Aligning Strategies and Business Units for DCPS
“Natalie’s collaborative and inclusive leadership style, coupled with her natural problem-solving abilities and attention to detail, consistently delivered successful marketing initiatives and significant growth and success for DCPS.”
—Domonique Baron, Senior Creative Manager, DCPS
THE CHALLENGE
Rapid business changes cloud the path forward through a revenue plateau
The founders of DCPS, a successful commercial property services provider, had been strategically acquiring companies that were adjacent to their main expertise, and now found themselves with six distinct brands and no clear way to organize them.
The barriers to communication and wider brand recognition between these companies were causing friction between business units and leaving untold sales potential on the table.
Our project together was to figure out the ideal brand hierarchy and identity that would best align all of the companies and their many goals, and to launch a new website to bring the strategy to life.
Here’s how it went:
Main Deliverables:
Roll-out strategy and brand design for unifying the brand under one brand identity
Consideration of both short and long-term phases introducing a parent company and ‘division by’ dissolvent approach
Sales & Marketing alignment between business units with key collateral, brand messaging and encompassing illustrations to enable cross-selling
New website and mobile graphics to reinforce the new all-in-one positioning and brand awareness setting the stage for growth
Key Pain Points to Solve:
Challenges unifying multiple brands, initiatives, or offers under one narrative
Misconception of vertical expertise for cross-selling to the same ideal customer profile
Stagnant growth and pressure to increase profitability
Struggles transitioning after big changes (merger, acquisition, new verticals)
Misalignment between business goals and marketing execution
To uncover opportunities and solve problems, we run every project through our SPICE framework: Strategy, Positioning, Identity, Clarity, and Execution
Strategy
In order to fully grasp the situation and identify the real problems, I interviewed the president of each individual company and key sales staff along with the founders. It became very clear that there was a huge opportunity for cross-selling services if everyone could work together.
To enable this, the companies had to be aligned under one brand, and then all the barriers to communication and collaboration could begin to come down.
Positioning
Housing companies with distinct specialties under one brand is a classic “pizza & sushi problem,” in the language of Peppered Labs. If you hear a restaurant serves pizza and sushi you might say “hmm,” but if you hear that a Food Hall has pizza and sushi you’d say “yum.”
When it comes to multi-million dollar companies it’s a bit trickier, but it’s the same concept. DCPS needed the right brand hierarchy to run the right messaging playbook to counteract the problem and capitalize on the opportunity.
Identity
Designing a clear, clean, compelling parent brand was one part of the project challenge. Another was getting buy-in from all parties, especially the many people with strong loyalty to their old company brands.
To do this, the plan was established first, and then execution was rolled out in a staggered way to better manage the change. In the end, all of the companies’ were woven together to speak directly to target audiences while also increasing awareness of the broad range of services.
Clarity
Today DCPS says simply, “We are the leading single source provider of commercial property services across Colorado.”
That direct message to a target audience is a far cry from all the messaging that was coming from the six distinct companies when the project began.
Because of that clarity, the distinct business units did get better at communicating and cross-selling, fueling success that resulted in bigger sales teams, which resulted in DCPS beating their revenue goals.
Execution
In the first 18 months after the newly aligned brands were launched, overall revenue increased 50%. By two years, it had more than doubled.
What started as a need for a new brand started a process that revealed and solved significant gaps that were stifling this huge growth opportunity, which is why Natalie from Peppered Labs always zooms out on the big picture to zoom in on the ideal solution.
