Week 3 - Part B - Developing a Brand

 

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https://tridentpacifictransformations.com/

For this class I will be using my husband's business, Trident Pacific Consulting. 

A bit of background: My husband is Forrest Walker. He had a 20+ year career in the SEAL Teams. Throughout his career he was given tasks such as redesigning and rewriting the whole desert warfare curriculum, BUD/s curriculum, and X-DIV (the temporary assignment for the "bell ringers" - the place where 'wanna-be' SEALs, the sailors who quit BUD/s, go) He took those leadership and program designing skills to the business sector, got two masters degrees, and is now launching his own consulting firm.

Currently his website says "Trident Pacific Transformations," although his thought is to change the name to Trident Pacific Consulting. He has been trying to define his services and brand, to find his "voice" in the competitive space of former Navy SEALs who are now authors, leadership coaches, business consultants, etc. He is working on a book on Sustainable Effectiveness in Organization Development but it is the early stages. I hope to help him redefine and focus his brand and to define his target audience for his book and his target market for his products and services. In addition to the business consultation, and book author markets, he is in the process of launching his signature program for personal development.

I was not involved with any of the designs for his website or logo. I asked for Forrest's help in answering the branding questions for this class. I do not believe there was any deliberate thought regarding branding; it came about organically.

The logo was designed by a gentleman on Fiverr at Forrest's direction and sketches. The website was designed by a young female student also on Fiverr. She was in the middle of finals and the international time difference made it difficult to communicate with her.

The logo started with a trident, which is the name of his company and also the name of the pin given to the men when they graduate BUD/s and officially become a Navy SEAL. The trident is metal, and to carry that theme, the font on the logo has a metallic, forged look.

The color scheme is navy blue as a tribute to the Navy. Keeping with a nautical feel, the background image initially was an iceberg floating in the water. It is still used as the background image on the website, however the iceberg itself is obscured by other elements. The idea of the iceberg is that the most significant part of it is hidden from view, much the way Organization Development works are hidden from view and counter-intuitive.

Side note: I went back to the 5 SEAL businesses I researched and 4 out of the 5 used blue or navy blue as their main colors. One used gold. 

The predominate font used is Ariel, found via internet search to be the most prolific font used in websites. My husband also had the Fiverr artist go back and make him a font of the 3D letters used in the logo; capitals, lower-case and numeral 0-9. My husband's intention is to use this proprietary font for the book title, chapter titles, and blog article titles to begin branding that font as his own. He already has business cards with the same logo and fonts.

If I were to help with his website design, I have a few suggestions. 

• Fix formatting issues (Home page title, contact information, etc). 
• Fix issues with responsive/adaptive web design.
• Make logo more readable.
  
• I would gray out the background a bit or make it more transparent. 
• Add social media icons and links.
• Clarify the copy. Use fewer words. 
• Define the customer's problem and tell them why you're the best choice to fix it.

Although there are two tag lines that appear on the website, we are not 100% happy with them. After a long conversation trying to identify possible new tag lines, we came up with a few. They are not ready for prime time yet. We came up with a few in each of these categories:

• Short sayings with origin in the SEAL teams.
• Adventure or travel themes
• Nautical elements. 
• Problem identification and solutions.

The next step is to whittle these down to a few good ones. 

The final analysis is that more deliberate thought needs to go into branding. I think that when we define his target market and niche, we will have a better idea about how to refine the branding.