Brand repositioning: from signs to spaces

Research: customer and employee interviews, market landscape
Brand strategy: positioning and persona
Brand messaging and copywriting
Creative strategy: logo and visual ID
Website, key marketing and sales materials
Brand launch: internal and external rollout

Twilight is a premier commercial sign maker in Canada. For more than 30 years companies have hired them to work on corporate HQs, hospitals, hotels, and retail spaces. Yet in a brutal retail market, those same clients today need to create a more special experience that can’t be found online.

The good news is that’s Twilight’s speciality. In their best projects they engage early and often, creating immersive environments that increase sales and brand perception. Turns out, that’s exactly what their customers want.

Our customer interviews showed that once people work with Twilight, they recognize what all they bring to the table: creative ideation, expert problem solving, collaborative process. That resonates with the right customers and separates Twilight from larger “assembly line” producers.

But our brand audit confirmed 30 years of “random acts of branding” made it difficult to see that come through. Without a focused message, they were just another vendor competing on price—unsustainable in the long run.

We targeted Twilight’s ideal audiences on two fronts: ambitious retailers who want more impactful brand experiences, and designers and architects seeking the latest innovations. As a result, Twilight can attract more visionary clients who want them to share ideas and expertise, not just bid on specs.

With those new audiences in mind, we repositioned Twilight by adding a new dimension to their brand. And that included elevating their proprietary collaborative process (“Creative Magic”) to show how they take you from inspiration to installation.

We designed a new brand identity that signals vision, energy and perspective. Like a sunrise from below, their logo speaks as much to the creative process as the end result. And with a bold palette and friendly typography, Twilight’s visual language speaks more to imagination than fabrication.

And the new brand messaging focused on benefits over features, including a company narrative that flexes for different audiences and media. For example, building owners want their space to be attractive but practical; architects and designers want their vision brought to life; and brand managers need to deliver an experience that aligns with their company promise.

Internally, we helped to develop brand training sessions to inform and excite the Twilight team. To emphasize this was more than just an updated look and feel, we helped users translate the new brand language into their personalized stories. In the end, sales associates and content creators could “Talk Twilight” with consistency while making it their own.

The new Twilight brand emerged across various touchpoints: online, in sales materials, and of course office signage. To convey their role as a creative partner for architects and designers, a new Idea Book served as a spark for inspiration and conversation. In the process, we redeveloped their case studies with a focus on process and results as much as materials and fixtures.

Twilight’s brand repositioning was designed to open business opportunities. It was successful because leadership saw the value of smart branding as a path to better business, better clients, and higher revenue. In the end they have what their customers need—it just needed to shine through.

Or as it says in the Twilight Manifesto: “when the time comes to build or renovate a space, do it right or not at all.”