How To Build A Brand in 57 Days.
An Ohio-based solar company needed a comprehensive brand build to stand out in a crowded market, and earn corporate trust by delivering sustainability goals and significant energy cost savings.
And … they needed it fast—in time for the industry’s peak spring season.
The Big Picture
In the words of Hello Sunray’s VP of Marketing and Brand Strategy, Rhonda Gaskill: “With over 20 years of experience in franchising, I’ve learned that building a brand takes time, patience, and strategy. So, when our company found ourselves needing to rebrand—within a tight 3-month window—we knew it was a tall order. We needed everything: a new name, differentiating messaging, website, marketing materials, and content. That’s when we turned to Kagency.”
Through research, a custom survey deployment, collaborative workshops, among other tactics, Kagency launched a fresh, beautiful, and differentiating brand, including a new name, logo and visual identity–all within three months. Not to mention a new website packed with educational content spotlighting solar viability in the Midwest.
How did we do it? Keep reading for a deep dive into the Kagency process!
Kagency launched a comprehensive discovery phase, with a proprietary survey as the cornerstone of analysis. After strategically crafting the questions, both executives and brand leaders from the solar company took the survey. The survey proved to be integral in creating complete alignment across the organization in a very short time. Every question was purposefully structured to pull out subconscious views from each individual in order to identify trends, commonalities and disparities. Post-survey, Kagency took the following steps to analyze the results and make unbiased interpretations:
- Collaborative workshops ensure alignment and help create branding that resonates with all stakeholders. By showcasing responses, executives were able to refine and define their feelings around brand traits and nuances.
- We leveraged survey results and feedback to make preliminary messaging and visual recommendations. These were simply meant to serve as a foundation upon which to build a strong brand personality, visual identity and tone.
- We later paired survey insights with audience research, including behavioral, psychographic and demographic, to ensure the new branding would resonate in a very crowded marketplace.
All of these elements gave us the insight we needed to craft messaging (differentiation, proof points, nobility angle, mission, vision, values) and visual characteristics that would serve the brand for years to come.
THE RESEARCH
THE KAGENCY METHODOLOGY
We establish a brand’s foundation by blending art (creativity) and science (data). While the science is objective analysis, the art is the subjective interpretation of highly experienced branding experts.
THE HYPOTHESIS
It became clear that the solar company had big market differentiators that needed to be clearly communicated. They didn’t just sell sustainable energy; they offered education and transparency into a typically complex process. We hypothesized that solar prospects would be drawn to a company offering a rare combination of white-glove service, thorough expertise, authentic education, and results-driven care in a highly competitive industry.
THE framework
We built key brand elements in the following order:
- Propose Brand Name: The naming process is comprehensive at Kagency. We first determined thematic buckets and populated each with meaningful names. The solar company joined us for a collaborative session to test these names against our proprietary naming criteria (a few examples: the name brand appropriate, memorable, sonorous, and more). Coming out of this meeting, Kagency ran a vetted name list through the proper legal teams and categorized based on ownability, availability, and competition.
- Messaging Strategy & Guidelines: Next up, we provided Hello Sunray with brand positioning, reasons to believe in the brand, mission, vision, values, brand personality, and tone and style.
- Visual Identity: We then created style boards and high-fidelity wireframes to determine brand colors, logo, photography styles, graphical elements, fonts, among other critical visual elements.
“Kagency integrated seamlessly with our team, guiding us through their proven process to uncover our brand’s voice, messaging, and visual identity. From that collaboration, Hello Sunray was born. Their ability to execute with both precision and speed was truly remarkable.”
HELLO SUNRAY
The Creative
A great process is not enough when building a great brand; a non-tangible creative strategy is hard to achieve, but extremely rewarding and is a big part of the Kagency branding process.
We zero in on a brand’s ability to tap into subconscious perceptions through visual creative. Dive into the creative elements of the Hello Sunray brand below.
The Results
Kagency unveiled the new Hello Sunray website in just under three months.
“When we launched the new brand at a local business expo, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Visitors at the event raved about our fresh and relevant new identity, including Ohio State Representative Jean Smith, who personally stopped by our booth to compliment the rebrand. It was clear that the new branding perfectly aligned with our company’s values and mission,” said Rhonda.
Kagency positioned the Hello Sunray brand in a way that blended authoritative expertise and hometown family values—allowing it to make sense for both residential and commercial clients nationwide. The new high-end, progressive brand immediately gained traction, differentiating them in a crowded marketplace.
This also translated to impressive web volume. Hello Sunray’s organic performance continues to drive upward—coming up as the first result for “solar installation” within our targets 71–85% of the time.
“Visitors at the event raved about our fresh and relevant new identity…”
