Raine & Makin

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an educational platform. We have an app that teachers use to get feedback from students.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Raine & Makin?

We needed help with the rebranding of our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Raine & Makin took the intel we collected by speaking to our users, and then they understood our value proposition. They did a market scan of our competitors and pursued the rebranding process of our business, starting from there. They also ensured that our online collateral and digital presence matched what we wanted in terms of look and feel, and then we did the relaunch of our company.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Luke (Co-Founder) throughout the project.

How did you come to work with Raine & Makin?

They were referred to us by someone in the industry. We met with them, and we clicked on a personal level. They understood our challenge and also had experience in rebranding businesses. Their understanding of our product and our market was also key in choosing them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $35,000 with them on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–October 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The product they delivered works, and the brand quality is greater than before we engaged with them — we’re much more recognizable. We’re also higher in terms of search rankings, and the general metrics have been improving.

How did Raine & Makin perform from a project management standpoint?

We had strong communication, and they turned out to be reliable partners. They also worked to the rhythm of our business in a personable approach, which was important. In terms of communication, we had weekly meetings to check on progress and updates.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a unique approach in staying focused on the project’s outcome rather than the outputs; they understood the business challenges we were facing and were flexible in finding the best business solutions for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We would’ve liked to move faster with the project, but we understand that it was difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Any advice for potential customers?

Trust them; they’ll understand the challenge of the project, and they’ll do everything they can to get the outcome you expect. We put a lot of faith in them, and they even did work behind the scenes to get the answers — they’re knowledgeable and committed to their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of Urban Camp Melbourne Cooperative. We're based in Parkville, Melbourne, and primarily host regional and rural primary school children for overnight stays to experience the city. We see about 10,000 children per year.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Raine & Makin?

We hired Raine & Makin to complete a rebrand. Our organization has been in operation for about 36 years and we were looking to refresh the brand.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We did a rebrand about 10 years ago, but we wanted to refresh it as it was slightly outdated.

The project was broken down into a couple of different phases. We had a brand discovery phase at the start which involved research. Luke (Brand Consultant & Founder), who ran the consulting, did a fair bit of research himself. We provided some background information, and they interviewed staff, directors, and guests. They spent some time out in the field with our students and visited venues to experience what our visitors experience out in the city. They also did a fair bit of research on competitors, including competitor analysis. They provided us with some findings, recommendations, and measurements.

Phase two was an exploration of a new brand. That process was really great. We were given three different options and then, as a branding subcommittee, selected the direction we wanted to take. That was a super important stage, and they made some adjustments at that point in time to incorporate our recommendations. Then, they worked on the development of the new brand and continued with the finalization project. They provided us with brand guidelines. These consisted of a new logo with modified colors, text, and font as well as key statements and some language to guide the brand voice.

We also looked at a couple of other add-on options. One was having it rolled out into our venue. They generated some ideas and a couple of proposals for what the rollout could look like onsite. They looked at a couple of different concepts for us, and again, we refined it and made some adjustments to that. We are currently going through that rollout process now.

They looked at our website as well as the development, customization, and setup of the initial website. We used an online template through Squarespace, but they developed a couple of page templates for us to work on. They added creative oversight and looked at some of our collateral to help us prepare to work on the website ourselves and roll out some related projects internally. We wanted to make sure that everything we were doing was in line with the brand.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two people from the team. One was Luke, who we worked with 95% of the time. We also worked with Rusty (Director), who was involved in the initial stages. When we signed on, we thought we were getting them both as a team and that we would be working with both of them closely. As the project went on, though, we worked more with Luke. He also had some staff working behind the scenes on the different phases of our project.

How did you come to work with Raine & Makin?

I believe they were recommended to us through an organization called Spark Strategy. We had used them for some strategy work in 2019. We went out to five or six brand consulting organizations and we just felt like Raine & Makin was the right match. They are quite easy to talk to and they understood what we were planning on doing. They matched our price point fairly closely as well.

How much have you invested in them?

We invested about $35,000 AUD (approximately $27,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2019–September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t fully rolled out the new brand yet, so it's a little bit hard to measure their impact. It was difficult to get a proper sample size of guests for brand feedback as well. Early on in phase one, we did an analysis with about 12 current guests. When we set up the new brand, we were only able to survey 9 guests. I would have loved to have a larger sample to really test that a little bit better.

How did Raine & Makin perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always fantastic. If something came up along the way, they would keep us updated. We were always happy, and they were quite flexible in that as well.

They initially used a project management tool that they set up early on, but we didn’t really end up using it throughout the project on our end.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were really down-to-earth people, and they really understood what we wanted to get out of the project. They were able to build a good relationship with us and our staff, which I think was key to our success.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had made some changes to parts of the project and they would just agree with them. I don’t know if that was a good thing or whether they should have challenged us a little more, as they had done all the research to get to that point. For example, we would say something wasn’t the right color and they would just go with our alternative color.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be super clear and super up-front with what you want to get out of the project in the early stages. Go into it with a good idea of what is actually required for the project to be successful. We had a little bit of trouble halfway through our project when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March and we had to cut back and make some adjustments to some of what we wanted to roll out. We didn’t spend a lot of money on the website and other related items because of the circumstances at that point in time.