How do you reposition your business to attract more of your ideal customers, even when you’re up against bigger, more established competitors?
Cooden Tax Consulting, based on the coast of East Sussex, has been helping companies across the UK claim Research and Development Tax Relief since being founded by Simon Bulteel in 2013.
Simon and his team work with their clients’ appointed professionals – such as accountants and finance teams – to access the most valuable tax relief that an SME can claim.
As the business grew, Cooden found that its competitors changed; they started to find themselves up against bigger and bigger rivals.
Simon realised that his company’s brand identity no longer reflected the status of the business and was beginning to hold them back.
Although it had served its purpose, the brand was starting to look outdated, inconsistent and parochial.
In the spring of 2020, the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic gave Simon the chance to review Cooden’s brand strategy and update its brand identity.
After completing a Discovery session to determine what needed to be prioritised, Tomango set about taking Cooden through a rebrand, to position them for substantial growth over the next three years and beyond.
In Discovery, we did a deep dive into the business get a thorough understanding of where it was going and what the issues were.
Whilst the first of these sessions happened pre-Covid and could be done face-to-face, once we went into lockdown these inevitably needed to be held over Zoom, but it was (almost) just as effective and enabled us to approach the creative part of the project with an extremely detailed brief.
The process of creating the brand identity involved the development of a bespoke primary typeface, paired with a confident secondary type, and the use of a bold new colour palette.
It also became clear during Discovery that there could be a need in the future to create sub-brands, as the business grows and moves into new markets.
By keeping this in mind when creating the main brand identity, we made sure Cooden will be able to activate these sub-brands easily when they’re ready to move into new areas to generate more revenue.
The new brand identity positions Cooden as a problem-solving, client-centric consultative business, with a strong personality and sense of self, but one that really empathises with its clients’ needs.
Since the new brand was launched in January 2021, Simon and his team have had plenty of positive responses from prospects, existing clients and other industry and membership organisations they’re involved with.
They’ve also noticed a significant uptick in direct enquiries and a significant increase in their visibility and engagement on LinkedIn.
The focused brand strategy and fresh new brand image provide the perfect platform to take Cooden on the next stage of its growth journey into a new, post-pandemic world.
The new brand identity is fantastic and I’m delighted with the result. We've already noticed a significant uptick in enquiries in the few months since the rebrand was launched.Simon Bulteel, Founder and Director
Cooden Tax Consulting