This top 50 regional CPA firm needed to differentiate itself from its competitors in order to achieve its goals.

Gibbons | Peck:

• Discovered through research that the target audience didn’t care how big or how technologically advanced a CPA firm was. What did matter was that their CPAs provided good advice, a fresh opinion, and practical, hands-on help.
• Noticed the two key competitors had positioned themselves respectively as both large and growing and technologically cutting-edge. This left a gap in which to position Crisp, Hughes, Evans.
• Developed the positioning line, “Hands on help, real world solutions.”
• Built a brand around tactile elements such as bowl-shapes, toothy paper, belly bands, and foldouts…elements would be “hands on.”
• Built a color palette of “folk art” colors, or colors that could be found in nature – a perfect approach for both the one-man offices in the North Carolina mountains, and the large corporate locations in Atlanta and Charlotte.
• Created a photographic approach that juxtaposed artful, symbolic shots of hands with candid, journalistic shots of real people interacting.

Results: Crisp Hughes Evans continued to grow and eventually merged with another top 50 firm. The new firm – Dixon Hughes – also engaged Gibbons | Peck to brand their organization.