Contrast Creative

Brief

We first rebranded CCS Media back in 2009. At that point they had a turnover of £50million and big plans to grow. The brand identity and website design we created back then served them well as they now have a turnover of £152million (2016), over 20 offices in the UK and 250 staff. They had therefore come to a point where they felt they had outgrown their old brand identity and felt they needed something which would represent who they are now and where they want to be in the next 5 years. They still wanted to have a friendly, approachable feel to their brand identity but with it, also a more corporate edge reflecting their size and the level of expertise they offered.

CCS media also needed a brand new website which would enable them to not only show who CCS Media is but also give more room to the brands they work with. The new site had to effectively allow for ‘mini sites’ within the main site for each of the 80 plus technology brands they sell, as well as be a point of reference for the events they host too! In addition to this CCS Media needed to have all their internal and external communication documents, marketing literature and email templates updated. Not a small task!

Solution

The key to CCS Media is its staff. CCS Media invest in their staff by way of market leading training schemes, competitive compensation packages and some amazing staff trips. We wanted to reflect this in their updated brand identity. Out went the illustrations and instead we focused on the staff – the CCS family. The new website design contains a lot of imagery to add warmth by way of updated staff photography and video backgrounds. With such a large site, a clear navigation structure was important. Also, as their first responsive website, functionality on a variety of platforms was also of paramount importance.

Following the launch of the website, we turned our attention to CCS Media’s email templates. Having an active email marketing system it was important that the new branding was carried across. They also wanted to move to a responsive email template to maximise engagement from their customers. Given they are maintaining the three pillars of their business to structure their products appropriately, we reflected this in the email templates created.

After this we began to look at the internal communication documents and corporate brochure design. We continued with the use of images to add warmth and interest to the documents but also created a series of icon and an info graphic style to be used to convey data.