From a brand perspective, Shutl blasted off in December ’09 at Le Web in Paris; the day our website went live and we made our ambitions public.
Prior to Le Web, we’d only shared the Shutl identity with a very select group of key constituents: retailers, couriers and shoppers (mainly family and friends). It received positive feedback, with people warming to its retro charm. It felt to us like we were laying the foundations of a great digital brand of the future.
So why, less than 2 years later, are we about to rebrand?
1. We now know who we need to engage and how
Shutl’s current identity was developed to a creative brief determined by what we thought the business’s needs would be. The trouble is that at the time that brief was written there was no business! Just a bunch of assumptions, and aspirations…
Now, 2 years in and with a bit of practical experience under our belt, we are in a good position to re-evaluate those assumptions. We know exactly who we need to engage with and, more importantly, how we should go about doing it. Our business is B2B2C, and our brand needs to speak to both consumers and retailers… albeit at different levels.
2. We know what brand assets we require.
In re-evaluating our requirements, we scoped out a “brand toolkit” (assets, iconography, guidelines, etc.) that we deemed necessary for the job. Our first stop was to see whether we could deliver on all these elements with the existing identity. The conclusion was that as much as we love our brand, it doesn’t give us the flexibility we needed.
Critical to Shutl’s success is generating sustainable value and competitive advantage for the retailers that we serve. Whilst Shutl has proven attractive to higher value customers, retailers can only truly benefit if they communicate the proposition effectively within their customer journey.
In order for a retailer to attract/convert customers off the back of Shutl, shoppers first need to be aware that the retailer offers the service! To that end our identity and proposition needed to be able to take the form of a badge that could be displayed (proudly!) on their websites and any other channels they offer the service across. It has to be able to occupy its own space so that it is both distinctive and consistent in appearance, irrespective of the background it is displayed against.
3. We need to remove the barriers
Having deployed our brand identity across a bunch of major high street names, we’ve met with a couple of grumbles over and over again… namely that the shape and colour of our logo and icons were awkward and didn’t sit comfortably with incumbent elements of their webpages. These grumbles only present us with barriers to making our service more ubiquitous. So we had to remove them.
4. Sooner is better than later
Although we are unwaveringly intent on world domination, Shutl is currently still only offered by a handful of UK retailers. It seemed prudent, therefore, that if we were to rebrand then we should do so sooner rather than later. Whilst only a small percentage of UK shoppers have interacted with or are aware of Shutl, the cost of change to our business (in terms of lost brand equity) is relatively small. It is also relatively painless for our retailers given that there are currently only a small number who have integrated Shutl with their channels, some of whom are already working on new and improved implementations of the service.
So when will the new identity be launched? With a bit of luck sometime in early November, though the exact date is till TBC. Of course, we’ll all be very sad to move on from something that we’ve nurtured over that last few years, but we’re confident that version 2.0 will better equip Shutl for the future.
Over the coming weeks we’ll be tightening up the sprockets, so keep your eyes peeled and prepare for lift off…!
With this in mind, to date we have limited Shutl to the confines of London’s M25 while working tirelessly with our courier and retail partners to get the basics of our service right.
