lutz comprehensive rebrand
Lutz & Company, PC, grew from a small certified public accounting firm into the largest locally owned accounting firm in Nebraska, employing more than 150 top-level consultants and staff between its core CPA business and tangential Financial, Tech and Talent divisions.
challenge
Due to rapid growth in size, services, client base and reputation, the brand message, vision and team energy was becoming fragmented. Lutz’s leadership sought help to uncover the root causes of fractured messaging, refresh the brand, and realign messaging and communication tactics. They were ready to make an investment in a full rebranding process, realizing that it was a critical component of their firm’s culture and long-term business growth.
solution
brand identity
before
after
David Day Associates synced up with the Lutz team immediately. They were excited to engage with our process, candid with their reflections and eager to make results happen. We guided their stakeholders through our strategic discovery phase, exploring internal, external, competitor and market factors.
Informed by our research, we were able to assert the core of Lutz’s unique value proposition: Lutz makes a genuine connection, simplifies complexities and generates real results, whatever the matter at hand. Thus, we simplified the company name to “Lutz” and created a crisp, aspirational word mark to illustrate the positive implications – financial, organizational and personal – of partnership with the experienced and dynamic firm.
“The stats derived from the discovery phase really ‘wowed’ us,” Scott Carrico, Audit Shareholder and Director of Marketing and Business Development at Lutz, said. “We had no idea that much research would be done before making it into the brand expression phase. We absolutely loved the brand core. We reference it frequently, and I even have a large poster of it hanging in my office to remind me. … It’s an amazing visual that we didn’t expect to come out of the process.”
The logo and associated design elements paired beautifully with the tagline and powerful brand voice, across all business segments and communication touch-points. We created a compelling brand playbook, describing the brand tenets, voice and vision, which was distributed to the entire firm at the launch event and now lives on the desk of every employee. An external launch soon followed and the brand continues to gain life and momentum.
impact
Lutz reported an immediate boost in internal brand awareness and employee morale, equating to enhanced camaraderie at the firm and growing consistency in communication with one another, clients and the community at-large.
We continue to engage with Lutz in activation of their brand through various channels, including website and advertising, and will help execute ongoing measurement of brand awareness and affiliation relative to business growth.