Bringing simplicity to a complex industry

Cornerstone Consulting Group is a team of cloud migration specialists with a history of on-time and under-budget complex cloud migration projects.

Their team of experts specialise in assisting companies and their cloud partners to accelerate migrations into the cloud. They orchestrate end-to-end, time-critical migrations; acting as a seamless extension of any team and helping businesses unlock the benefits of cloud for the long-term.

Focus area

Animation
Brand Identity
Consultancy
Strategy
UX/UI Design
Website Development

Industry

Technology

Overview & Strategy

Cornerstone approached us in January 2023 wanting to upgrade their brand positioning and visual identity to sit alongside other AWS Partners in the industry.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) is a global community of accredited cloud service providers who can only reach official partner status after passing certain benchmarks. Despite being a relatively young company, Cornerstone was quick to achieve AWS accreditation, and it was important that their brand reflected their level of expertise and the value of their service – particularly in an industry so awash with complex and convoluted information.

The process:

As a new business, Cornerstone needed to establish a firm sense of identity and be clear on what they were offering and what set them apart in the industry.

To kick things off, we ran a workshop with the co-founders of the business and learned more about what they do. The team explained that there are masses of businesses with data building up every day, often stored on their premises in large hard drives, and that these businesses need to transfer their data to the cloud in order to ‘future-proof’ themselves and, most importantly, keep the data secure. Moving customer data into the cloud often costs a lot of money, and if you pick the wrong partner and run into any errors, you could also be running into a number of lawsuits – or you could be facing the collapse of your entire business.

The key theme for Cornerstone’s rebrand was simplicity; their goal was to bring simplicity to data, to simplify the cloud migration process for clients, and to steer away from the ‘fluff’ you often find from other providers in the industry.

One of the exciting things about the Cornerstone project was that their team was really open to letting us run with what we felt was right. Our creative team set about getting under the skin of Cornerstone’s story and their unique selling points, and we then had to think about how to extract all of that information and translate it into a clear and unique position for them in the market – all while portraying that within a visual identity which would stand out against other people in the industry doing similar things.

First and foremost, Cornerstone needed a new website. They were essentially a start-up business formed of a small team of experts, and they’d had a simple site set up initially just for the sake of having something up and running. However, they’d secured clients quickly due to the background of the team, and they’d become an AWS partner just as fast, which ultimately meant that the business was growing quickly and the website wasn’t keeping up.

They needed to be set up with a recognisable brand and functional website which could evolve with them and the pace of their growth, and would enable them to compete with others in the space.

One thing that was clear was that the Cornerstone team aims high, and that their brand needed to reflect the level of expertise they were providing while also presenting a slick, premium and professional feel.

Cornerstone had three key selling points:

Pace – they always deliver on time and on budget.

Precision – they’re technical-minded individuals who are committed to exact and specific execution.

Predictability – they run a completely dependable service and they’ve never let anyone down.

Coming from the old site, they didn’t have a lot of imagery or many client stories, and it can be tricky to find the appropriate imagery to convey a story in such a niche industry.

To tackle this, we came back to the underpinning focus of simplicity; we wanted to strip away the complexity of cloud data services and turn it into something interesting that was easy to follow. With this in mind, we breathed new life into Cornerstone’s website by creating a journey through the homepage; walking visitors through exactly what they do and how they do it, accompanied with slick visual execution through each phase of the journey and an animated logo which evolves to represent each area of Cornerstone’s services.

Rather than just talking about bringing simplicity to data, we simply just did it – through no-nonsense explanations and succinct information, without the ‘fluff’ that leaves potential clients confused.

Success:

Just two months after they originally approached us, Cornerstone’s slick new website went live in March 2023. They now have a refined digital identity which has elevated their standing with partners and established the value they offer as a company.

Since launching, they’ve received brilliant feedback from AWS Partners, and have secured further opportunities with AWS as a direct result. They’ve also won new work off the back of the new brand and welcomed new clients on board.

As AWS specialists, Cornerstone’s team develop new tools and pioneer new methods in the industry, offering a unique value which is now reflected in their brand as much as it is in their work.

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