Rouge Media

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing and admission to an independent school in the UK, a fee-paying school.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rouge Media?

We were looking to refine the branding of our school as well as our proposition to families. We wanted to make sure that we had more applications to the school from families of girls and from boarding families in the UK. We also wanted to update our website to reinforce our refined branding and positioning.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rouge Media supported us in refining our brand, specifically on how we could best capture the visual identity of our school within our branding. As part of that, they developed our brand playbook, school prospectus, and visual architecture.

For the second phase, they developed a bespoke WordPress site, which enabled us to have different templates and modules so that we could build the website using different elements. By doing that, we could also populate our website and have a consistent high-quality look and feel across our platform. They continue to provide us with development services.

What is the team composition?

Karen (Operations & Project Manager) is our main point of contact. We had a core team of three people for the main project and 4–5 additional people have been drawn in at different points for their particular areas of expertise.

How did you come to work with Rouge Media?

We looked around at companies that had done some work with similar organizations. We drew up a long list, and we saw that Rouge Media had worked with another local school here. We invited five organizations to tender for our project and invited two to interview. In the end, Rouge Media came on top during the interview.

How much have you invested with them?

The web project was about £20,000 (approximately $26,900 USD), and the branding work we did with them was £6,000 (approximately $8,000 USD). We now spend £3,000 (approximately $4,000 USD) a year for their ongoing development services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Rouge Media around October 2019, and we continue to collaborate.

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

We’ve increased applications from families of girls from 33% to 44%. On top of that, the applications to the school have more than doubled. In addition, the school roll has also increased from 446 to 526.

How did Rouge Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They keep everything organized, and we communicate through email and phone calls. We also have regular meetings with Rouge Media, and we like the fact that we always know who we’re talking to because their staff doesn’t change all the time. 

During our branding project, we didn’t have an established project management process. Then, for the web project, we used something similar to Basecamp. We had a lot of workflow-tracking there, and we were able to place our comments, too. Moreover, we were able to reference a development site as we were doing more work on the website.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Rouge Media is a good-sized company, and they offer cost-effective services. They’re small enough to care but big enough to have all the expertise we need. On top of that, they give us good value for money since they produce quality service. In particular, they brought a lot of expertise and knowledge that have helped us in our brand development process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they could improve because they have everything we need for our project. Despite that, Rouge Media has the option to grow their agency and offer more services.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

When choosing an agency, you should spend a lot of time researching and finding the right people. If you start with people that you don’t work well with, it’s going to be quite painful to either get out of that or come to a successful conclusion at the end. It’s worth putting the effort in upfront to find the right partner.

Additionally, establishing a clear brief is always a good idea and itemizing costs will eliminate confusion as you work with each other. It’s also important to know how many revisions or iterations you can do when you consider your budget and how much is the cost if you want further additions, although it’s always hard to know how much refinement you’re going to need. We didn’t need that much in our case, but it was a good thing we had something allocated for that.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the global marketing manager at Dye & Durham Corporation, a legal services company. We provide technology to the legal, governmental, and financial sectors in Canada, the UK, and Australia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rouge Media?

We’ve recently gone global and needed to refresh our brand, develop a website, and conduct marketing, so we partnered with Rouge Media.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We began by briefing Rouge Media about our brand and objectives. We wanted to show that we are not an ancient brand, but are a modern, up-and-coming, tech-savvy company. We also wanted to keep our history but shape up what we currently have.

Rouge Media went on to do a lot of bits and pieces for us. They rebranded the entire company and provided us with a new set of corporate values, brand guidelines, color schemes, and creative assets. The team also put together a new logo and all of the marketing information that we would need in the future. It was a complete brand overhaul that didn’t stray far from what we currently have while still supplying us with a lot of new designs.

Rouge Media also revamped our WordPress website. We sat and brainstormed about the user journey, focusing closely on investors and customers from different areas in the UK. They created the wireframes and pages for the website, building off of existing elements to keep the whole site familiar.

They also helped us choose the right assets and images and recommended a partner of theirs to do some of our videos and photos. The whole website content was created with keywords in mind, but we have yet to instruct the team on the social media aspect of marketing. 

