Vertex Brand Launch
"We had a very complex brand strategy that we brought to market in a very short period of time and the reality is, we couldn’t have done it without Garfield Group. Their knowledge, passion and strategic thinking turned a huge challenge into a huge success."
— Alex Smith, Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, Vertex Inc.
How do you elevate your brand to engage more senior-level executives, drive more leads, and stay relevant in a fast-changing industry?
By elevating Vertex from a “departmental” to an “enterprise brand,” we established the company as a key player shaping the future of the tax software industry.
Challenge:
For nearly 30 years, Vertex has provided software that over 90 percent of the Fortune 500 use to speed the processing of their corporate taxes. But the tax world has been slow to adopt technology and is currently undergoing a significant transformation. New regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, a convergence between finance and tax, and the global nature of tax, has made managing tax strategy and compliance more complex than ever before. Vertex came to us with a huge challenge: transform the Vertex brand to align with the changing needs of VPs of Tax and CFOs, get Vertex in on conversations about the most pressing problems senior tax professionals and the Big 4 face today and position Vertex as a key partner in shaping the future of tax technology.
Results:
Taking key Vertex stakeholders through our strategic planning process, we developed a new Brand Strategy and Messaging that transformed Vertex from a transaction tax solution into an “enterprise brand.” Leveraging this new brand and messaging blueprint, we developed strong Creative Brand DNA that uses tax terminology and numbers to visually communicate how Vertex is shaping the future of tax. In addition to a new website, sales materials and print ads, we created multi-touch online and offline direct mail campaigns, driving senior executives to webinars and demos. A special non-branded “Tax 2.0” (tax2point0.com) website was also launched, to encourage a dialogue among senior tax executives using leading Web 2.0 tools.