News in the Channel - issue #33

HAMMER DISTRIBUTION

won’t change. “Clearly, you will now get an invoice with a Hammer logo rather than a Exertis Enterprise one, but it will be the same systems and the same people. People can expect the same level of trusted advisory services that we’ve always delivered for them. “What will change is we will be delivering to new customers under our own merits and what we do.” Rebrand journey But to get to this point has taken time and a lot of organisation behind the scenes. “We began thinking in anger about rebranding in February,” says Jason. “We’ve then gone through the process of what does that mean and how do we become Hammer?” Jason adds that there was debate about whether to go back to the previous Hammer branding but eventually decided to go with a new design philosophy and brand colours. “We have a really cohesive board, and we’ve all got strong opinions and sometimes we take all of those opinions and debate them before making a decision that we are happy to go forward with, and we’ve done that and ended up with something we are very happy with,” he says. There were various complications that had to be negotiated too, such as re- registering the company in the UK and the six territories in Europe it operates out

of as Hammer Distribution. Jason adds that the rebranding process involves numerous other changes too. “For instance, you’ve got policies written with Exertis logos on them and they all need to be gone through and rebranded as Hammer Distribution and read to make sure that they’re appropriate for our organisation,” he explains. “There are websites to redesign and rebuild. It’s not a simple thing. Emails need to be changed but you must ensure that emails to the old address are still forwarded to your new one. All those technical considerations are all part and parcel of what must be done before it all goes live. “There’s also been a huge amount of effort from our marketing team. They’ve leveraged some tools, particularly with AI, to create some of the teaser videos about the brand coming that we’ve put out into social media. They have also used AI to help them with the design philosophy of the brand.” One that was completed, the physical aspects of the rebrand were addressed. “We shut all our offices on the Friday night before the rebrand launched, and we took out anything that was associated with Exertis Enterprise and replaced it with Hammer Distribution, so everybody in our businesses came back into their respective workplaces to experience a whole new environment on the following Monday morning,” says Jason.

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We began thinking in anger about rebranding in February... ...We've then gone through the process of what does that mean and how do we become Hammer?

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