Brandartica

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of a nonprofit organization that provides early detection and prevention services around skin cancer and melanoma. Our mission is to reduce the risk of skin cancer and melanoma everywhere.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brandartica?

We had previously been working with a communications company and decided to make a change. We were looking for an agency that could offer multiple services around website development and maintenance as well as manage our communications, so we’ve brought in Brandartica.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re in the process of letting Brandartica get to know our business, so we’re still on a learning curve. However, they’ve been working on branding our events and are building out the landing pages of the new programs we’re developing. We’ve also talked with them about how else we want to provide marketing and PR services for new and old programs. We’re working out the look and feel of the graphics, how we will promote it on our web page, and what the overall communication is going to be like. 

The team is also collaborating with our social media specialist in creating templates for our content.

What is the team composition?

I work with two people, Peter (Founder & Creative Director) and Jeff (Partner & WordPress Website Developer).

How did you come to work with Brandartica?

Our social media consultant was the one who recommended Brandartica to us. We did our due diligence, and I and our whole staff had several conversations with them to get a sense of what the fit would be. Brandartica seemed good on that end so we started working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been with Brandartica for three months, starting last January 2021. We’re currently working 10–15 hours a month as we’re getting through the COVID-19 pandemic, but as we raise more money we will bring Brandartica in for more time.

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

Brandartica is getting the work done in a timely manner. We may come back with changes that we want to be made, but it’s been a very good collaboration so far. They’re working closely with our business and brand in a way that can be expected to turn into a long-term relationship. 

How did Brandartica perform from a project management standpoint?

We are all very engaged with the project management. We use Asana to track what work they’re currently doing and what the deadlines are. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve been looking for an organization that we, as a small company, can exercise some influence over, and we feel that Brandartica is exactly that. They’ve given us an opportunity to negotiate and have more control over the costs and the division of workloads. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We’re in the early stages and are still figuring everything out, and so far Brandartica has been doing a good job. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to establish a regular time for you, your staff, and Brandartica to meet. The interpersonal aspect and having access to Peter and Jeff make all the difference in how you can get your work done.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My wife and I own Plainfield Country Store. Our store offers delicious homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Brandartica?

My wife and I were both teachers, and we never owned a store before. That prompted me to start consulting with Brandartica before we bought a store because we know nothing about marketing.

Since we couldn't have the domain name of the store we were buying, we also needed help in creating a site since we were not familiar with how to build one. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the branding, we started with a face-to-face conversation where we discussed our vision for the store. The Brandartica team just picked our brains, and based on that, they were able to create different logos and press releases that captured what we were looking for. At times, they even presented slideshows to show their work and ideas. 

Then, they proceeded to build our WordPress website, and they incorporated several pictures I provided to make the site look inviting. Thanks to that, I could log in to our platform through the backend. Furthermore, our tagline, “Fuel Up. Get Fed. Say Hello.” was just one of the copies they created for us. All the content we had integrated into the website was also posted on our Facebook. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, the team helped us design our corporate banners. They also designed our labels and merchandise. Furthermore, with their assistance, we were able to promote our store at a radio station. 

Brandartica continues to maintain our website, especially the backend. They also implement updates and fix glitches.

What is the team composition?

Peter (Founder & Creative Director) is our main point of contact, and we also work with Jeff (Partner) who’s in charge of the website. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $7,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in late June 2019, and our engagement is ongoing. We bought the store in July, and our website was launched in August. 

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

We have an intuitive and easy-to-use website, thanks to Brandartica. Since we didn’t really own our store at the start, we had zero customers, and now we have a lot. Moreover, people have commented on our website with appreciation. Our external stakeholders also appreciate our Facebook’s usefulness, and they love our logo and signs. Most importantly, our external clients buy our shirts, and that’s surprising because we bought that for our staff.

Anecdotally, I’ve learned what it means to market a store and what it means to have a brand. Brandartica has a keen eye on linking threads together, and that’s the reason why our site and Facebook stand out. They’ve also helped us ensure that our platforms represent our brand identity, especially in our colors, texts, and messaging — and that has allowed us to look professional.

