Update (June 3, 2024): We are currently REVAMPING Damien’s brand! Stay tuned for PART 2!
Successful digital branding is more than making pretty Instagram pages and generating likes that may or may not convert engagement to paying clients. While front-end aesthetics are great, for digital branding to be successful for any client, these front-end operations need to be supported by efficient back-end processes and strategic rollouts. That is where we begin to separate ourselves from the competition and help our clients enjoy the perks of successful digital branding. This is a model we practice here at Awe-Inspiring & Bold Creative-Tech Solutions Limited and use on behalf of our clients. One such client is Damien M. Williams. We delve into his story and results below with our featured case study.
N.B. Damien’s work with us dates back to our Kei Dubb days.
The Backstory
Damien is a long-time friend of the Kei Dubb brand as we’ve always been able to lend our LIVE! appearances services to his philanthropic efforts. Damien has a big heart and has dedicated much of his life to social entrepreneurship and community development. He is also a life coach, public speaker, pastor, worship leader, and a man familiar with adversity and affliction. The combination of all these realities makes Damien who he is – a man of passion and purpose with several avenues for expressing the same.
The Beginning of Something New
In 2018, Damien published his first book – Grab You Some Lemons: Make the Best Out of Life’s Sour Moments – and added the title of author to his growing list of public titles and avenues of expression. When we learned about Damien’s book, we were very excited. Founder and Creative Director of Kei Dubb – Kerri-Anne C. Walker attended and covered the launch, got herself a signed copy, and of course, wrote the review for our lifestyle hub (which you can read here). Still, it would not be until Sunday, June 16, 2019 (Father’s Day), that Damien and brand Kei Dubb would enter into a new phase of their relationship.
Father’s Day 2019 featured a surprise Father’s Day appearance by Kei Dubb at the Ekklesia Bible Fellowship’s Father’s Day Brunch and Celebration. It was there that Damien shared a desire to build a website and build a digital brand presence that would reflect all of who is he and all of his interests. This led to a consultation and the rest, as they say, is history. Below, we take a closer look at the process and the results from our Rebranding Damien M. Williams project.
The Road to Successful Digital Branding
Damien’s Dilemma: The Need, The Problem, The Solution
By the time we got our hands on him, Damien had already made attempts to revamp his personal and professional brand and present it in a way that was authentic to who he was, his values, and what he was trying to accomplish through his work. His previous attempts were unsuccessful, however.
For starters, everyone else he has met with before told him, essentially, that his vision would not work. He was told he was trying to do too much and he should choose between parts of himself and focus on only one or two things. He was advised to try and fit his vision into one of the existing molds within the marketplace and repeat the cycle to make that work for him. That was the first difference between his previous experiences and our approach to his talents, vision, and values.
Keep Talking! We Hear You Boo!
During our discovery session and consultation, our instructions to Damien M. Williams were simple – we want to know everything that matters to you; tell us everything you want, like, dislike, and ultimately want to accomplish. He was hesitant at first, as this approach was different. However, after assuring him that nothing was off-limits and there were no wrong answers, he began to passionately speak about his vision and all he wanted it to entail. As he spoke, we made our notes.
Laying the Foundation for Successful Digital Branding: About Our All-Inclusive Approach and Why Everything Matters
In the digital branding industry, it is easy to simply look out for and conform to trends and inadvertently force that unto clients. While it is important to use data to gauge what works and to guide your next steps, there is also something to be said for doing things differently and charting new paths. At Kei Dubb, we practice a delicate balance between the two. We never start the conversation with a client by telling them what is not possible. Instead, we really try to get to know them and what their goals are in light of our expertise and find creative ways to make it all work in a way that makes sense for their brand and their audience. This approach was the crux of Damien’s success. Regarding this approach, Damien said the following:
I’ve been previously told to choose one thing but Kerri heard me and was able to represent all I am and do it in a single space and made it make sense. Kerri has the precision of a surgeon and is superlatively pleasant to work with.
Damien M. Williams
We believe all of who a client is at the level of their values and vision will determine the quality of what it is they can produce and provide professionally for their clients or audiences. So, we encourage them to bring all of it to the table (particularly, the parts that feel ‘messy’) and let us figure out how to streamline and communicate all of that seamlessly and effectively. That’s exactly what we did with Damien.
The Building Blocks of Digital Branding Success: Here’s How We Make It All Work
We used all that Damien gave us and all we know about branding in the digital space to do the following:
01. Shape the moving parts into a whole
STEP 1: Messaging
Like many of our clients, Damien required bringing his many interests together under one umbrella. So the first thing we did was to find the common thread between all the parts (hint: it usually lies somewhere betwixt passion and purpose) and create one solid messaging from that.
