NHHBA – Rebranding
Background
The New Hampshire Home Builders Association (NHHBA) sent out an RFP that my agency, Vizuluxe, responded to. The NHHBA was looking for an agency to update their website, control their social media, and, most importantly, refresh the look of the NH State Home show (website, ads, and signage). I thought we were positioned perfectly to take on this project, so I submitted a response to their RFP, and…we won!
RFP and Response
The New Hampshire Home Builders Association (NHHBA) sent out their RFP in May of 2018. The 4 page document (Read it here) was a bit vague, but responding was an absolute no-brainer for Vizuluxe. The majority of our existing work was based around construction and real estate, so not only could we make some money on the projects, the networking opportunities were a huge plus, too. I spent the better part of a week putting together our response and outlining our plan to update the NHHBA. Although winning the RFP was a shot in the dark as we were one of two dozen replies, I worked hard on our reply to put our best foot forward. I included a ton of details and strategy ideas that my boss thought was overkill. I’m proud to say, however, that those details are what helped us stick out from the rest of the replies and ultimately won us the business.
Click the image to the right to see the response I put together.
Our Plan
After a kickoff meeting to make sure we were all on the same page, I got down to business. Starting with the rough plans I put together in the proposal, I put together a thorough plan for the upcoming year. The NHHBA has a number of “arms” (“arms is their word) that were all included in the FRP. The main arm is the NHHBA master brand and website. The annual Home Show is the second arm, the Cornerstone Awards (an annual award show for builders in New Hampshire) is the third, and the Granite State Builder magazine is the fourth.
From accent colors for each “arm” to detailed wireframe for each website; from home show messaging concepts and media strategy to an updated look and feel to the magazine, the presentation to the right covers it all.
Once again, this presentation is long, but the time, thought and research that went into this is evident if you take the time to scroll through. It’s absolutely worth the few minutes it takes to read.
Our Plan
The NHHBA was thrilled with the plan we devised. Since the Cornerstone awards were set to take place just a matter of weeks after we won the bid, we put that on the back burner. Our first priority was to refresh the NHHBA.com website. Next we’d leverage that design when refreshing the NHStateHomeShow.net site. We also began the process of updating the Granite State Builder magazine, including posting the individual articles on the NHHBA.com website for the first time ever.
I’ve split up the three “arms” that we’ve completed thus far below.
NHHBA.com
Below is what we started with. The navigation was flat (Click here to see) and the site was ugly and borderline unusable:
We repositioned some pages, and added quite a few to give the site a much more logical flow (See Here). I hired a great web designer to come up with a few concepts for us, and after presenting them, we decided on this concept to the right. Check out the final version, including all of the new pages and magazine articles at NHHBA.com.
Click to enlarge
NHStateHomeShow.com
Next I leveraged the NHHBA.com website design to update the Home Show site. The NHHBA site was not just a redesign, but a reorganization. The Home Show site, however, was basically just a visual refresh, so it went much quicker. Below you can see what we started with and what we came up with, or just visit NHStateHomeShow.net to see the real thing!
Here is what we started with:
And what we came up with:
Granite State Builder Magazine
The last leg of the rebrand was to breathe some fresh air into the “Granite State Builder Magazine.” Unfortunately, I don’t have any before issues as they never distributed it virtually, but the image below is the first issue of the quarterly magazine to feature our more “fun” look and feel. Although we continued to use a third party for the layout and printing, we had extensive creative control over the whole process, including key imagery and content.
Click on the image below to take a spin through the first virtual edition of the publication, and make sure to read the article on pages 14-15 about how to take great cellphone photos, written by yours truly.
Soon after the rebrand, home show, and magazine refresh was complete, I left my position at Vizuluxe to take my current job at Jabra. Since my departure 3+ years ago the websites have slipped a bit and have not been updated consistently. This is my long-winded way of saying that if you click on any of the above links, what you see will be a bit different than what I delivered.