PMG Brand Narrative
The PMG Brand Narrative was a project commissioned by PMG around the launch of PMG’s rebrand and repositioning in 2017. The Narrative was intended to be a resource for employees as the brand transitioned, to bridge the old brand to the new brand, to make the story around PMG clear, consistent and ownable, and to equip employees with a standard set of language to use around the brand.
I worked with leadership to understand the new positioning and its context – the challenges with the previous brand that made a rebrand necessary, how they’d been addressed with the new brand, and the challenges presented by the transition to a new brand. The primary objectives were to differentiate the PMG story from other agency stories by infusing the personality of the brand into every aspect of the work, to provide a clear story for employees that connected them to the positioning of the brand, and to showcase the recent strength and growth the brand has experienced in recent years to be more reflective of its status as a major player in the digital agency space.
We worked over the course of several weeks to complete discovery and background research, after which I drafted an outline, wrote an initial draft, and then incorporated feedback and revisions to complete the final work.
The final Brand Narrative work is 5,500 words in length, and just shy of 30 pages printed. See selected sections below.
Introduction
Welcome to the future (of marketing).
With the power of technology at our fingertips, we’ve arrived at a point in history where we’re faced with more opportunity to connect to information and to each other than ever before. We communicate, consume, create, and transact in an increasingly digital space. Always-On is table-stakes in this brave new world of digital marketing – the technology we rely on to power our connections is in a constant state of evolution, and demands our full attention and engagement in order to thrive.
At PMG, we are more than Always-On – we are Always-Engaged in these constantly-evolving technologies. We don’t simply exist in this ever-changing landscape. We’re continually mastering it, and we use our experience to shape it through our highly-evolved media strategy, distribution plan and advertising capabilities.
We form true partnerships with our clients, operating in full transparency with our data, insights and methodologies. We leverage our technology acumen, media expertise and data science authority to pioneer groundbreaking solutions that are tailored to our clients’ unique needs.
Our superior methodologies spark unseen, needle-in-the-haystack opportunities for our clients that scale across all media and sales channels while retaining audience precision. And we’re relentless in our pursuit of continuous improvement – we’re never satisfied with “good enough” and seek to continually improve our strategy, operations and processes in small ways, every day.
We are catalysts and guides who help clients reach, nurture and activate their customers, and turn customers into authentic relationships.
We create powerful connections.
We are PMG.
Who We Are – Creating Powerful Connections
To continue deepening our understanding of the above brand framework statement, we’ll examine the phrase, “creating powerful connections.” If you’ll recall from the section of this work explaining the concept of a Brand Narrative, this phrase is the fundamental human truth revealed in our story by the tension we experience between technology and relationship.
If you think of this tension like a wrestling match, each seeking to dominate the other, then it’s easy to see how we might struggle – and have struggled in the past – to maintain a controlled balance between the two. But if we instead liken them to the opposing magnetic forces that power high-speed Maglev (magnetic levitation) trains – we quickly come to an understanding of how we might exploit this tension as a means of propelling our business.
The difference in the two scenarios above is the presence of an overarching goal. Left to their own devices, the two forces can’t help but fight for dominance – technology over relationship turns into tactical execution, and relationship over technology turns into service. But identify a goal for these forces – for example: creating powerful connections – and you can guide and direct the tension between the two, harnessing their energy in perfect balance to create a powerful driving force.
