In January 2024, Priority onboarded Walker Sands (WS) to support accelerated revenue growth through a clarified brand strategy and strengthened G2M approach. When this collaboration began, Priority’s CMO and WS’ primary stakeholder, Dave Faupel, said, “Success is Priority being known for payments and banking and one platform that brings it all together.”
Achieving that charter required the WS team to quickly gain a deep understanding of the brand to accomplish two key objectives: understand Priority’s unique value proposition and transform its product architecture from a house of distinct brands to one brand with multiple offerings. The primary challenge at the onset was defining what differentiates Priority from its competitors and determining how to effectively position the brand to resonate with current and future customers.
Through qualitative research including a current state audit and interviews, a brand tracking and perception survey to establish a baseline, and a post-launch brand tracking and perception survey, WS was able to develop comprehensive insights & identify opportunities for growth that informed brand development with actionable recommendations for expanding market penetration.
Overall, their efforts re-introduced Priority to the market as the payments and banking fintech that streamlines collecting, storing, lending, and sending money to unlock revenue opportunities. Priority is now armed with a new creative identity that transforms the way Priority speaks about their business internally and externally and unifies their offerings on a refreshed website. They are seeing their investment in WS pay dividends in brand awareness.
As WS kicked off the project, they knew that a data-driven approach was going to be critical to developing strategic recommendations. Diving into this was no easy task, and over 20 team WS team members put in 4,500 rebrand and retainer hours to help not only reimagine Priority’s structure and brand but further solidify the company’s market position well into the future.
This started by conducting a comprehensive audit and analysis of Priority, its products, and its position in the market against its competitors. To inform the audit, the WS team conducted nearly 20 internal and external interviews paired with a quantitative audience brand tracking survey to gather baseline perception and insight.
To inform Priority’s overall position in its market and marketing landscape, WS conducted a thorough review of Priority and its competitors across earned, owned, and paid media channels. This not only informed the brand project but also provided the broader WS team that touched Priority with actionable insights to provide strategic outcome-based recommendations to elevate Priority’s market presence moving forward.
After WS conducted its research into Priority’s existing brand positioning and presented it to Priority, the team uncovered key discoveries that could be leveraged into actionable and strategic next steps to bring Dave’s initial charter to life: for Priority to be “known for payments and banking and one platform that brings it all together.”
WS then presented the brand direction of Priority as a trusted and flexible commerce partner, dedicated to empowering customers with tailored solutions that drive growth and unlock new business opportunities.
Once the direction was established, WS expanded these insights into a comprehensive positioning statement that encompassed the brand category, a compelling brand promise, and four brand personality traits that embodied its essence to guide its messaging. The team also reimagined the mission and vision statements to align with the company’s new direction.
A critical part of the rebrand was shifting Priority’s product architecture from a house of brands to an all-encompassing collection of products under Priority. This was a major shift for the company which historically acquired companies/products and rolled them into Priority with their existing branding and required incredible executive buy-in and a meticulous roll-out plan - no small feat for both WS and Priority. To ensure success in rolling out this new brand architecture, the product rebrand was rolled into the comprehensive G2M strategy. This required WS to work closely not only with Priority’s marketing team, but also the entire executive leadership team and the CEO to ensure clarity and buy-in.
That was just the rebrand project. While all of this was going on, the WS team (across earned, owned, paid media channels, creative, content, and digital teams) was hard at work building a fully functioning marketing program that was working beyond the rebrand.
WS’ objective for Priority’s rebrand campaign was to build a comprehensive brand foundation that clearly communicates Priority’s value to not just its customers but the market. In the first few months, the rebrand has demonstrated incredible results in line with that objective.
These quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that WS’ work to rebrand (and reorganize) Priority has been a success. When we asked our team what they thought about this rebrand project, WS Creative Director Kyle Kane said “From a branding perspective, a lot of projects don’t go that deep. They came to us and asked not only how could they reorganize but how could they launch it too. They really leaned on us to guide them through this process, and we touched and shaped so many aspects of their business. more than we thought we ever would.”