What is the team composition?

There are seven people, and I lean on two project managers.

How did you come to work with Rouge Media?

The marketing director of the business we acquired a year ago brought in Rouge Media with them. That’s how we were introduced.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve invested £200,000 (approximately $271,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2020, and our partnership is ongoing.

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

Rouge Media has brought forth a consistency in our brand journey and story. We’re an acquisitive and quick-growing company, and they’ve helped us gather all of the pieces that we needed to ensure that our brand is strong and recognizable in the market. They’ve also assisted us in making all of our internal and external employees feel part of a unified brand. They’ve been a great partner to our business and this partnership has made a big impact on the company. 

How did Rouge Media perform from a project management standpoint?

Rouge Media’s project management is brilliant. They’re a fantastic, trustworthy team that’s always on point. Their pricing is reasonable, and their turnaround time is second to none. 

We typically communicate via email or meet through Microsoft Teams, since those are most convenient to me. They’re always available and update us via Google Docs as well. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their work is very consistent and extremely high-level. They’ve really taken the time to understand our brand, producing flawless, professional work. They’ve exceeded our expectations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I find it hard to fault them. We could, however, use some improvement on the project management side since a lot of content and materials are turning up all of the time. Rouge Media is very aware of this issue as well and is trying to create a way for us to more easily understand their output.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Working with Rouge Media is a partnership. As long as you give enough for them to understand the brand and what you’re trying to achieve, they will deliver. They’re very open and honest.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of marketing at a law firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rouge Media?

We needed their skills in web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our existing website was outdated and not mobile-friendly, so we thought of engaging a development agency to remedy that by creating a quality platform for our customers. Rouge Media stepped in to build a new WordPress site from scratch based on our old content.

Apart from making it mobile-responsive, their team also integrated new functionalities into the platform and made all our panels accessible through the home page. They incorporated a client payment system and a virtual fee calculator to help our customers estimate the potential cost of the services they needed.

What is the team composition?

We worked with their director, project manager, and developer at that time.

How did you come to work with Rouge Media?

I found their team on Google while searching for potential agencies to onboard for this project. We chose Rouge Media because they had impressive reviews, and they sent us a detailed proposal that showed their clear understanding of our business.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from April–November 2017.

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

Internal and external stakeholders were pleased with the updates that Rouge Media integrated into our new platform. We also secured a higher client acquisition rate through the accessible contact page and forms that their team set up. Overall, I could say that our expectations were met because they succeeded in improving our processes and engagement.

How did Rouge Media perform from a project management standpoint?

Rouge Media was on top of their project management game — we never found the need to chase their team for deadlines or any unmet requirements. They were a communicative and timeline-oriented partner that set up everything in an orderly manner despite encountering delays from our end.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What stood out about Rouge Media’s team was their capacity to remain approachable while handling the project professionally. They accommodated our questions and guided us in the right direction without any judgment. 

Rather than going through the journey on their own, they took the time to keep us involved every step of the way — Rouge Media’s sincerity and high level of accommodation were truly notable qualities for a provider to possess.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t encounter any areas that needed improvement — they were simply on top of everything throughout the process.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First meetings are always integral to any partnership, so find the time to meet them in person if you can. Rouge Media will understand your brand image and goals more comprehensively if you explain these clearly to their team. Once they get a grasp of what you want to achieve, they’ll take it from there and make things happen for your business.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of marketing for Nominet, and we’re custodians of the UK domain namespace.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rouge Media?

We had a number of different websites that we needed support building.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rouge Media predominantly provides us with web development projects. One of their main responsibilities is building a microsite with a complex data visualization toolset that would allow us to load responses from surveys and interviews. We would then allow people to manipulate the pieces of data and build their own custom segments to export and extract.

We initially provided them with extensive documentation that included our overall brief and visual components for our brand identity and sample data.

They use WordPress to build the platform using a custom script to enable the data validation and visualization pieces. Moreover, they designed all of the frontend interfaces and how users would access the filters and create their segments.

What is the team composition?

