Elite SEM, a portfolio company of Mountaingate Capital had grown rapidly through acquiring several specialty agencies including Orion CKB, CPC Strategy, and Email Aptitude. After years of acquisitions, they had simply outgrown their name and needed a unified brand that could bring all agencies under one cohesive identity, position the company for its next growth phase, differentiate them in the market, and reflect their unique company culture.
Following stakeholder interviews and a full-day Brand Story Workshop, we arrived at the positioning idea of the “Purposeful Provocateur”, reflecting the company’s intentional and data-driven methodology whole acknowledging their culture of fearlessly challenging the status quo. Next came name development, leading to the Tinuiti name to suggest acuity, ingenuity, and continuity.
The Tinuiti logo was inspired by a Mobius strip to represent the closed-loop performance marketing approach central to their business model. The launch planning involved organizing a major reveal at their Digital Growth Summit, where over 300 senior marketing leaders from major brands gathered.
Throughout implementation, we created a launch video, comprehensive brand guidelines, office signage, and graphic treatments across all locations.
The Tinuiti rebrand proved tremendously successful. In the two years following the rebrand, revenue grew 97% and media under management increased to over $2 billion with the addition of numerous high-profile clients including e.l.f. Cosmetics, Etsy, and Ancestry. Throughout this growth, they maintained a strong company culture, being recognized as AdAge’s #1 Best Place to Work. The transformation attracted new investment partner, New Mountain Capital, to help accelerate their next growth phase. In 2021, the rebranding effort won a Stevie Award for Rebranding of the Year.
The logo and visual identity created for Tinuiti reinforces the simple truth that digital marketing requires an agency that is “always on”, generating a continuous loop of data and insights, and delivering engagement across devices of all shapes and sizes. To support the launch, we also created a comprehensive set of brand guidelines to explain the elements of the new identity and its application for all internal marketing teams
We created signage and graphic treatments for Tinuiti’s office network. We managed the vendor selection process for the signage and graphics creation, working closely with the Tinuiti team to implement the signage program across all locations.
