CASE STUDY
→
Blend360
How Blend Powers AI Innovation With New Branding by Outliant
In a world where people definitely judge books by their covers and businesses by their branding, how a company presents itself is a pivotal factor in achieving its goals.
The team at Blend, a premier AI services provider that serves Fortune 1000 brands, understood that to leave a meaningful impact on the world, they needed to make a lasting impression. And the partner they trusted with Blend’s entire corporate rebrand was Outliant.
Blend’s new corporate branding was developed by Outliant to demonstrate key messages and create a look and feel that would resonate with enterprise clients.
Fully developed, robust brand guidelines are now used across a global organization of over 1,000 employees.
Outliant overhauled Blend’s website with key organizational features, dynamic global content, and easy-to-use reporting.
Blend can now confidently use the brand and website to drive client growth and attract new business.
“Outliant was a critical partner in our branding and website development. They took an innovative approach that was highly collaborative with our team and executed the program in a way that exceeded our expectations. We are very happy with their team and the results. We look forward to leveraging our great brand and website for many years to come.”
With offices around the globe, Blend is dedicated to unlocking value and fostering innovation for its enterprise clients by harnessing world-class people and data-driven strategy. So it makes sense that to accomplish their mission to fuel bold visions, the marketing team needed a bold brand to match.
Naturally, Blend saw its corporate website as a crucial portal—not only to wow visitors with slick visuals but also to effectively share how the business can serve its clients’ needs. At the time, however, the team struggled with a website that lacked both form and functionality.
With over 1,000 team members and a fleet of enterprise clients, Blend needed a fresh look and feel that would exemplify their leading organization. To gain a competitive advantage and drive growth, the team needed to put their best face forward with a modern, reimagined brand identity from top to bottom.
Visitors to Blend’s previous website found the layout confusing to navigate, as elements were often disconnected and lacking cohesion. Clients looking for more information were met with limited, static content that didn’t deliver the details they hoped to find.
In addition to the front end leaving users frustrated, the website’s back end was also difficult for the marketing team to manage and update. This was especially true when making certain changes came with a high risk of inadvertently affecting other elements on the site. As the team grew, they knew they needed a system that could easily handle frequent content updates and didn’t require hours upon hours of training and onboarding.
Aside from its functional inadequacies, Blend’s website didn’t reflect the company’s direction moving forward. A rebrand would allow the team to unify its assets and create cohesive representation across all business properties.
“People often assume rebranding is merely a design decision, but Outliant has been able to make our entire operations more effective with a streamlined, easy-to-use website that our clients actually want to visit.”
In June 2023, the Blend marketing team partnered with Outliant to jointly collaborate on a complete rebrand, including a brand new company logo, visual branding, and corporate narrative.
This process involved transitioning from an internal focus on marketing to an outside-in perspective that unified all facets of brand representation.
Over the course of three months, Outliant worked with Blend to develop its brand purpose, which is to solve big challenges by blending people and AI to make the world a better place. The aspirational anchor that tied this core messaging together was the new tagline, “We blend in so you can stand out.”
Blend has always valued its client relationships, so it was critical to showcase customers as the heroes of their own stories. Outliant brought Blend’s motto to life with an enhanced brand voice that is both professional and personable. These key messages enabled Blend to cater to various audience needs in a visual and informative way.
The website was rebuilt from scratch to support core messaging that puts the company’s clients front and center, talking about how Blend solves their biggest problems and co-creates meaningful impact.
The pièce de résistance, of course, is Blend’s new corporate logo, which uses its prominent “B” shape to symbolize the 360-degree representation of the company’s blending of ideas and perspectives.
What resulted from Blend’s partnership with Outliant was nothing short of transformative. The marketing team is now enthusiastic about this brand reimagining and excited about running campaigns again.
They’re also more confident thanks to Outliant’s hands-on training and onboarding. No longer do they feel uneasy about making updates to their own site.
This strong sense of autonomy has created a ripple effect throughout Blend, which is now set up for success and ready to adapt as business needs evolve.
And despite its new motto to blend in, with its new brand and website, Blend can stand out to clients and prospects, while also providing the team with a personable approach to nurturing their day-to-day relationships.