How did Brandartica perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve had calls that have allowed us to expedite the process, and we also have in-person meetings together with Brandartica. We also send things back and forth thru email. Most importantly, whenever I have a problem with the website, such as how to change the menus, the team helps me. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

When I look at other people’s websites, store signs, and logos, I see that all of them don’t look good as ours. Some of them look incomplete — some don’t have their menu and some don’t have their address on their platform.

Overall, I love our website, and it works great. That happened largely due to Jeff’s contribution to the site, and Peter’s overall creativity and energy. With them, I don’t have to do much work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t really think of anything they can improve. They’re responsive and always receptive to feedback. For example, when I told them I didn’t like the background of our website, it wasn’t really a big deal to them. In the end, they changed it. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about what you want. Don’t worry about what you think they can or can’t do. Give them all your ideas, and they’ll make it a fun process.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior marketing manager of an inn, brewery, and restaurant in New Hampshire that has around 40–50 employees. We’ve been brewing since 1995 and our lineup of beers is being sold in the markets of New England.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brandartica?

Our logos were cartoonish and heavy on the image of animals, like weasels and pigs. It looked good at the time since we are a legacy brand and have been around longer than other breweries. However, when our profit went down, we decided to rebrand with Peter (Founder & Creative Director).

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brandartica helped rebrand the brewery and some elements of the inn and the restaurant. Everything we wanted, Peter put into the design. He came up with a hashtag and incorporated a lot of New Hampshire-related themes into our marketing materials.

Peter redesigned our restaurant’s brochure and came up with a new logo for our inn club, which at the time wasn’t well marketed. He didn’t touch our website, but he had a lot of influence as far as the visuals were concerned. Using his contacts in radio and TV, he was also able to help us with radio ads.

We were trying to reach out to a new age group through the design, but some of Peter’s output got pushed back due to some people in our organization not liking the change. We were also planning to improve our gift shop and sell gift items, like t-shirts, online in order to make more money, but this also got turned down. 

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with Peter.

How did you come to work with Brandartica?

My boss was the one that got in touch with Brandartica. We did interview a couple of other companies before. We had even worked with one that led us to being sued because the logo they created was very similar to another existing logo. It set a bad precedent and made our owners a bit more cynical of branding companies, but Peter did a great job of handling our expectations so we decided to work with him. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested an amount within the range of $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Peter for 2–3 years, between January 2017–April 2020. We’ve ceased working with him due to budget constraints, but will definitely work with him again when we can afford it.

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

Brandartica really helped give us a bump in sales by kickstarting our brand. The designs were crisp and clear and made our products jump out from the shelves. Peter also came up with really cool and catchy verbiage for our establishment and for new items on our menu that were about to launch. He did great for our rebrand and our marketing in general.

We had a pretty good relationship. Peter was super passionate and was able to work with us even though there were people in our organization that had different reactions towards change. Even though he had great high-level branding ideas, we couldn’t move forward with them. The ideas of his that did push through were very successful.

How did Brandartica perform from a project management standpoint?

Peter came in, led the process, and helped us get on track through monthly meetings. He organized our errands into a calendar and was on top of everything. He was also the one that talked to outside parties about ads and deadlines so that we didn’t have to. 

As an organization, we were always scrambling to get things done since we didn’t have a marketing plan. His involvement caused a lot of good organizational changes and we began to do a better job of planning and working together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Peter has spent a good amount of time in the business, which helped him bring insight into our brand design. He pumped some life what we were doing and showed excitement about the brand refresh along the way.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Peter and I clicked right away since I also come from a marketing and advertising background, but some of our members misinterpreted his passion as pushiness. I don’t see this as a weakness though, because his passion is what pushed us to the level that we are at now and, at the end of the day, we were all really happy with his work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to figure out, as an organization, what you want Brandartica to do for you and just ride with their ideas from that point. You can 100% trust Peter with your brand and if you sign up with him, he will achieve your goals.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a mutual bank that has been around for 152 years. We’re headquartered in Franklin, New Hampshire, with eight full-service locations throughout the state.

I’m the VP and marketing officer for the bank, and I’ve been with them for about six years. I oversee the bank’s strategic marketing efforts, PR, communications, and branding. I’m also in charge of developing and implementing marketing campaigns. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Brandartica?