Karen (Operations & Projects Manager) is our main point of contact, and we also work with Adrian (Lead Developer) and Hannah (Lead Creative).

How did you come to work with Rouge Media?

We came across them about a year and a half ago when we went out to tender for a website. We also heard about them through a colleague so we invited them to pitch for this particular project and they were the only vendor to succeed in the process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent around £100,000 (approximately $130,400 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in February 2020.

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

I can’t provide any metrics, but the quality of their work is demonstrated by the fact that we’re still working with them. They’re very thorough, detailed, and clear with the expectations they set. Apart from that, their design skills in-house are very high-quality, and we’ve yet to find a project where the initial concepts they provide haven’t hit the mark.

Their account management team is also very good at maneuvering the delivery around our very tight timelines.

How did Rouge Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform strongly in terms of project management. Their communication is always clear, respectful, and they’re always concise with what they need from us. We mainly use Teams, email, and phone as our primary channels for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed by the balance between the quality of the output and their price — they produce high-quality products that don’t come with exorbitant prices.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are always things we wish we could’ve done differently, but they’re always very minor with their issues, like typical communication breakdowns. However, if I could try and convey the scale of the project at the speed at which we were moving, it would be really insignificant in comparison to all the good they’ve done.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say be really clear with your expectations up front and try to give a strong brief as possible.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a company called Dye & Durham. We are a global technology business. We have offices and almost a thousand employees across Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rouge Media?

As we expand across our global markets we need to rebuild and expand our websites and improve the user experience. We're looking to create a main portal for our investors and additionally, we're looking to create a global directory whereby local product marketing in Australia, UK, Ireland, and Canada can be easily accessed. We commissioned Rouge to advise, design, develop and deliver this project as well as supporting our Global branding activity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our approach is to utilize WordPress to build our websites from scratch. Rouge manages the whole process from guidance to building wireframes, and they analyze our options to determine what works and what doesn’t. They're also collaborating with our individual marketing teams globally, so that they can understand additional integrations such as Zendesk or CRM solutions like HubSpot.

Additionally, we have consumer-friendly sites that they're also supporting. We're looking to create a comparison site and they're making sure that platform has a stronger SEO. 

Other than that, they help implement the content framework for the sites. We tend to manage most of our content since we're the experts on what we want to do, but they'll give us a steer on just making sure that it's fit for purpose — this is to ensure we're doing what Google needs us to do, rather than just repeating content across various countries.

What is the team composition?

We’ve got about 6–7 people working on the project. We've got Stu (Director of Digital Development) who helps us with video content on the website, a project manager, and a couple of designers.

How did you come to work with Rouge Media?

They pitched for an organization I previously worked with, and they just really understood what we were trying to achieve. What I like about them is the fact that they don't just pay lip service because you're a client — they’re honest and will let you know what works and what doesn’t. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I've been working with Rouge for more than five years now, but this specific ongoing project started in March 2021.

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

They're very honest, approachable, and they go the extra mile. We recently had a situation where we changed the spec of the project last minute, so their team stayed up all night to get it fixed — it didn't become an extra problem that we needed to deal with.

How did Rouge Media perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been delivering their tasks on time and within the budget. At the moment, we're tracking on schedule so we have weekly updates from the team. The people who’re working on all asset production will send a weekly email with a percentage status of where they are in terms of progress completion. For the overall project plan, we're currently looking at the discovery phase, the review phase, as well as the scoping phase of the website build.

They use Trello, but since I'm a bit old school, they extract a lot of the data and put it into a standard Gantt chart. As for communication, we use Teams for meetings and regularly communicate through emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I find that Stu and Andy (Co-Founder & Design Director) actually have massive amounts of expertise and experience and that they've taken into their own company. Their pitch is very good, which genuinely interests us and gets our attention. They really care and they want to see the project succeed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think they've got the right formula to expand, but it depends on whether or not they want to go nuclear and grow to become a bigger company.

Any advice for potential customers?

I would advise being very honest with the brief, and tell them exactly what you're trying to achieve, as well as the challenges as you see them. If you're very honest about the outcome you’re trying to achieve, you'll get a much better result.