NRG Seattle
This redesign shows that an insurance site
doesn’t have to be boring to be informative.
Authenticity
Design: Lisa Torrence
Copy: Mimi Bean
Marketing direction: Nick Bean
Client: NRG Seattle
Contact: www.authenticity.net
425.746.0056
Michelle Rupp, president of an independent
insurance agency, was referred to the design firm
Authenticity through a contact at her local Chamber
of Commerce. She had visited other branding companies
and was disenchanted with the whole idea.
However, she knew her agency needed a distinct
voice and personality, and she couldn’t do it herself.
Finding a unique personality for the insurance
company’s brand wasn’t a far search for Authenticity.
Mimi Bean of Authenticity explains, “Michelle herself
is straightforward, smart and resourceful. Endowing
her agency with those attributes wasn’t a big stretch.
We distilled three customer-centric brand themes:
telling it straight, getting it right and watching your
back. With those in hand, we wrote her tagline:
‘Insurance is a commodity. You’re not.’ Everything
[on the site] sounds like Michelle would say it.”
The brand themes were part of what
Authenticity calls a brand map, which gives the
designers criteria to measure all the creative against.
With the brand map in place, Authenticity was able
to create a logo, brand mark, color palette, tagline,
font family, illustration style and ultimately a website
design that was consistent with the marketing and
voice. Authenticity also crafted a complete identity
package, postcard campaign, telephone scripts,
trade show materials and even a wrap for Michelle’s
SmartCar for the insurance agency.
“We had fun breaking our formatting when we
had the tiny SmartCar on the site run over the text
and squash ‘financial services,’” says Bean. “We’ve
used subtle animations throughout to keep the fun,
quirky feel of the site and to keep the brand personality
without going overboard. We also added something
we hadn’t seen done before; in this case, we
framed in the content with a beveled outside edge.”
Bean says, “We need to give a nod to our client
Michelle for being open-minded, willing to stretch
the limits and giving us the creative freedom to tell
her story in fun, new ways.”
