How Research Helped My Company Transform Our Brand

Published by Ashton Elder

Ashton has an M.S. in Marketing from Florida International University and has been working as a marketer for over five years. She is currently serving on the University of North Florida’s Department of Communications Professional Committee Board. Ashton has been a guest on several media and marketing panels throughout her career. She also holds a degree from the University of North Florida where she studied political science, journalism, and mass communications. Prior to working in marketing, she worked as a journalist for several news outlets and publications, including an internship at NPR where she produced several radio features. This site features a collection of her articles and radio features from her career in journalism. This site also features some of her insights and projects from her career in marketing. Ashton’s background in journalism has provided her with a solid foundation on which to build enhanced media and social media strategies to provide creative, innovative marketing solutions. Ashton also has first-hand experience with brand design and brand building. Ashton also works on an array of marketing projects from social media to email marketing and everything in between. View all posts by Ashton Elder

I am the marketing coordinator for a real estate brokerage in Jacksonville, Florida. Over the four years in my position I have been part of a team that has given the company an extensive brand makeover. I used research to guide the decision making process every step of the way. Some of the key ways I have done this are highlighted below.

Brand Redesign

In January of 2020 the company’s core leadership met to begin the process of redesigning the company’s brand. I brought research on several design aspects I admired from other brands to the table. I was particularly inspired by the design elements of the marketing from Compass realty and that influenced our new brand’s design.

Storefront Redesign to Reflect Our Brand

In the summer of 2019 my company moved its office location and we began the process of completely redesigning our store front. We did extensive research to redesign our office with our brand theme. One of the things we used for our research was EXIT Realty’s Look Book. We also incorporated design aspects from other offices we admired in Jacksonville. The redesign of our storefront also reflects the new brand design.

Email Marketing/Web Redesign

We also completely redesigned our website and incorporated a variety of aspects from our research. We also consulted with an expert who was able to incorporate several unique features into our site, including animated text, gifs and a lead generation form. All of these elements reflect the new brand.

One of my main tasks in 2021 is to revamp our email marketing program. I recently found a fantastic new platform, called Flodesk, which allows me to craft a variety of marketing emails with our brand colors and fonts.

Branded Gifs

Another part of our brand redesign is a set of branded gifs. Early in 2020 I realized many real estate brokerages and realtors were using unique gifs in their marketing on Instagram. I thought this would be a fun thing to incorporate into our new company brand. I worked with our designer to put together a series of GIFs which can be found on Giphy and Instagram by searching company keywords like “EXIT 1.”

Large marketing projects such as a complete brand redesign requires a lot of research. There is a wealth of information from industry influencers and insiders which can be essential to getting it right. If your company is thinking of a brand overhaul don’t skimp on the research process- the final results will be worth it!