STEP 2: Visual Representation
Secondly, we brought our wide range of skills and disciplines to the table in order to visually organise all that our clients communicate with us so we can effectively communicate that for them in the digital branding space. Some of these skills and disciplines include:
A. Colour Psychology
Colours matter greatly when designing content for a particular audience and response to the same. This is because studies indicate that certain demographics respond to different colours (particularly where the tone/shade/tint of the same is concerned). Consequently, we look at the colours that resonate both with the client we are working with and their target demographic when we begin to design the visual brand elements (like logos, websites, social media templates, and more). Other general colour psychology truths like green being a great colour for learning and the last colour to go in cases of colour blindness, and yellow being the first colour the eye is likely to pick, all factor into how we not only choose colours, but more importantly, how we select varying hues/tones/shades/tints of a given colour. Experience has taught us that no colour is really of limits, but the shade/tone/hint/hue of that colour is what one should pay close attention to.
B. Colourful, Creative, Minimalism
As a creative brand, we understand the importance of injecting creative signatures into our brand design. We are also aware that a clean design is likely to be more effective in its communication than a cluttered one. So, we bring together the colourful and creative with the clean and minimalist.
C. Language Style and Tone
Perhaps this aspect is naturally considered due to Kei Dubb’s leading lady’s training in Linguistics (yes, she brings all of who she is to the table as well), but we are aware that our ‘how’ is as important as our what. Starting with the premise that communication is not achieved unless the intended message is received in the way intended, we are careful to bridge the gap between the client’s natural voice and the studied/proven communication style of their target demographic and ideal client.
D. Building the Nucleus
The nucleus of any digital brand is its website, or as we like to call it, your digital hub. It is there where you will house your content and become the primary source of experiences that your clients will have with your brand and the work that you do. To successfully do this, your website will need to be content-rich and search engine optimised. This is exactly what we did for Damien.
This is a key step in successful digital branding for many reasons. For starters, it is never recommended to make a platform you neither own nor control to be the hub for your business operations. Doing so would leave any business more vulnerable than necessary. A simple change in algorithms or policies will significantly impact (sometimes negatively) the reach and profitability of your business. On the other hand, if you use your own website as the digital hub or hot spot for your brand experience, you are able to remain consistent in what you provide for your clients. Furthermore, you are able to use social media platforms as the highlight reel that points to the real experience that is your
02. Strategically Expand the Brand Reach
For us here at Kei Dubb, social media platforms are an adjunct to your work in the digital media space – not the core of it. We use social media platforms as a great complement to a website or digital hub where high-engagement content posted on these platforms should lead users and prospective clients back to the experience of your carefully created and curated digital space. Once the website is created and fully content and SEO-rich, we simply extend some of the content features to the social media pages. Much of this is shared using a combination of scheduled auto-posting and ‘content blocking’ engagement.
The Results: Successful Digital Branding Unlocked
By bringing together all the elements above (along with some content creation and promotion strategies not mentioned here) we were able to craft a recipe for Damien’s digital success. As intimated, at the core of that branding strategy is his official website. For Damien’s website, we primarily included the following:
- Front-end pages (e.g. About Damien, Contact, Events)
- Dynamic content portals (e.g. Blog, Media, Membership)
Importantly, we visually streamline the content features included in the site and have used the same to design the new structures for his social media pages. His successes include:
01. Clarity and Direction
Due to his diverse interests, and constantly being told that he had to choose between different parts of himself to be successful professionally, Damien found himself struggling with stating clearly who he was and what he did. He left his discovery session with us far more confident than he entered, reassured that his journey was valid, and clear about two things:
- He didn’t have to choose between his interest as they were all connected
- He was able to clearly and succinctly describe who he was, what he does, and his modes of expression
02. Paying Clients
Before working with us, Damien had a website that he felt never really reflected him and his purpose in totality. Consequently, he never enjoyed any business from the website.
Since working with us the opposite is true. Damien has consistently been able to connect with new paying clients and enjoy regular bookings from the work done to make his website what it is today.
Admittedly, Damien has been doing great work for years, he just needed to effectively communicate that in the digital space and set himself apart from the noise.
03. Growth Across Social Media Platforms
The final tool in our successful digital branding arsenal was growing his social media presence strategically and organically. We met with Damien again to assess the current success of his content-rich SEO website and outline a social media strategy applicable across the top 5 relevant platforms for his brand and begin to roll out the same.
Damien and the Clients that Followed
Our project with Damien became the Blueprint for our full-suite offering for successful digital branding as he became the first client for our full-suite rollout. Before this, we would focus on smaller bundles (you may view all our bundles here). Observing the success of his website and digital branding suite, other clients came on board and we will look a little closer at their case studies on our blog in the weeks to come as well.