Bringing our new brand to life

Building a startup is a fluid process. You have set expectations of where you want your brand to go, but over time these ideas develop as they grow. There’s a huge learning curve, and these lessons help you evolve. After two and a half years, we reached a point where we’d outgrown our branding. We weren’t the same startup that had been founded in 2018, our perspective and values had evolved.  

Having decided to focus solely on Tech for Good startups, we wanted Confido’s look to reflect our updated mission. This involved a complete overhaul of our existing colour palette, logos, tone of voice and more. In this blog post, we’ll be delving into the rationale behind our new look to explain how we brought 'the Tech for Good talent partner’ to life. 

Why did we rebrand?  

Your brand is your chance to tell a story, and we weren't on board with the story our branding was telling anymore. The cold metallics and monochrome didn’t remotely represent who we were. It takes 0.05 seconds for people to form an opinion about your website. If we weren’t fans of the way it looked internally, what were other people thinking when they clicked through to those gold and silver pages?  

We were all agreed that the website looked more like a dusty law firm than an innovative startup. The colour scheme was dated, indistinct and conservative (which aren’t exactly the buzz words you want to hear about your website). The bottom line was that our branding wasn’t aligned with us as a team, or with the startups we were passionate about partnering with. Something had to change. Well, a lot of things.  

Firstly, we never wanted to see metallics again. Secondly, we wanted to create a distinctive look and tone that resonated with both our values and the startup sector in general. 

An example of our old branding - so much gold 

Our rebrand process 

We’re proud to say that we’ve developed our new branding ourselves. In true lean startup fashion, we pulled together to create the brand we all wanted to work for. We started off with group brainstorms to kick around ideas on who we wanted to be and how we should come across. This core identity helped us create a brand framework which we used as a basis to create our visual assets and messaging. Our framework included our collective values, data on our existing audience and client personas, as well as competitor and market research.  

During this process, we uncovered four key points that steered our decision making. We knew that our branding should:  

• Tell our story in a simple, straightforward manner  

• Clearly communicate our positioning and offering 

• Differentiate ourselves (particularly from recruitment agencies) 

• Align with the startup sector  

These were the most important aspects to consider when making final decisions on how our brand should look and feel.  

Our visuals 

When we started looking at colour palettes and imagery, we wanted to ensure our new choices helped symbolise our values. The question was how to do it successfully. We had to consider how we wanted people to feel when they saw our branding.  

Recruitment agencies tend to use bright primary colours, so we wanted to stick to a more pastel palette to align with the startup sector. We knew it needed to be bold and eye-catching, but not too in your face.  

We each brought our own ideas to the table, inspired by other startups we love. We also used colour symbolism charts to influence our choices. While the pink shades were a favourite, we decided they were too striking for a primary colour. With up to 90% of consumer decisions based on colour, we knew we had to get it right. No pressure then... 

Potential colour palette options

We all loved the strong purple shade, as it felt creative and bold. We chose that as our lead colour, pairing it with a softer lilac white. This is complemented by two bright accent shades of teal and pink, which we use to highlight points of interest. We’ve used the two primary shades to create our logo, and all four shades throughout our website, including our new imagery.  

Our new colour palette

We had three images designed for our key landing pages: the Homepage, the Startups page and the Talent page. These images were designed to help amplify our mission and values across the website. We really wanted to illustrate the Tech for Good aspect, which we’ve achieved through the use of six icons. We also wanted these images to represent a diverse range of people, as helping startups improve their diversity is important to us. We’re really pleased with how the imagery came together and will be mirroring this style across our content.

Shiny new illustrations

Our messaging  

In terms of copy, our tone of voice has been heavily influenced by our core identity (from our brand framework) and the four pillars of our brand personality:  

Always honest 

We’ll always tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear. We’re not here to judge, we’re here to help. 

Your trusted advisor 

We’re here as a mentor, friend and confidant whenever you need us. We’ve got your back no matter what. 

Caring 

It’s our mission to connect startups with people who want to help them make a difference. We care about the businesses we work with and the impact they’re making. 

Experienced 

This is what we do. We know what we’re talking about and we want to use our experience to help connect people and startups with shared values. 

We wanted to ensure that our messaging was simple, straightforward and confident, without being boastful. This process helped us refine the wording of our mission statement and develop our tagline: the Tech for Good talent partner. 

Feedback

We’re thrilled with the way our new branding turned out. Our new look seems to have resonated well with our clients too...

• 'This looks awesome. Congrats to you and everyone else in the company :) I definitely think it's a great niche to specialise in, and the new site looks awesome!'
• 'I think it looks pretty sharp, I like it! :) I also like the colours, very fresh.'
• 'I really like your new site - looks great and I think I would have knocked on your door if I had seen this.'

We’d love to hear what you think of our new branding. Let us know what you think at contact@confidotalent.com. As always, you can keep up to date with the latest Confido news here in our Hub, on LinkedIn or on Twitter.