A summary of our re-brand from marketing’s perspective
We’re turning 25 this year. If AMC Technology was a person we’d be entering into a new age bracket – the one where you can do the mature adulting activities like renting a car hassle free, but still feel like you’re not far removed from the college kids’ lingo. So, we’re still here in the industry at the hip, but responsible age of 25. Happy birthday to us!
As we began planning the marketing efforts around this celebratory year of 2020, we realized that our branding looked a little dated, not in need of a complete overhaul, but perhaps just some Botox, so to speak. We wanted to modernize our look and feel without losing the brand recognition from the people who know and respect us within the industry. We also wanted our architecture to be well organized and easy to articulate to customers, partners and prospects.
We came to this conclusion based on three points:
- We were still the same company, with the same people and the same values. We weren’t changing because of a crisis or shift in the company.
- People in our niche know AMC, so we wanted to keep the recognition easy to identify.
- We wanted to make sure that the way people saw AMC matched our company voice or personality: expert, flexible, vibrant, dynamic, modern and friendly.
- We wanted it to be easy to understand our products and how they work together to solve customer problems.
So, we all accepted we were ready for change. What’s next?
Research
We needed to take a comprehensive look at what was already out there in the industry. How do our competitors, partners and industry leaders portray themselves? What colors are most frequently used? Having a full understanding of this would help us know what designs to utilize in order to stand out.
Design
Here I spent several hours in Illustrator trying to bring to life the vision we wanted. Several ideas were generated around fluidity and circles to illustrate the feeling of communication and flexibility. We knew we wanted to modernize our font and have a flatter design, but settled on keeping the imagery of the sun and the color palette to keep the brand recognition.
Critique
This step was critical to make sure we didn’t just subjectively like the design, but that the criteria we planned for applied. Does it still look like AMC, just more modern? Does it come across as flexible, vibrant, expert, modern and friendly? How does the logo look in mock-ups of our website, our collateral and our social media? We finally made a few more tweaks and the design finally checked all the boxes.
Reveal
We’re excited to finally reveal and celebrate the new look of AMC. Stay tuned for more information and how we’re continuing the celebration of our 25th birthday.
