point, have you ever had to write about yourself? Perhaps a bio, a blurb, about me, etc... It's more difficult than you think. As Christine puts it "Decode your DNA". Figure out who you are. Figure out what your trying to do/sell/offer. Strip everything away and focus on the one thing that makes you, you.

This is the case with any branding initiative but it's a lot easier to dissect the fruits of someone else's labor. When you are forced into a moment of introspect, things get uncomfortable, usually a bit sticky and ultimately someone steps in something gross and tracks it across the living room floor. Fortunately for this industry, a creative solution can clean up any mess.

Once you have the fancy adjectives and fluff stripped away and you can clearly see your vision, corporate culture and unique differentiator, you can begin the process of putting your brand back together. Don't forget all of the other cosmetic details either - you have to think about curb appeal in this neighborhood.

So now you've got a new look, a new approach and now a new buzz in the atmosphere. Now what? Oh yeah, now it's time to launch. I'll leave that up to you while I segue into the Renegade brand launch.

For some time we've been revamping the Renegade brand - who we are, what we do and how we do it. As I mentioned earlier, it was not an easy process and for any agency that has gone through it, knows that.

It's almost like planning a wedding.

You lock down the foundation that everything else will fall into first - who you are, where you're going and how you'll get there (a.k.a. research). Then you move on to the more detail oriented tasks - brand positioning, brand identity, brand plan. And last but not least, the nitty gritty details that you can't forget but never remember - updating all letterhead, docs, envelopes, business cards and email signatures with your new look, setting the tone for your new culture and rallying your troops (in the midst of all the top-level business decisions, you can't forget about your front line - these folks are going to be your brand ambassadors).

With that said, I highly recommend checking out Christine's article in AdAge and also keep checking back to the Agency Confessional and the new Renegade Communications website for the launch of our new brand.

- Jim Luparello III AE Brand Ambassador

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Who the hell do we think we are?

One of the biggest challenges for us as an agency has been the fact that we're not an agency - not in the traditional sense. In fact, when the company first started in '88, it was a production and post house. Over the years, the marketing and strategy side evolved to keep up with the needs of our clients. Like fish that grow feet.

We brought in agency talent from around the region and the country. Advertising studs who, instead of resumes, can bring in an issue of Fortune, point to a page and say, "I helped make that."

While that certainly made us look like forward thinkers - having agency and production so closely linked has been one of our strongest differentiators - up until recently, we weren't quite sure what to make of it. And if we were unsure, it's safe to say some of our prospective clients were thoroughly perplexed. Especially when many of our clients on the production side are other agencies.

Believe me, it's was months (read: years) of internal hand-wringing, brainstorming beatdowns, and branding brawls as we tried to wrap our heads and arms and legs around exactly who we were. But through it all, a funny thing emerged. We began to embrace this agency/production paradox as a good thing. We realized that we can be many things to many people and not have to compromise or hide or otherwise subvert what makes the whole place great. After all, industry newswires are chock-full of consolidations and mergers - usually from a financial or operations aspect. We're simply celebrating what we've been doing all along - consolidating services.

And true to form, we're doing it the exact opposite way others have done it: building a brand by splitting it apart. Confused yet?

Meet Renegade Productions. Not to be confused with Renegade. We're still the fully-integrated advertising and production company. We're just making it easier for different people to get a handle on our different services. Clients have always been able to come to us for the whole shebang, from the concept to the casting couch to the cut. Now, there's a little more clarity, a little better understanding of how the company fits the needs of clients from all sides. We hope.

Our Director of Production, Jason Stern, put this out to help clear things up for clients and agencies looking for a shop who can help produce pretty moving pictures.




So Renegade moves forward from today as one. In two pieces. Or something like that.

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