id8

RetailStat Brand Unification

Over the course of decades, Information Clearinghouse Inc. (ICI) had assembled product brands specializing in retail finance and analytics used by brand owners and real estate professionals to make business decisions.

Brands like Creditntell, AGDATA, and ARMS (Accounts Receivable Management Solutions) had developed strong reputations as reliable sources of intelligence, helping drive value to the parent company. Each brand, however, relied on the power of its own reputation, not effectively leveraging the power of the entire product suite.

With the help of market research from id8 – and under new leadership – the decision was made to create a new, umbrella brand to house the disparate products. At the same time, an operational initiative was undertaken to create a single sign-on (SSO) process for clients who used multiple services.

It’s common for companies with legacy history to feel a deep affinity for their brand. This is particularly true when they’re acquired and still want to maintain a sense of identity. However, most research exercises that id8 leads show there is far more willingness in the external market to accept unified brands than internal audiences suspect.

This was the case with ICI. Internally, their brands had strong loyalty among employees. External audiences, on the other hand, were only loosely connected to the brands and cared much more about performance and quality.
This presented an ideal opportunity to restructure the company’s product suite and create a new, expandable system that could stand the test of time. RetailStat was born, taking on the mantle of a single, authoritative source for retail finance and location information and analysis.

To showcase how the products work together to deliver business value, a new name, new logo, and brand lexicon was created. The ability for clients to add and subtract products to build a custom solution is showcased in a Tetris-style graphic communication.

Brand unification is an ongoing process that requires care and attention to both internal and external audiences. For RetailStat, this meant creating a six-month change communication strategy that started with vision casting from leadership. Clear roadmaps were drawn to take the group from several distinct brands to one unified company offering a suite of specialized products.

For the external audience, brand names meant little. The change in operations and introduction of an SSO, however, was huge. As the company was transitioning to RetailStat, id8 was communicating to external stakeholders, educating them about what the changes would mean to them. Our primary goal was to facilitate a seamless transition that laid the groundwork for the RetailStat team to dramatically increase cross-marketing opportunities.