5 Years of Exponentially

Exponentially just turned five, and it’s been quite the experiment. 

Picking up where my last reflection left off (you can read all about years one to three here), the end of 2019 was all about heads-down delivery. I didn’t have time to work on my brand or messaging—I was completely focused on just getting my product out there, sporadically putting material together to make it happen as I went.

Then along came 2020—you can see where this is going.

The first thing that happened for businesses at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly in the case of an organisation like mine, was that you couldn’t physically get your product or service in front of customers. It was do-or-die time, and I asked myself, “How am I going to keep Exponentially alive and deliver what I do well?” 

I managed to keep afloat, continuing workshops (virtually), doubling down on online training, delivering sprints digitally, and doing some retainer projects. But what I realised very quickly when no longer able to be face-to-face with my customers was just how important it is to stay present and resurface in peoples’ minds for when they need you and are ready for your business.

To compete in the digital space—where I’d squarely found myself—you simply need to be better. For Exponentially, being better meant investing in how the brand was presented, from simple things like having a decent camera, to bigger investments like realising you need people around you that can keep you on message and help you be clear about what you do and don’t do. 

I wanted my customers to have a coherent digital experience, which for me meant I needed some professionals on board to do the messaging for me. From introductions to pretotyping, through to workshopping, post-workshopping and beyond, I wanted that experience to feel the same, to “feel Exponentially”. And, if people bumped into the brand online, I wanted that to feel the same too. 

I was fortunate enough to partner with an incredible team who helped me do just that while we tested the waters and pretotyped ways to reach new audiences (like online training, a Slack community and more) across that tumultuous period. 

After surviving through the pandemic—and successfully pretotyping the benefits of presenting a cohesive brand to market—come the start of 2022, I felt the need to start getting really clear on what the business does now that we were over four years in.

I watched the market and the need for a shift in the conversation. My whole model was around “what is pretotyping?” but by then, people knew what it was, and I didn’t need to make a case for it anymore in the context of experimentation and innovation. I needed to shift the conversation to “okay, I know what these things are, but how do I do it?”

So I started focusing on rapid experimentation within enterprises. Why? Because rapid experimentation is how a business grows and finds new products and services and how they don’t waste money on stuff that customers don’t want.

This meant that I really had to start consolidating the messaging, pulling it back from being a “pretotyping company” and focusing on the core of what we do really well—implementing rapid experimentation in enterprises—and shifting parts of the business away from the forefront, such as online training, which through our own experimentation turned out to be useful for people to learn from, but not a core revenue generator. 

Once I got clear on how I wanted to be portrayed as a business, the logical next step was to reconsider how our messaging and assets—particularly the website—reflected our core offering. 

I was asking the question, “Okay, how do we refresh our positioning to feel more enterprise while still playful and interesting?” I wanted to differentiate from the ‘Big Four’ consultancy model and position ourselves as exactly what we are—a boutique consultancy that genuinely builds capability within organisations. All of which landed us in need of a proper, considered rebrand.  

At points through the process, I absolutely wondered, “why the hell am I rebranding?” The Exponentially I’d known and loved had got me this far—couldn’t it keep adapting?

In reality, the Exponentially brand had grown organically over the course of five years, changing as we came up with ideas, pretotyped and learned. It had got us to where we were, but it meant that things just weren’t quite working as they should—for example, the colour palette was starting to constrain what we could do on all the different platforms and inside the material, and there was no real visual identity to speak of. It meant the brand started feeling cheap and garish with McDonald’s vibes (no offence, Mickey D).

So that’s why I decided to rebrand. It was a process of shedding, asking, “how do we take five years and say ‘this is the core essence of who we are’ in a brand identity?”

It’s been a challenge, but I’ve loved it. Whenever you start a business, everyone obsesses over these details, like their colours or logo, before they even write a line of code. And I’m one of those people because it really matters how it feels. I want to connect with it, feel proud of it, and for its current instantiation to reflect where I am.

I love the new look. The new logo is excellent with its expression of conversation and exploration. And I love that it’s tongue-in-cheek—the “comment” shape represents opinion, which is the opposite of what we do at Exponentially!

My business is all about growth, and the last few years have been all about growing Exponentially into something that really speaks true to who I am and how I want to help businesses, and I feel like I’m finally there.

So, welcome everyone to the new era of Exponentially. I’m excited to work with you, and I cannot wait to see where we are another year or two down the road.