Johnson Investment Counsel
From developing ongoing marketing campaigns and collateral to leading their rebranding in late 2010’s, Intrinzic’s relationship as agency partner to Johnson Investment Counsel has deep roots extending nearly 20 years.
Brand Development
Brand Positioning
Messaging Matrices
Website Strategy, Content and Design
Website Development
When Intrinzic led the Johnson brand redesign in 2017-18, the project scope included a website restructuring, content refresh, and implementing the new logo, color palette, and other graphic updates.
As their firm has grown over the past several years, the Johnson Investment Counsel team approached Intrinzic about repositioning and redesigning their online presence to better align with their brands’ evolution. In 2023, Intrinzic began exploring what a new online presence for the brand might look like. Little did we know that we were beginning a project that would take our whole team on a significant and unexpected journey.
“ Our firm has significantly expanded and evolved in recent years, and we felt our website no longer reflected our team culture or the depth of our services. It was time to embark on a full website redesign. ”
— REBECCA J. DESCH | CREATIVE MARKETING MANAGER
The Challenge
When things get out of alignment, they get uncomfortable. Not in an immediate or glaringly obviously way. More like when there’s a small pebble stuck in your shoe, and the more you move around with it, the more you realize something’s not right. Once you come to the realization that something is not as it should be, how do you figure out where the discomfort is coming from, and take the necessary steps to alleviate it?
In recent years, Johnson Investment Counsel had been experiencing some growth and changes that weren’t recognized for what they were by the client team, or our team. Conversations were feeling disconnected and our teams weren’t quite sure why. We decided to gather the whole team in one room and engage in a deep, honest conversation. As we listened to the perspectives of people from across the organization, the pieces started clicking together. What we heard was that the disconnects were due to “growing pains”. They’d recently moved into a new building, were experiencing a lot of client growth, and their long-term business expectations were expanding. It now made sense why things had felt off-kilter: the brand’s visual and verbal elements needed to evolve to account for how the company itself was evolving. Up until now, trying to expand visual elements for the website had never felt quite right, but no one had been able to fully articulate why. As we heard more from the team, we were able to identify common themes and find the center point from which to base the brand’s visual evolution.
Finding the common thread amongst their team
And turning that into one aligned outcome
The Inspiration
Much like our team experienced with our own website redesign project, we needed to apply the brakes and go back to the beginning—twice, actually.
The first time was early in the process, before we’d even begun work around website updates. After spinning our wheels on the content strategy for an adjacent brand foundation project, we realized that the brand story and tone of voice were no longer aligned with how Johnson Investment Counsel team was trying to express themselves. After conducting interviews with various members of the team to discuss how they felt the brand should sound and relate to their clients, a revised brand story and tone of voice became clear. Our team collaborated with the Johnson team to implement updates that had everyone feeling good about how the brand was evolving and the story they wanted to put forth.
The second time we needed to go back to the beginning was when the website redesign project got underway. After multiple rounds of work, there was something about the visual expression of the new site that the broader team wasn’t connecting with, but it was difficult for them to articulate exactly what it was. Not only was the prior visual system not matching where they wanted to be, it wasn’t aligned with the adjustments that had been made to the brand story. After additional conversations, our team realized that there were many different opinions and perspectives at play that needed to be heard and acknowledged.
In order to address the range of perspectives we’d heard our team paused the work and went back to the early stages of our proven process. Realizing that we were in another situation where the brand had outgrown its current design toolbox, we went back to the Inspiration phase. We took elements and ideas that came out during our conversations and began crafting what we called Vibe Boards: a more streamlined version of our typical Brand World exploratory. The spectrum of these Vibe Boards ranged from minimalistic and modern to richly textured and luxurious. But all containing elements and styles we’d heard throughout our conversations.
We gathered the entire team in a room, took them through the Vibe Boards and engaged in an in-depth conversation on which pieces felt like a true reflection of Johnson Investment Counsel today and for the future they were growing into. Our team came out of this conversation with a clear direction of what the team had sparked to and what they collectively were wanting for the new expression of their brand. Once they were all in a room together, expressing their thoughts and discussing openly, they were able to align to a visual space that felt like the right fit for their brand.
Those common threads created our vibe boards. Their team selected one.
“ Our team had a broad mix of opinions and perspectives. We were struggling with how to acknowledge them all while coming to a consensus on a path forward. Going through the Vibe Board exercise with Intrinzic was a pivotal piece in getting our team aligned and excited for our new brand expression. ”
— REBECCA J. DESCH | CREATIVE MARKETING MANAGER
The Outcome
With a new consolidated—and universally agreed-upon—design vibe, our team set to work creating an updated visual brand toolbox. We knew we’d need to provide a robust range of assets that could apply to a wide variety of materials, including the new website, print collateral, client pitchbooks, digital marketing and more.
From here, our team could resume work on the website redesign, implementing the new toolbox, expanding the content strategy for the site, and delivering a more robust and relevant finished product to satisfy what a Johnson Investment Counsel prospective client is seeking in the marketplace.
“ We are beyond thrilled with the outcome, the way our brand is now being brought to life on our website, in our print collateral—it's a true reflection of our firm and our future. Intrinzic has been a trusted partner for years, and this project was another example of their dedication to understanding our firm, our culture, and our goals. ”
— REBECCA J. DESCH | CREATIVE MARKETING MANAGER
Let’s collaborate
We would love to connect and talk more about how our collaborative process and alignment tools can
help you bring your teams together and clearly define your culture and purpose.
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