Hodges rebrand appears in Marketing Magazine – The Identity Issue
With its 160th birthday this year, Hodges wanted to relaunch the new identity to set it up for an even more successful future.
Background: The Victorian property market has experienced immense growth in recent years and, as a result, the category is incredibly competitive. In this environment, real estate companies need to stand out and showcase their reputation to secure hearts and minds.
Hodges Real Estate is Victoria’s longest standing real estate agency and, in its 160th year, it was due for a revitalised brand image.
Stepping in to lead the business in 2015, Group CEO Carmel Baker was keen on ensuring each touch point was cohesive for each of the franchisees, while also communicating the values of the organisation to current and future clients.
With its 160th birthday this year, Hodges wanted to relaunch the new identity to set it up for an even more successful future.
“I wanted to transform the business by showcasing the values of this incredible 160-year-old business,” says Baker. “We needed a brand that was contemporary, communicated our expertise and, most of all, was relevant and relatable to our clients.”
Due to Hodges’ presence across various locations in Melbourne, the brand needed to unite all employees to the brand’s image.
Hodges needed a brand that represented the diversity of its target markets. This needed to consider everywhere from the very upmarket suburbs of the Bayside areas — where the brand has enormous recognition and acceptance — through to newer territories like Cranbourne and Ascot Vale, where the brand is establishing itself. The new brand needed to ‘stretch’ to accommodate all of these variables.
The existing brand identity lacked cohesion between its franchises and had no graphic elements that spoke to the core of the business’ offering or personality. It communicated little about Hodges’ brand value, which is all about getting more for its customers.
Objectives: Traffic was engaged to rebrand the Hodges identity and create a series of campaigns to improve brand awareness in its areas of operation. “We needed to create a brand that embraced each local region,” says Andrew Begg, Traffic’s CEO.
The biggest challenge was to modernise a 160-year old brand, and ensure that it felt contemporary and relevant to the highly discerning, brand-conscious vendors and buyers in the suburbs where Hodges has a presence.
Hodges wanted to retain its strong history and boutique aspirational feel, while navigating a reinvention to communicate its point of difference as it expanded.
Five key values were to be communicated. These included:
- a united team with a strong vision for the future,
- a respected reputation, steeped in history, while always innovating,
- an approachable, aspirational brand,
- a fun and energetic brand, which makes the selling/buying/renting experience enjoyable, and
- a boutique team with outstanding results on the journey of growth and self-realisation.
Response: To inform the new brand identity for Hodges, Traffic ensured that consultation was at the centre of its creative response to the brief. It did this by keeping Hodges’ key stakeholders involved, engaged and aligned from the start. Traffic ensured that everyone felt part of a collective journey and shared successes.
This rebranding created a path for Hodges to transform into an innovative and fun brand, while highlighting its incredible history and uniting employees with a strong vision for the future.
Hodges’ reimagined logo holds onto the 160 years of history with the use of orange, while reflecting its revitalised brand image through the symbol of the plus sign.
Execution: There were two key elements upon which the new brand was built:
1. You get more with Hodges
The plus sign in the logo encompasses the brand promise that you get more with Hodges’. More advice, more attention, more services, more local and industry knowledge and, most importantly, more for your property. The plus symbol is a positive new addition to the logo, with the arm of the H extended to form the ‘+’ symbol.
Signifying Hodges sells more houses for more, it also acts as a reminder to the Hodges team to always go the extra mile in terms of customer service. It further reinforces Hodges’ long-term commitment to growth and displays a promising future for the brand.
The plus symbol will also allow for a more visually appealing way to attach together different aspects of the brand. These include new services, qualities, attributes and people that can now be linked to the brandmark via the ‘+ Hodges’ structure. For example, ‘You+Hodges = the right property at the right price, for both buyer and vendor’
2. The colour orange
Keeping the colour orange as a significant feature in the logo highlights what Hodges is and what it has achieved throughout its long history. Hodges at its core is energetic, full of cheer, excitement, adventure, warmth and good health.
The orange was maintained, given it was a key part of the brand’s DNA, and yellow was added to the colour palette to enhance the impact of the new brandmark, as well as make it feel more contemporary.
New marketing material features brand images tailored to embrace each local region across Bayside, Cranbourne, Prahran, Caulfield, Bentleigh, Geelong and Ascot Vale while maintaining the core structures of the new brand identity.
Results: The launch of Hodges’ fresh brand took place on Monday 9 May 2016. It is still too early to see any achievements the rebranding has had on the target publics; however, success can already be seen on a corporate level.
It was an incredibly challenging brief to bring together the elements cohesively while demonstrating the brand values. Traffic engaged the brand’s network of franchisees and team members.
The feedback from across the network has been overwhelmingly positive, and the internal buy-in to what has been created is high. Employees immediately made requests, saying they wanted business cards the next day and wanted their offices remodelled. Importantly, the phone is ringing with people wanting to join the network.