Start taking about gigabits, cellular towers, colocation facilities and more – and, well, eyes glaze over. So we didn’t go there with our branding and messaging for IdeaTek, a company on the move. Its leadership team of restless rebels came to us in 2013 for help connecting the marketing dots. We started with a discovery workshop that led to a strong brand positioning, promise and essence. Visual and verbal mapping mapped out possible creative directions.
You looked into the soul of our company and extracted its essence. The brand detail was spot on and got us excited to have it so clearly articulated.
DANIEL FRIESEN
IdeaTek managing member and innovation officer
IdeaTek’s efforts to connect cities to fiber-optic networks all over Kansas and provide customers with tailored services led to our emphasis on tech with a human touch. The new identity conveyed advanced capabilities, dedication to personal service and urban pioneer spirit. The tagline – “Human at Our Very Fiber” – differentiated IdeaTek from competing, impersonal carriers.
The logo leveraged symbolic fiber optics to weave a network – we call it the fiber diamond. Supporting icons signified service areas: carriers, healthcare, government, education, enterprise. Hard hats, trucks and employees all proudly wore the brand. The responsive website showcased the company’s strengths, integrity, good-guy qualities and broad range of services, while automatically scaling to perfectly fit any device, from smartphone to notebook to tablet to desktop.
IdeaTek’s brand and our public relations support (including presentations to the Wichita City Council) worked so well, it helped lead to the 2015 carrier and enterprise acquisition by Zayo Group. We rolled out the change to employees first, announced the news to local and national media, and issued letters to customers. IdeaTek retained its residential and small-business division, which returned it to its original roots of providing fiber-based communications to underserved areas in Kansas. The IdeaTek brand proved resilient and flexible enough to make this shift with only slight adjustments. It’s still a company going places. And taking a very human way to get there.