Shawna and I had the best team in Big Deal Branding to work with for our re-brand and new website. And the funny thing is that we were not even actively looking for a new marketing team. Before Shawna and I decided to get married in Italy, we had been thinking of a barn wedding in Vermont. In our search for a barn for our wedding, we came across some amazingly beautiful pictures of a barn wedding in Vermont. While we were looking at the photos, something in the back of my mind said to check out who these photographers were and where they lived – I honestly had this feeling they were from San Diego. Lo and behold, they live in Oceanside! And not only that – but they also have another business doing, you guessed it, branding and marketing for photographers. Shawna and I had been working with a graphic designer for a logo for our old website and while her work was decent, we just were not connecting with the look, or our own site and message. We’re photographers, not marketing experts, so discovering Big Deal Branding when we did was like all the stars aligning at the perfect moment. We hired Gary and Courtney to shoot our wedding in Italy, and they also handled our re-brand.
We started out with Courtney and Krysta. Courtney laid out the process to us and made sure we were happy along the way. And Krysta…she is easily one of the smartest people I’ve met who is an expert at her craft and has the ability to take a step back to see the bigger picture like no-one else I’ve ever worked with. We spent the first 6 weeks working with Krysta in a phase which is like business therapy – figuring out who we were both as individuals and as a team. Shawna and I came out of this process not only knowing our message, but because we now knew what our individual strengths were, we divvied up the tasks related to every aspect of our business according to our strengths. Now our business operates like a well oiled machine. We both are happy with everything we’re doing because we do the things that feed into our strengths. At the same time we moved into a studio, where I work full-time during the week. Having a physical separation of work and home was really important to us because if we’re not achieving a balance in life, we won’t be happy and we won’t stay centered in our love for each other.
We came out of the business therapy phase and started working with Gary on the artistic phase of the re-brand. Gary is as amazing an artist as he is an amazing photographer. But more impressive was his ability to dial into exactly who Shawna and I are and what look would reflect us best. There were no round 2 revisions – what Gary showed us as his first designs simply nailed exactly what we were looking for.
Gary then handed us over to Sean who took Gary’s artwork and developed that into a working website with stealth. We had a working website within a week of Gary handing the artwork to Sean. Shawna and I were amazed!
In mid-April Krysta said we should anticipate going live with the new site on May 11th. I worked in software for 11 years before photography and rarely were deadlines met, but guess what – we went live on May 11th! Simply put, Big Deal Branding knows what they are doing, they are extremely professional and fun to work with throughout the entire process, and they deliver success….every time! We not only have a beautiful new website and logo that reflect exactly who we are and what our goals are, but we know ourselves better, we have a clear objective for where we want to take our business, and our business runs smoother and operates more efficiently as a result. We couldn’t be happier. Thank you Big Deal Branding!!!
If you’d like to learn about the process we went through and to see how Big Deal Branding can help your business, check out this link
