Why we rebranded to way boutique

To understand more about why and the process, keep on reading.

Our brand, IQD, was founded in November 2010 when I started the company and named it E-Marketing. This was the first name. Like most business owners I started out of necessity. I was fired from an ad agency and I had to pay my mortgage, bills, and other things. Before the agency, I had a side hustle: I was running e-voucher. Think Groupon but a weekly newsletter with three vouchers sent to an email database of 50,000 emails – and back then the open rate was over the roof.

Whilst I was doing that, I had some clients ask me to help them send promotional emails. And if you are thinking if I was the guy that used to spam people with promotional emails, you are 100% correct. I had an email database and I used it to the max. I’m not proud of it.

Then I decided to go all in and start charging clients for what I was doing. Back then Facebook wasn’t as big as it is today, so I started helping clients with their social media, building websites and other digital marketing activities. I was getting paid, and was over the moon because I started getting some cake money.

Fast forward I started working with some freelancers and I changed the name to VIVID. The reason why I changed the name back then is because I wasn’t doing only emails any more as we expanded our services. So the name was changed within around 2 years.

After a couple of years, I changed the name to IQD as one of my friends joined the company and suggested we do a rebrand. The reason behind IQD was because our IQ was Digital hence the name IQD. We were very focused on the digital aspect of marketing.

It was all about website development, facebook apps, social media ads, google ads.

Throughout the years as we evolved and I started learning more about emotional intelligence, emotional connection and brand purpose. I became very curious about why we love some brands, and why we don’t care about others. Why do we prefer one brand over the another? All these questions led me to different courses, different books and different answers.

At some point I lost interest in marketing – I lost my sense of purpose. I didn’t want to manipulate people to buy more shoes, to buy more stuff for no reason. I looked into other things that I was passionate about. Then I had an epiphany. I didn’t actually have to quit marketing! I had to change my perspective, because marketing can be a great tool to change our culture, to change society in a positive way. It doesn’t have to just be about profits. So we kept on going but now we focused on creating great stories.

I started to explore storytelling and brand purpose. I got obsessed with the topic. I love it.

I noticed that a lot of companies that care about what they do are not different – they are not differentiating themselves. It’s like another brick in the wall – yet when I met some of these business owners they loved what they did. Then why were their designs and visual identities so neglected and outdated?

I looked in the mirror and remembered that our work years ago wasn’t always brilliant either. I didn’t have the design aesthetics and the taste I have now. One of the reasons why we evolved in our designs is because many years ago I hired a full-time designer. That particular designer used to work at an agency that managed huge brands like Nike, and is  fantastic at her job. She taught me about minimalist design, aesthetics and user experience. .

I started to work on my empathy and understand that so many small business owners are just like me – they’re doing their job, they’re not design experts and taste is a skill that you acquire.

So after that I started learning more about creativity, photography, videography, why colours evoke different emotions in the human brain and how we can influence buying decisions.

In the past year I joined different academies, I took different courses because I realized I don’t want to be mediocre; I don’t want to be average. In the past six months I trained with a strategy consultant that worked at BBDO (a huge ad agency), Apple, Spotify, Lays and other massive brands. I learned so much from him. I took the new knowledge acquired and implemented it in our agency. We changed our internal process and our client process.  It made me realize that there is so much room for improvement.

I put my head down and I started deep learning – becoming immersed in the topics I was interested in. Read and re-read some fantastic books.

There are many reasons why companies need to rebrand. Some do it because of an outdated image, some because the management is changed, some because they are planning to expand in new markets.

One day I was chatting with Louiza, our designer, while we were working on an internal project (which will be revealed very soon) and I randomly asked her if she thinks we should rebrand. Her answer led us to the whole rebrand from IDQ to way boutique agency.

The reason why I decided to change is because as a brand we ourselves got lost – we used to work with different brands from different industries. Two years ago, we didn’t see much growth and I followed the advice that a lot of people give: ‘find a niche’. So we focused on the hospitality industry – we worked with hotels. Last year, as you know, hotels were affected a lot, as were other industries. But we didn’t just work with hotels. As you can see in our portfolio, we worked with the health and wellness industry while we were communicating that we work with the hospitality industry, and to be honest I felt a bit weird as we did take on projects that were not hospitality oriented.

I had a very long and deep think about all of this – what do we want, what are we good great at and what changes do we want to make. I went and read our story (previous story) and asked myself the question that we ask our clients when we create stories; “What change do you want to make in this world?”.

It’s a hard question and it requires a lot of thinking. It requires us to be honest with ourselves.

And then it hit me.

We want to help people with passion thrive. We believe that when we have people with passion do what they love our world becomes a better place. We want to be a bridge towards that.

You might be asking, what industries do you work with now? You know, we don’t have one industry. We want to work with ambitious people, which means independent family-owned businesses that truly care about what they do.

We are on a mission to help people that care about what they do flourish. In order to do that we have to push our limits and change, improve internally, enhance our skills, become the greatest. Not just create nice designs and nice stories, but brand stories that make a difference, brand stories that will move people, brand stories that will help people make better decisions.

Storytelling is a trending topic, but people view storytelling in different ways. We start at the foundation; we go to the core and look for answers that evoke emotions. We are dedicated to our craft – to become the best to help others that care achieve their goals.

I believe that small companies deserve somebody who is skilled in storytelling and content marketing to help them as the big guys have the resources to get the talent they need.

Our brand name, as you’ve already seen, is way boutique agency. Our tagline is inspire with purpose. To read our story, you can click here.

What is the thought process behind the name way? As an individual I believe that there is always a way. As a team we always find a new way to connect to the consumer on an emotional level. Why boutique agency not just agency? Because boutique means a small and dedicated team. Before I wanted to build a large agency; today my goals and priorities have changed – I want to build a small specialized boutique agency that are masters at what they do.

Throughout the years I’ve always worked with freelancers. The reason why is because it helps me find talented people that don’t only live in London or Cyprus, but across the world, and because it helps me keep my overheads low. Some people on the team are full time team members, some people are part time and some people are freelancers which helps our clients get the best results – as if we need something we will always find a way to get it done.

And when it comes down to clients, there are always better clients to work with and we as way want to find those clients and help them as we always put our heart and soul into our work.

Welcome to way boutique agency.