Our company was in need of a new agency of record. We wanted a vendor that could serve as an extension of our marketing team and that could help us elevate our brand from other banks in the marketplace. This was how our partnership with Brandartica started.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brandartica has been involved with us in a number of ways. They help us develop marketing plans and creative materials for various campaigns such as print, digital, and radio advertising, as well as annual reports. They’ve also been producing some videos for our digital advertising efforts and social media channels. 

On top of that, Brandartica has developed a new website for us. In the beginning, we lost our staff member who was maintaining our prior website, which was built on WordPress. It had several plugins to accommodate our functionality requirements, but it was challenging to update certain areas of that website — we lacked the procedures for them. As a result, I reached out to Brandartica to assist me. Once the team became more involved in our website updates, it became obvious that we needed a better way to maintain the site. Brandartica then came back to us with a rough idea of how they envisioned the whole new page to look like. From there, we looked at other banks’ websites to get an idea of how we wanted our new website to be. They then took our idea and built the homepage for us. 

For us to save money, we didn’t initially want to build a whole new website. As a result, Brandartica only developed templates for internal pages. I hired a digital marketing manager to assist me in building all those internal pages. In the end, that manager worked closely with Brandartica to build the rest of the website for the bank.

In terms of marketing, I usually develop a plan first and chat with Brandartica about the tactics we might want to consider. From there, I finalize the plan and pass it to the bank's president, who will then share it with the board of directors. After that, I put together a budget to support the project, which also needs to be approved by the board. Once the plan and budget have been approved, we move forward with developing the campaigns to support our objectives. We look at updating our creative on at least a quarterly basis, if not sooner. My digital marketing manager is also in constant communication with Brandartica on a weekly basis, chatting about social media strategies. 

What is the team composition?

We’re working with Peter (Founder & Creative Director) and Jeff (Partner for Web Development).

How did you come to work with Brandartica?

One person in our department stumbled upon Brandartica when they received a best in business award from New Hampshire Business Review, a well-known and respected publication in the state. Every year, the publication would facilitate a contest where readers could vote in certain categories for businesses and agencies. They were tapped to assess Brandartica, and my colleague read about the agency through this publication.

We also looked at a couple of different options, but we really liked Peter, who introduced himself to us and pitched us in another meeting. His whole approach was different. As a result, we chose Brandartica. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $100,000–$250,000. Our retainer fee goes up over time. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September 2017, and the partnership is ongoing.

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

Brandartica keeps raising the bar when it comes to the creative materials they provide for our campaigns. Everything looks so fresh and in line with our branding. Since they’re not as close to the brand as we are, they can take it to the next level; they can envision more than we can. 

Looking at some of the things they’ve been involved with, such as the social media campaigns, we measure success very easily by looking at metrics within the platform. For instance, we measure the number of our followers and engagement over a period of time. 

So far, Brandartica has been great at assisting us with expanding from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to Instagram. They’ve been instrumental in our campaigns and strategies for using Instagram to promote our brand to people who aren’t familiar with us.

How did Brandartica perform from a project management standpoint?

Brandartica’s project management skills are very good, and they use a management platform to keep themselves on track. They’re great at meeting deadlines because there’s constant communication between us and they’re very responsive. 

Moreover, we’ve gained many years of marketing experience. Our company has the ability to use a lot of platforms at our disposal, and our partnership with Brandartica complements our in-house talent. As a result, we’re less dependent on them to do many things that we used to receive from a full in-house agency.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Since they’re a small company, Brandartica can quickly adapt to changes in our campaigns. Their principal owners work out of their respective homes, so they don’t have the overhead of rent and staffing that a traditional agency would have. That makes them more affordable for a bank of our size. 

Apart from that, Brandartica provides a fresh perspective to us since they’re not working solely with banks. They work with other types of clients, so they can share some of the things that they’re doing and present them to us for consideration. What’s more, we know that their outputs aren’t going to be something they’ve already used for another bank client. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to suggestions. Just because you’ve done something in a certain way before doesn’t mean you don’t have to change it. The banking industry is very competitive, so you must always find ways to elevate your brand against your competitors. Have a mindset of being open to fresh new ideas because this will help you if you’re working with Brandartica. They think outside the box and bring a whole new perspective to the job at hand.