80% of brand development costs paid for by the Enterprise Development Grant.
Since their humble beginnings in 2008 as a recruitment agency, AYP Group has now grown to offer a comprehensive suite of HR and payroll services technologies for businesses worldwide.
But with success also came an increase in competition. AYP approached us to re-evaluate their brand’s positioning to differentiate them from their competitors.
Setting AYP apart
To find out exactly how well AYP was doing in comparison to its competitors, we had to first do an in-depth brand audit. We conducted thorough investigations of AYP and its competitors’ digital assets and engagements, then assigned them each a brand score based on:
01
CommunicationsBrand Communications
02
Visual
IdentityVisual Identity
03
User
Journey User Journey
04
Perceived
Brand ImagePerceived Brand Image
Besides refreshing the brand, our underlying goal was also to steer AYP towards a blue ocean of unsaturated market space. To do that, we plotted out AYP’s business propositions on a value curve map to help identify market niche opportunities.
AYP Value Curve Map
More than just business.
To amplify its presence and to build rapport with audiences, AYP needed its own unique brand voice and personality. So we put the AYP brand through our proprietary brand archetyping process and discovered something interesting..
Dedicated to sharing its extensive experience and knowledge in the field on social media, AYP is clearly a Sage. Yet, the brand’s focus on developing tech-enabled solutions also signals its desire to deliver disruptive and transformative experiences, a typical Magician trait.
Seeing as how the two archetypes complemented each other so well within the brand, we decided to position AYP as a hybrid – a true Magician-Sage brand.
AYP is…
With such a perceptive and visionary personality, the brand needed a crisp new tagline to reflect AYP as pacesetters of the HR industry.
Always future facing and constantly innovating, AYP continually raises the bar for themselves, their clients, and the industry.
The hybrid archetype helped to guide not only their written communications, but also the creation of AYP’s visual identity. Just as colour and visual motifs affect emotion, AYP’s logo and brand colours were designed to align with its brand personality.
AYP Product Pillars
Part of communicating the AYP brand was also planning out its product pillars. This process streamlines the philosophies behind each product, creating a foundation for purposeful product-building and future innovation.
PLATFORM
JuzTalent
A multi-pronged
platform for everything
HR and beyond
PEOPLE
PEO
Effectively managing
talent for regional
business growth
PROCESS
POM
Simplifying and
increasing efficiency
of HR processes
Brand Graphics Set
Design Collaterals & Templates
A brand guide was then compiled to help them stay consistent across all their communications.
Selected excerpts from the AYP Brand Guide.
Nuturing the AYP culture
We spoke to everyone–from stakeholders to employees to clients–and found that the view of the brand’s personality and culture was diverse.
Perceived Brand Archetype
Stakeholders’s Perceived Brand Archetype
So to realign AYPians to a common culture and identity, we crafted a manifesto to shape the AYP culture moving forward.
Selected excerpts from the AYP manifesto.
That manifesto then developed into a comprehensive Employee Culture Book that showcased not only AYP’s journey, but also affirmed employees’ roles as key drivers of its future.
All AYPians–local and regional–were then brought together for several brand culture workshops to mark the beginning of this new chapter for AYP.
With a refreshed identity and clear direction, AYP was ready to Lead the Future of Work.
