For more than ten years, CMYK Solutions Inc. enjoyed a thriving reputation as the go-to source of promotional products, and marketing and brand-building concepts and implementation.

But the initial meaning of their name (which stood for “Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black” – the four basic colours in printing) evolved over time to indicate the company as simply a printer. The name did not reflect the transition to marketing and branding in the digital age.

CMYK knew it needed more than a tweak: it needed a complete re-brand to reflect relevance in the digital and online paradigm.

We asked CMYK clients and customers what they expected from their relationship with CMYK. They stated they found the true value in the company’s ability to understand strategically who the client was, their value in the marketplace, the real identity of their customers and prospects and why these people engage with them in the first place. We realized the brand must be about the customer and their journey.

We determined that a simple name change made no sense. Technical realities – such as existing lines of credit, ongoing supplier contracts, banking and investments – made that move a non-starter.

We created a “DBA” (Doing Business As.) The new identity needed to reflect the consultative nature of the business, and the idea that “customers are first and foremost.” The brand, and the language it used, needed to demonstrate clearly that when the customer succeeds, everyone succeeds; without the customer, there is no company.

In January 2015, CMYK Solutions Inc. became “Your Brand Marketing, a division of CMYK Solutions Inc.”

Through a series of blog posts during the rebrand process, we told the story of how a company enacts a rebrand, with the last post focused on the story of Your Brand Marketing.

Along the way, we previewed snippets of the new brand, the logo, the message and the voice to key clients. This started the buy-in from these important clients.

The success of the brand is in the formation of new clients and new relationships that were far more profitable and deeper in nature.

The work at Your Brand Marketing is now strategic, not tactical, and the level of trust between Your Brand Marketing and its clients increases as clients now readily associate with the brand and its vision.

Nooksack River Casino faced a significant challenge: how to attract and retain high-value clients.

Their geographic location and the construction of other casinos with easier access to main highways sapped away loyal clientele. They realized that due to geography, attracting Canadian clients were their best option. However, with a weak Canadian dollar, getting those clients to cross the border and spend money at Nooksack was harder and harder.

Nooksack River Casino’s biggest advantage was an active player’s card. They had data on everyone who came to the casino, but they were not utilizing this data to their advantage.

First, we mined the database to understand better the players’ profiles. We realized quickly that the Casino not only had names and addresses of players, but data on family relationships – spouses or other people who frequented the casino with them – what games they played, how much they won or lost, how long they played and how often they came to the Casino. We also determined that we had data on the birthdays for almost every player.

We created a “birthday mailer” that, for two years, delivered very positive results. This mailer featured variable text so that players received offers based upon how much they spent on average visits. (Low-value players received $25 US play for $25 Canadian; mid-level $50 US for $50 Canadian, and high-value players received $100 for $100.)

3% of the total database – ultra-high-value clientele – received additional special offers. The Casino invited each player to visit during the month of their birthday, redeem their offer, enjoy a free piece of cake, and save 50% off lunch or dinner for themselves and everyone they brought with them. At the time, the Canadian dollar was hovering in the $0.60 US range.

Our average results over a two+ year period were 45% response month over month. Return on Investment was at least 10X with a drop of 50,000 pieces of direct mail every month.

Legislation passed to enact a smoke free mandate in all bars in the Edmonton, Alberta region. This was to be a test market for the Province of Alberta and it needed complete accuracy and compliance.

The concern of our government contacts was that bars would lose the majority of their revenue based upon their smoking patrons not frequenting the Edmonton bars.

We realized was that, probably, a large number of people did not go to bars because people smoked. This was a hypothesis at the time, but needed a test. The challenge was how to bring these people into the bars and replace the revenue of the lost smoking patrons quickly.

Everyone agreed that we needed an incentive program, coupled with an advertising campaign to draw patrons into the bars. The challenge was to make sure that all bars received the same opportunity, and that whatever campaign we developed did not create a short-term spike but that, when the campaign was over, the patronage by non-smoking guests dropp

We devised a knowledge-based campaign coupled with an incentive for a vacation to the San Francisco. Since this was the middle of winter, this incentive brought people out to the bars. Over a two-month period, people received ballots for entry for the trip based upon answering a series of questions online. The questions were on one side of beer coasters and the answers were on the backside of another coaster. We sent out the coasters strategically so that responders needed to attend different bars to get all the questions and answers and needed to answer all 36 questions to have a chance to win

We distributed 200,000 coasters over a period of 8-weeks throughout the city of Edmonton. In the middle of winter, bars remained full at normal peak hours and customers remained engaged in the process (as we offered smaller prizes given away weekly.)

At the end of two months, we announced the winner in a large media splash and interviewed the winners live from the vacation area by some of the local Edmonton radio stations.

The long lasting result was that, because patrons created new habits, a new, non-smoking clientele claimed the bars and bar owners did not see any significant drop in patronage either short or long-term