Bokka Launches Complete Branding Update for Holt Homes in Two Months
The Background:
In early 2020, we partnered with one of the nation's fastest-growing home builders, Holt Homes, based in the Pacific Northwest, to refresh their digital presence. We took their existing website and updated it so that was both more user-friendly and more modern. In the spring of 2021, we embarked on an entire brand refresh with Holt Homes. At the same time, we worked with them on creating website assets (a landing page, digital display banners, etc.) for a multiple-week builder showcase event they were participating in that summer.
For the brand updates, we worked in conjunction with Holt and a local brand-agency that really understood the look and feel of the Pacific Northwest. Part of this initiative was to update their website, media, and all of their digital assets. Therefore, we would need to work closely with both the brand agency and our client, in order to ensure all of the website deliverables aligned with the overall brand direction. In addition, the website refresh was going to be the last element of the brand that was refreshed, and it needed to correspond with a company-wide launch date for all brand pieces (updated signage, print-outs, etc.,). As such, our team would have only two months from when the brand updates would be available to our team and when the website and web assets needed to be updated.
For the builder showcase event, our team was responsible for creating numerous webpages, emails, blogs, and media materials promoting the event. All of these assets would need to be created in the new brand look-and-feel, as the brand launch and the event launch would be happening simultaneously.
The Challenge:
The Holt Homes website refresh and Street of Dreams launch was a two-pronged project with coinciding deadlines and two other invested parties: our client, of course, and another brand agency. The timeline for when we would receive the deliverables was short and required quick turnarounds from our team.
The Solution:
When projects have numerous outside factors that cause time constraints for our team, we need to rely heavily on the Agile process of starting small and then launching quickly and testing in order to efficiently get work done. We also needed to facilitate communication amongst all stakeholders throughout the project.
An agile approach is what led to the overall success of this project:
- We scheduled preliminary calls with all of the invested parties in order to understand and fully establish what our role was in the successful launch of the brand refresh and the event. It was incredibly important to have clear expectations set at the beginning of the project as to what we were responsible for and what we would deliver. We also established early on that we would need deliverables to us by a certain deadline in order to fulfill the responsibilities on our plate.
- Once we had established our role and responsibility within the project, we turned to our Agile process, which allowed us to break up the work into smaller chunks that we could execute quickly. We developed a solid but flexible roadmap with the creative and development team. The team collaborated on use cases and requirements for each piece of work.
- Once we had the deliverables we needed to accomplish our work, we held ourselves accountable to the deadlines given to us by the client. We work in two-week Sprints* as part of our Agile process, and since we had a limited number of Sprints to complete this work, we made this project a company-wide goal for each of those Sprints. By doing so, we made the entire company aware of how important this project was, and therefore, we had the support and buy-in from the rest of the team. We all knew how important it was to get done in a timely manner.
- We used our weekly Status Calls as a time-efficient way to get work in front of the client and approved quickly. We created space during these calls for real-time feedback and discussion, and then made it a priority to quickly turn around any updates to the client.
*A sprint is a short, time-boxed period when a team works to complete a set amount of work.
Final Result
We were able to successfully launch both the Website Refresh and Builder Event deliverables in just two months and within the scope that we originally planned. Holt Homes was incredibly pleased with the product - the look-and-feel of the website refresh and the builder event deliverables. It set the foundation for ongoing improvements to the website and digital brand assets, and is continually being iterated upon.