Bookkeep is how smarter accountants
get their work done...automatically.
HOW WE REBRANDED THE NEXT BIG THING IN THE ACCOUNTING INDUSTRY
Designed with the help of professional accountants, Bookkeep eliminates manual processes, reduces costs and maximizes accuracy in ways that other companies simply can’t match. That’s exciting stuff, yet the company was struggling getting the attention of the accounting community. By rebranding Bookkeep as the Smarter Accounting Automation Platform we helped them stand out from all of their competitors. After all, who doesn’t want to work smarter? Thanks to a full rebrand, Bookkeep is now on a fast track to become the new standard for how accountants get their work done, and they’re giving the whole accounting industry something to smile about.
WE ALWAYS START BY LOOKING AT OUR AUDIENCES
Good design takes into account the audience’s needs, desires and behaviors. By conducting interviews with accounting professionals and speaking with the management team a Bookkeep, we learned that accountants are a very hard working group of people – the kind who do whatever it takes to get the job done and rarely complain. This is true of small independent accountants, as well as accounting professionals working in finance departments of small to medium size businesses, and it also applies to people working at large accounting firms with thousands of employees and large corporate clients.
Most of these folks are so busy working hard, they don’t have time to work smart. And that is a serious problem, because the industry is overwhelmed by a rapid proliferation of sales and payment processing platforms and a lack of standards which is creating more and more dependency on manual data entry. Additionally, the industry is also suffering from a shortage of qualified resources. When you combine these factors it becomes easy to see why the entire accounting industry is in crisis mode.
Jason Richelson, an entrepreneurial problem-solver, saw this crisis as an opportunity, and launched Bookkeep to provide accounting professionals with automated tools to help them address their growing challenges. Prior to Bookkeep, Jason had started Shopkeep, a company that offered one of the first POS systems for small retail businesses, a revolutionary concept at the time. He eventually sold his company for a tidy sum to Lightspeed, a global retail software company, and had been looking for the next opportunity to disrupt an industry. Bookkeep became just that.
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WE NEEDED TO GET ACCOUNTANTS TO CHANGE THEIR WAYS
By and large, accounting professionals are not early adopters of new technologies. In fact, many of them continue to spend many hours doing manual entry as opposed to using new tools, like automation, that could save them a lot of time and effort. Bookkeep needed to break down these pre-established attitudes and help accountants realize that accounting automation could be just the solution they needed. To help make this happen, we crafted a new strategic positioning based on the commonly accepted notion that there’s a big difference between working harder and working smarter.
WE POSITIONED BOOKKEEP AS THE SMARTER WAY TO WORK
The positioning strategy was designed to associate Bookkeep’s offering with a solution that is better than the old-way of doing things (manually) as well as the competitive alternatives. To do this, we noted that automation is smart, but the accounting automation platform offered by Bookkeep is smarter. By the way. the concept of smarter was not just meant for the product, it was also meant to apply to the individuals and businesses who chose to adopt Bookkeep, and we carefully pointed out that Bookkeep was not replacing accounting professionals…it replaces time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks, allowing accountants to spend their time on more valuable work.
A NEW BRAND IDENTITY SIGNALED THE NEW POSITIONING
One of the fastest ways to help people recognize something has changed is to introduce a new logo. In the case of Bookkeep, we developed a completely new brand identity system. We started with a new logo, but also provided the company with a vast array of assets – including new fonts and corporate colors, patterns, photography, icons, animations, etc. And we produced a set of Brand Identity Guidelines establishing how the new brand identity could be used across digital and traditional brand touch points.
To launch the new brand you need assets
As the time came close to launching the new brand we worked closely with the management team at Bookkeep to identify the assets that would be most helpful to launch the new brand. We developed a whole array of materials ranging from business cards and promotional items to a completely rebranded website that better communicated their value proposition and invited businesses to sign up for a free trial. As part of the process we built prototypes of items that would help the management team visualize an out-of-home billboard campaign, digital ads, and more
Bookkeep is now positioned for growth
Thanks to the rebrand, Bookkeep has seen an unprecedented surge in new customer acquisition, and the company is poised to become the next big-thing in the accounting industry. More importantly, we are thrilled to have played a role in helping Jason move towards his goals. Today Bookkeep is helping accounting professionals regain control of their professional and personal lives by delivering products designed with a human-centered approach, and with a brand that is helping Bookkeep capture the industry’s attention.
What could we do for you?
We help companies launch new brands, revitalize existing brands, and manage transitions due to mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. We deliver strategic branding initiatives that include naming, logos, packaging, websites, videos, environmental and event design, product design, advertising, and much more. Ultimately, we aim to build awareness, differentiation and preference for our client’s brands.
Imagine what we could do for your brand!
