Harry Fry & Associates
Redesigning the brand and customer experience for a digital-forward era.
Program
- Forge, Build
- 3-month engagement
With thousands of customers across the country, many of them lifelong advocates of the stellar customer service and personalized approach taken by the HFA team, ushering in the next chapter for the organization meant building upon their legacy while preparing for a new generation of customers.
When it was time to reimagine how their brand showed up in today's digital ecosystem, HFA looked to Thrive to build a rock-solid strategy for revolutionizing the brand.
- Positioning review
- Identity design
- Visual design
- Content design & strategy
- Web development
- Marketing strategy
After engaging in a discovery phase that involved a content audit and a number of qualitative interviews, it became clear that it was time to reestablish Harry Fry’s market position by articulating a new, dynamic positioning statement. Guided by insight gleaned from both recently acquired and long-term customers, Thrive worked with HFA’s team to surface legacy brand characteristics that could fuel a slight positioning shift. The result was a North Star statement that centered the customer while embracing the organization’s venerated family values.
Early in the project, we saw an opportunity for HFA to reintroduce itself to the market as a modern brand designed to operate inside today’s online ecosystem in order to meet the needs of internet-empowered equipment buyers while also attracting the next generation of customers. In order to do this, we had to introduce a brand that felt safe, secure, and considered, while avoiding visual and verbal elements that felt too corporate or conservative. The result was a voice and tone that was both conversational and reassuring, and a visual identity that brought forth a feeling of warmth and security.
One of the brand values that has made HFA so successful is its close affiliation with the founding family. During the qualitative interview phase, we heard from a variety of customers who could name a particular person at the firm on whom they relied, but didn’t see HFA as an organization that could stand on its own. The company was seen as individuals rather than one cohesive, dependable unit. To solve this, we leaned heavily into an ownable design system that was at once playful and serious, bringing in aspects from each of the founding family members, and transitioning completely to the company shorthand, HFA.
