Ukrainian performance marketing agency* Cpamatica has transformed. Now it is expla – an engineering marketing* company. A complete rebranding and new naming was carried out by the creative agency I AM IDEA. For Vector, the parties disclosed the details of this process and the difficulties they faced.
Cpamatica has been on the Ukrainian market since 2015. The main areas of work include Comparison Websites, Social Media Advertising, and Affiliate Network*. Initially, the company only wanted to update the employer brand, but eventually they updated the entire corporate brand.
We turned to I AM IDEA with a request for a complete brand transformation. This included positioning and brand strategy, as well as the main attributes: name, communication campaign, tone of voice, and visual identity,
recalls Anna Leskiv, Senior Employer Brand Manager at expla.
The first area of work at Cpamatica was the Affiliate Network.* Almost nine years have passed. Now the company consists of several large departments.
Therefore, the transformation into the new expla brand is a recognition for ourselves and for the market. It meant that for a long time we have been something much more than just an Affiliate Network. For us, it was a very logical and reasonable step,
says Evgeniy Prima, CEO of expla.
Understanding what the company has become in 9 years is an asterisked task. Aram Symonian, Strategic Director at I AM IDEA, says that in order to crystallize all the experience into one strategy, you need to start with task number zero.
It is to understand the client’s product and to understand the nuances of work in a very short time: the way the team lives and how they work every day. This is a pretty easy task for a partner. But for an agency, being on the same wavelength is a big task. At least to speak the same language.
In order to take this first (zero) step, you need to go through all the projects, departments, talk to stakeholders, understand their interconnections and stories.
“We didn’t have a goal to sell anything to anyone and create communication. We needed to understand one important thing: who are we?”
The main thing in this project is a thorough work with the client’s team. To see the full picture, we conducted in-depth interviews with people who have been working for five years, a few days, and from the first day in the company.
For example, we interviewed a guy who had only been working for three days. And it gave us a lot of insights and changed our perspective by 360 degrees.
The main task for the agency was to differentiate itself from competitors. The Ukrainian online marketing market has a lot of clichés and stereotypes. As if it’s only people who drive Lamborghinis, travel around cities, and “solve some issues”. But this is not the case.
“We wanted to get as far away from this as possible. Because expla is actually a systemic business with corporate standards. The company has a background (our team called it a “cultural heritage”) from a large company called Genesis, which we could not ignore either. We wanted to use it.
expla has a very clear understanding of who they want to be, where they are going, what niche they want to be in, and what people they want to work with. They definitely have an entrepreneurial vision inside”.
