What do you do with an ad agency when it stops being an ad agency?
For years, PS had been a digital creative & tech agency. But big shifts were happening. The creative arm of the business was split off to (re-)form Razorfish. Leaving PS to focus solely on digital business transformation. What’s that, you ask? Honestly, half the employees didn’t know, either.
Quick lesson: It’s a B2B service. They help existing businesses create new digital business models. (Like how old DVD-Netflix transformed into Streaming-Netflix.)
Except, nobody really knew that’s what they did. CUE REBRAND MONTAGE.
How do you explain a company that’s product is so amorphous, it changes with every customer? When you distill it down to a single thought, what is it that Publicis Sapient does?
Answer: They make becoming obsolete… obsolete.
PS changes the steps of however a company makes its widgets, or does its services, so that innovation is just baked in. An endless cycle of improvement. They build the teams you need, the technology you need, and the methods you need to keep right on coming up with new and better stuff. They teach a man to fish. #Respect.
Slight snafu: PS was without a Global Creative Director at the time. And no one else had high-level brand experience. So I walked everyone from the CMO down through the structure of a brand, the development of a brief, and the process of makin’ creative bacon.
I helped guide creative reviews to make sure everyone’s feedback stayed focused, and the work stayed on strategy.
In B2B tech, especially, it’s so easy to slip into vague, tech jargon. But PS wanted to be the more human, approachable tech experts. So we stayed consistent with the higher-ups on the importance of speaking to our target audience in their language—rather than just to ourselves, the subject matter experts.
The brand was human-toned, plain-spoken, and digestible. The campaign ran in digital media on tech and business sites, LinkedIn paid and organic, and emails.
Content writing samples
These are longer-form pieces I wrote as part of a content marketing effort.
Digital Business Transformation landing page
Article: “How We Do It: The SPEED Capabilities”
Publicis Sapient About Us page
Insights article: “How to Develop Your Business’s Muscle of Continuous Change”
Swag, or it didn’t happen.
No rebrand is complete without merch, c’mon now. This was the swag and the posters they distributed around PS offices.
