Case Study Kingston & Co
Raising Awareness of a Luxury Home Décor Company with a Tailored Brand Strategy
Meet Kingston & Co. a new player in the luxury home décor space
Kingston & Co. was a new venture looking to make an impact in the luxury home space. Their mission was to empower homeowners to access hotel-quality goods such as bedsheets, towels, and other accessories that elevate their everyday living at affordable prices.
Their target audience was people with “Champagne tastes on a Prosecco budget”, a wide market that showed unlimited potential in succeeding with the right branding strategy.
Services Provided
“We love working with startups! After all, Creative Solutions was a startup once, too. Ten years on, we haven’t forgotten the challenges and lessons from our early days, and are passionate about sharing our knowledge, insights, and skills to help new businesses have the best start possible.”
Hollie Hoadley
Founder & CEO of Creative Solutions
The Challenge
One of the biggest challenges of any new business is to create meaningful relationships with its target audience. The solution is an effective branding strategy that properly reflects the company’s identity and values. A memorable brand identity strikes a chord with customers, gives employees something to rally around, and makes marketing efforts easier.
Consistent branding is also critical, ensuring the company’s logo, fonts, colours, and messaging are instantly recognizable by the public.
Kingston & Co. understood the importance of branding but wasn’t sure where to begin to project the most powerful corporate image to the world. To help them through this crucial phase of business development, they turned to the Creative Solutions team.
Strategic branding based on a human-to-human approach
Creative Solutions’ unique human-to-human marketing approach to developing an impactful brand is geared to making a lasting impression on the public. This technique defines the company’s identity, business philosophies, why the public should engage with them, and much more. It’s a deep dive into what drives the people behind the company to do what they do.
Developing Kingston & Co’s brand was established in three easy but wholly comprehensive phases:
Phase 1 Two-Hour Investigation Session
Creative Solutions began by hosting a collaborative brainstorming session with the client to identify their overall business and brand ideas. Elements discussed during this session included:
- Core values
- Target audience
- Mission and vision
- Brand personality
- Brand voice and tone
- Brand X-factor (what makes them a superstar!)
We set out to make Kingston & Co. the trusted source for people who want to elevate their lifestyle from ordinary to extraordinary and aimed to encourage shoppers to embrace the mindful luxury offered by Kingston’s exceptional curated products.
Based on this goal, our team defined their mission as “empowering individuals to reinvent their definition of luxury” and “fostering a cultural shift in perspective that embraces mindful luxury in everyday experiences by valuing creativity and collaboration.”
With the brand positioning now in place, it was time to start designing.
Phase 2 Logo Creation
The third phase is where we establish the brand positioning and messaging in a detailed but easy-to-read document. The guide sets the foundation for all of the client’s marketing initiatives and marketing assets and includes the following:
Step 1 Brainstorm
Sketching, conceptualizing, and presenting 10 – 20 mockups to the client, from which they choose three ideas for further development
Step 2 Layout
Organizing the elements of the logo into different layouts, with 5 – 10 mockups provided to the client, from which they choose three to work on
Step 3 Icon Work
Another round of sketching and conceptualizing of the three ideas, from which the client chooses two to continue with
Step 4 Font Work
Further conceptualizing of the two ideas, from which two font designs are chosen to further develop
Step 5 Colour Work
Final round of revisions, this time with added colours, from which the client chooses one winning logo design
Phase 3 Formulating the Brand Guide
The third phase is where we establish the brand positioning and messaging in a detailed but easy-to-read document. The guide sets the foundation for all of the client’s marketing initiatives and marketing assets and includes the following:
- Logo variants, including stacked, horizontal, or vertical applications, and black and white versions
- Logo colour palette
- Logo font(s)
- Recommended minimum size
- Icon and trademark version
- Primary and secondary versions
- Safe area
- Sizing
- Colour versions and background application
- Misuse or unacceptable usage (things to avoid)
- Minimal white space usage around the logo
- A list of typefaces used for the brand or custom typeface
- Font system: How fonts should be used, i.e., primary and secondary and digital typefaces
- Type hierarchy: a combination of font styles for headings, body copy, CTA, etc.
- Brand positioning statement
Custom tagline - Copy Reference Guide telling the brand story
- Usable language examples
- A dedicated writeup of all items covered in the Phase One brainstorming session
- RGB, CMYK, and hexadecimal codes
- Primary and secondary color palette
A whole new brand image – tailored!
Results Overview
Creative Solutions delivered the brand assets and brand guide to the client’s complete delight. Kingston & Co. were ready to launch their business with an impactful, memorable brand image that created connections with their customers, starting the new company on the road to success.
Perhaps most importantly, Kingston & Co. also had a true partner in Creative Solutions who was ready to provide support with additional tailored services that create sustainable organic business success and substantial profits.
“It’s gratifying to deliver completed brand assets to every client, but there’s something special about giving a new business the assets it needs to trigger excitement among its target customers at launch. Kingston & Co. was great to work with, and we look forward to collaborating with them again when they need us.”
Hollie Hoadley
Founder & CEO of Creative Solutions