#Bemarcable case study – 6 min read
Jacques Philippe Deco
Jacques Philippe is a passionate interior designer that lives in Alsace, France. He is what some call a “late bloomer” meaning someone who discovered his passion later in life. His remarkable sense of aesthetics and space harmony pulled him towards achieving impressive home designs. Everyone who saw his work branded him as the interior designer they wanted to work with. His reputation through word of mouth grew and his clientele along with it.
When Jacques reached out to us, he knew what he wanted. He wanted to grow. To get to the next level. He didn’t know how he would get there but he realized that it was time to get out of the bubble that was created around him only through word of mouth. And he knew he needed professional help. He knew that even if he is an expert in design, he needs more than aesthetics to create a brand.
We were very excited to work with our first interior designer. For us, it was like working with a cousin from the design family. We knew he would have a high level of design sense and that he would understand the meaning of taking trends into account but going beyond them to achieve a brand that will stand the test of time.
- BRANDING – The challenge
Before we set up the online meeting, we went through his digital assets to get a sense of his vision, style, and current situation.
His only assets were a facebook page with images of his work taken with his phone, a logo, and a business card that he designed himself.
During our #bemarcable discovery session, we got to know him better. First as Jacques the person, his hopes, dreams, aspirations, values. And Jacques the interior designer, the professional, his process, his inspiration, his work.
We go through this process with all our clients. The need to understand our customers, what drives them, what they look up to, where they want to go and why, is the foundation we have to discover to achieve the best results. We are analyzing them from our perspective, ask them to describe themselves from their perspective and agree on how they want to be talked about from their customer’s perspective.
We go through this process because we concluded, after working on so many branding projects, that the uniqueness of a brand is the reflection of the unique personality of its founder. We take into consideration the following:
- Who is Jacques as a person?
- How does Jacques want to be perceived as a professional?
- What are Jacques target customers used to expect from an interior designer?
- How do the best interior designers present themselves to the customers Jacques wants to work with.
From here it’s just a matter of finding the right balance between all ingredients to achieve in the end, the brand that will stand the test of time. A brand that our customers will feel it represents them and reflects towards their customers who they are.
To understand the first two aspects, we needed Jacque’s contribution. We asked him to send us everything he finds inspiring. The websites he visits, the images he feels attracted to and of course, his portfolio.
Analyzing the data he sent us, a pattern emerged.
Jacques is not the standard interior designer. He is a world of ideas. His love for color and shapes could not be restrained to a particular style. His work also reflected a variety that can not be categorized. And that is his superpower. The ability to mold himself on the personality and the space of his customers integrating his ideas in the process. Bringing them the ambiance they would most enjoy.
Based on this discovery, we created three branding propositions:
After proposing them we went to the #bemarcable review session. A winner concept was picked and was further polished to reach 100% satisfaction.
And here lies the next fundamental step in assuring the success of our collaboration and that is knowing when to lead our customers as the professionals in our field and when to let them lead us with their desires, personalities, and goals.
In our industry, many have been thought, there are certain rules to follow. If the targeted users react to this color or that, we should impose it to our customers because we are the professionals, we know better than the person we are serving. This becomes a problem when the people we help with branding do not identify with those rules.
For us, at #bemarcable, the ultimate goal is that we combine those rules and the customer’s personality so well that our customers see the assets we have created and say YES, this is 100% me, my business. I could not have imagined it better looking.
That is why, after we submit the propositions, it’s all about what Jacques felt it is right for him. And it was our responsibility to align his view with the brand.
Only after we heard Jacques say his logo was perfect, we moved to the next stage, and that was his website.
- The website – how are we going to solve this?
Now, when you google interior design, the first and sometimes the only thing you find is … yes, images. Crisp, high-resolution images. Perfect images. This is the definition of an interior designer website. And that was exactly what we didn’t have. We didn’t have great quality photos and Jacques couldn’t go back to his customers and take photos again because it would have been too much trouble for his customers to prepare the home again as he left it after his work was done.
So we had to think of a creative way to use the photos he had and present them in a way that would assure his customers he is the interior designer they are looking for.
We also decided on the platform we would build the website on. Jacques told us he is not a tech person and one of our principle of collaboration is that we have to create assets for our customers that help them to be as independent as possible from our services. We do offer support but we don’t tie down our customers by building them assets they could never navigate without us.
This was the reason we decided to use Wix to build his website. It would provide him with everything he needed and he could update his portfolio very easy without the need to involve us.
Now, we had the platform, but not the assets to build it.
We asked Jacques to go through his portfolio and select the best of the best images. We went through everything he sent and again selected the best looking and most importantly the ones that were good image quality.
We took all of them through Photoshop for polishing. But there where not enough images that in our opinion would make the impact we were looking for.
Luck came to our aid as Jacques announced he would just need a couple of days to finish a project he had been contracted to do. A whole apartment. That was exactly what we needed.
We booked a meeting call the next day to sit with Jacques and walk through everything he can do to create the materials for the website. We talked about the process of taking the pictures, from what angels, what details of his work would look amazing.
Still, the issue was that he didn’t have a professional camera. He had only his phone.
So we asked him to also film the apartment as if someone would walk through it. And that is how we started the whole website experience.
We finally presented the concept to Jacques and we got to hear the line that we always aim for. This is perfect.
We decided to lead his website with his work. A portfolio that is very colorful and diverse but that enfolds it’s aspects one by one, everything else remaining grayscale. This approached added a uniform look while still tempting the viewers’ curiosity to discover the color palette used in the designs.
Another aspect we thought about was that, except for a small description of Jacques and his services, we didn’t have much to use for SEO purposes. But we had a treasure chest that many oversee as relevant in regards to SEO and that is his portfolio. And because he is still at the beginning of his online presence, it was not enough to optimize the images in regards to the metadata. So we decided we would have images of his work with a discrete watermark. We added also a frame to bring a sense of crisp to the image.
You can check his website here.
And so, our work was done. Project duration was 3 weeks from the first e-mail to the last one. Our proposed timeline was for two weeks but we waited for a couple of days to get more images and videos. During this time all comunication was online to save time on both ends.We were hired to create his branding, website and business cards. The first step in building a professional reputation in the digital space.
Now that we know Jacques, we recommend him to anyone who is looking for the best interior designer in Alsace. If you want to contact him check out his website. And if you decide we could help you as we helped Jacques, send us a message.
Even if you think you don’t know what you want but are just curious about what it would take to build your project. We are happy to answer your questions.
Keep walking the digital path,
ioana
