NEW BRAND AND
WEBSITE LAUNCH

In partnership with Executive Conversation, the new website–embracing their new brand positioning, logo and visual language–is now live.

Before I dive into what excites me most about this site, it’s important to understand the challenge...

The Challenge
With over 20 years of experience providing business acumen training for elite sales teams focused on C-Suite engagements, Executive Conversation wanted to broaden its reach to sales and marketing teams working within all levels of an organization. It’s based on a simple belief that everyone on the team should drive top-line growth. With this expanded focus, Executive Conversation came to Phinney Bischoff for help in embracing the new business strategy while still retaining the credibility they had as a leading firm.

The Process
Our team immersed ourselves in the research–with stakeholder interviews, competitive audit and ideation sessions with the client team. What emerged was a brand positioning that embraced and further defined its unique role-relevant approach. It’s perspective-driven, expansive (but tiered) and focuses on the entire organization which positions Executive Conversation as a comprehensive partner (vs. niche).

The brand positioning then informed the logo and visual language process and brought to life what had only been expressed in words.

We then moved into web planning, design and development. With a lot of whiteboarding, hard-core wireframing, multiple iterations, changes and evolutions, this is where we are today.

^{Old Logo
The focus of the old logo was on the top elite sales teams.}

^{New Logo
The new logo moved away from the vertical, hierarchical relationship into a horizontal layered engagement, while still recognizing its very important core base.}

^{The symbol is transformed into a graphic element that brings focus to the imagery and highlights people and relationships.}

The Result
Taking visual cues from the metro design language (based on the design principles of classic swiss graphic design and created by Microsoft), we took the role-relevant positioning and core target audience and customized the entire experience with these in mind. The complex layers of information and application tools (see below) are presented in a modern and easy-to-navigate way. The grid layout, big icons in the footer, and typographic approach to the navigation allows the user to access the information that is truly relevant to them and the training needs of their organization.

In addition to benefiting the core target audiences that may be researching online, it was incredible how this website would directly improve Executive Conversation's own process by giving the sales team a comprehensive and interactive aid when working with prospects and clients.

^{The Build a Custom Report tool allows the user to build a business case for their next learning initiative. With just a few steps, it generates a tailored downloadable business case report, customized for the user’s organization and training needs.}

^{The interactive Benchmark tool allows users to explore the different profiles of their sales teams and the business acumen levels they should be performing at.}

So what excites me most about this website? This quote by Jonathan Ive, from the book, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, captures it perfectly.

"Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep...You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”

The process we went through with our client to understand Executive Conversation was deep and complex. In fact, it was the most complicated website project I have experienced to date. But also the most rewarding. To be able to take something complex, and emerge with something that feels so simple and intuitive...now that's exciting.

^{Project Team: Rebecca Arbeene, Devin Liddell, Cody Rasmussen, Ed Ouellette, Maya Babish, Nick Chapman, Ryan Scherler and Audrey Na}