Today, 97th Floor reintroduces its brand identity, positioning, and promise to our clients and partners, fully embracing our history while turning to the future of marketing and our place in the industry.
97th Floor began in 2005 when founder Chris Bennett set up shop from his basement. Chris had a clear vision of what 97th Floor could become, an agency serving a growing market—up in the clouds—with the best.
Thus, 97th Floor was born. An ambitious marketing operation whose name set it on a course to become what the best brands in the world are. That ambition has held. It’s evident in the internal innovation and molding of our agency that’s taken place over nearly two decades as employees thrive in a culture that empowers them to do the best work imaginable.
All this innovation and energy buzzes through 97th Floor on a daily basis. In 2022, it was time to make a move and bring our brand forward both visually and in our positioning.
Hours of reading, interviewing, brainstorming, writing and rewriting, to say nothing of the tireless work of our design team, have come to fruition today. With optimism for the future, we set our stakes in the ground as a marketing agency for the ages.
Brand Philosophy
From its beginning, 97th Floor has been committed to elevating people and brands that we believe in. Our marketing has been a means to that end, but that's not all. We take pride in building growth strategies for some of the best brands in the world. We are committed to Great Marketing. These concepts have lived inside us, and now they take the stage as our Three Pillars for Great Marketing.
What is Great Marketing?
There are three essential criteria that combine to make Great Marketing:
Empathy: The thorough exploration of who our target personas are beyond their role as potential buyers of our products and services. Marketing that makes a profit at the expense of an audience—without truly caring about them—can make gains in the short term. But today's buyers will hold these profiteers accountable in the long run.
Innovation: The experience to know the best marketing practices, but also the guts to break out of it in just the right ways. In a market where change is so rapid, "safe" marketing will no longer yield predictable wins. Taking (calculated) risk is, in reality, the only way to grow.
Profitability: The discipline to measure and make an honest accounting of every marketing strategy by its ability to drive profitable growth. None of the metrics marketers report on matter if there is no route to long-term profitability. Impressions, clicks, leads, MQLs—without a clearly defined path to revenue—aren't enough to make marketing truly great.
Our New Brand Design
Logo: Our primary logo has not changed through this brand refresh, although you may see it presented differently now and then. Our big, red Nine-Seven is the logo we associate with a never-ending chapter of innovation and exploration—and it’s the logo we’re keeping. We are introducing a secondary logo, however, that adds a little more context when needed.
Colors: 97th Floor’s colors are inspired by the nature of the Utah mountains. Their use allows us to employ our bold 97th Floor red in more tactical and creative ways throughout our brand. And to be honest, they give us a lot more to play with as we tell our story.
Imagery: At 97th Floor, people come first. Our brand reflects that! We’ve created hand-made animated scenes of everyday people in everyday life to convey our attention to, and understanding of empathy for real people—the people our clients need to connect with. Each animated character you see is based on a real human in real life—our employees, our friends, and even our clients.
97th Floor employees each get their own avatar too.
Animation
Hand-designed humans in their scenes are a great start, but we wanted to bring them to life—living their lives. Our first scenes take place in a home, an office, a downtown square, and an airport. (And you can see all of them on our homepage as you refresh the page).
The Website
The performance of our website—our ability to help our visitors find the information they're looking for—is the culmination of all our efforts. Every new design, layout, and piece of content you see was scrupulously selected in an attempt to remove friction along our buyer's journey.
Our Promise
We look ahead with excitement to a marketing future that's constantly changing. With a commitment to our clients and the principles we've laid out as Great Marketing, we will continue to create cutting-edge campaigns for those brands ready for sustainable growth. Thank you for coming along for the ride!
Behind the Scenes
Typeface: Manrope for headlines; Cambria for body copy. We want our paragraph text to feel classic and academic, while keeping our titles bold. This mix of serif and sans-serif fonts helps us strike the perfect balance.
Mood boards:
A brand is a feeling. Thus, our brand refresh started on mood boards. Many, many mood boards. What did we want our brand to feel like? What thoughts, ideas, and emotions did we want visitors to feel when interacting with our brand? These mood boards were a playground for design and for many obscure and delightful ideas that ultimately led us to our existing brand design.
Iterations of the brand colors and scenes:
We moved through several iterations of brand design concepts, colors, and schemes. Eventually, we arrived at our current design as a perfect convergence of sophistication, confidence, empathy, and approachability.
Storybrand:
Meanwhile, a more philosophical work was taking place as internal leadership discussed our core beliefs as an agency. Many thought exercises and hours of research debated by impassioned marketers showed us that the heart of 97th Floor is strong and opinionated. One particularly impactful exercise was that of moving our hero—our client—through a hero’s journey as described by AUTHOR in Storybrand BOOK. Many of the notes on this whiteboard are translated into the copy on our website, in our brand assets and writing, and on our social media.
Wireframe to Figma Mockups:
With design ideas and taglines swirling around, it was time to start building a framework for the new website. Each page was first created in Lucidchart, offering design the elements necessary for each page on the website.
Finally, the design team transformed wireframes into a true vision on Figma and our skillful developers brought it to life at 97thFloor.com.
