A 1000WATT refresh

1000WATT started as two friends deciding to do some consulting for a while.

That was seven years ago. A lot has changed.

Today, 1000WATT is much more than the Brian and Marc Show. We are a full service brand, marketing and strategy agency with a team of people based in two offices. Our clients – real estate brands, brokerages, tech companies, mortgage companies and more – bring us new opportunities and challenges every day.

We love it.

But it had been a while since we worked on our own stuff. All the things we do with clients – brand discovery, story development, creative ideation, design – we had not done on ourselves for a long while. Client work always came first. Our brand always waited.

It was time, though. Past time.

So, a few months ago we dug deep into our own brand. Our own story. Our own creative well. Our own aspirations for the future of our business.

We did a lot of things, but the public part involves our identity, website, blog and 1000WATT Index. You’re seeing some of it right here in this email, or on this page. But we invite you go to our new site and allow us to reintroduce you to who we are and what we do.

We also want to share some of our process – the thinking behind what you see today.

Identity

You will notice that our brand identity has evolved. You could say it has been flattened, but that’s not it exactly. This isn’t an effort to chase a design trend; it reflects something deeper. In recent years, our clients had come to strongly value our work developing and simplifying their stories – the process of creating clarity out of complexity, or establishing a strong market position out of features and benefits.

Our logo wasn’t really communicating that. It was “cool” but busy. The new version is clearer while still retaining the energy of our original cluster of light bulbs.

A metaphor for our work, in a way.

Website

The intent with our website was twofold.

First, we wanted to be more explicit about what we do and who we are. This was always a big internal debate. Discretion is really important to us (and our clients), so even as we continually fielded the “What do you guys actually do?” question from prospective clients, we always chose to operate in a somewhat veiled manner.

We lift that veil a bit on the new site. For the first time we are showing just a small sampling of the client work we are so proud of.

Our other goal was to communicate the creativity that goes into this client work. At the core, we are an idea company. What should I call my product? How do I bring it to market? How can I design an experience people love? How can I connect with my customers’ underlying desires? These questions – and the many more we get – require creative thinking. Lots of it.

The new site reflects that – and who we are as people, too. Marc was in the music business for years, so that inspired the album imagery. We are a band of sorts. The images on the interior pages are of our Portland, OR office. And, yes, there are photos of all of us.

The 1000WATT Index

We completely scrubbed and reorganized the 1000WATT Index, our effort to catalog the real estate tech world. We started the Index for ourselves. We needed to track and organize the software and media companies popping up all over the real estate industry. A few years ago, we made that project public. For this re-launch, we culled a lot of companies that had folded, consolidated some categories and added new ones (like “micro-location”) that didn’t even exist a couple years ago.

Take a look and tell us what we’ve missed.

The 1000WATT Blog

People ask us a lot about “content marketing”. It’s a thing. We’ve done lots of this for clients, but the truth is our best case study is our own company.

1000WATT was built on content marketing.

It’s been mostly writing, published on our blog, though we’ve done other media too. One early effort (which we cringe about now due to the murky, 2007-ish production values) was a video titled “I am not a lead”. This was an attempt to communicate our stated goal of pushing the industry towards a more conscious consumer focus. Most people seemed to like it, and it was shared all over the place.

This stuff has never been easy, but has almost always been worth the effort. A point of view communicated in an engaging way is powerful.
The redesigned 1000WATT Blog lets the content stand on its own, with as little else as possible getting in the way. We hope it makes reading easier for you.

Next

Tell us what you like (and don’t like) about our new look. Email us. Hit us up on Twitter. We really value feedback.

But please also accept our thanks. We are quite aware that we would not be here without our community of clients, readers and friends.
We appreciate you deeply.

Now back to work.