In July of 2016 I joined the Avantpage team with two primary objectives:

1. Rebranding our translation & language services company
2. Redoing our website to match our new brand

Today I am thrilled to announce that we accomplished both of these objectives. This is the story of our rebrand journey from the beginning of finding our greater purpose, to how we got here, and most importantly why you should care.

Rebranding Translation, A Quick Background:

Avantpage has been in business for over 20 years, and in that time we have grown and changed with the translation industry. We expanded all three of our locations across the world, recruiting and onboarding the very best people to make sure that we could provide the very best language services to our clients. But, growing a company is no easy feat, and it comes with a lot of challenges. One of those challenges for us was defining who we are, what we stand for, and what our values are.

We knew that just redoing our website and logo wouldn’t be enough. We needed first to uncover our greater purpose and stand for something more than the services we provide. To do that, we focused on our brand story.

What We Knew And What Was Missing

Here’s what we knew:

• We’re a strong presence in the translation industry
• We work hard to provide excellent customer service
• We are focused on our niche markets of healthcare, government, and education
• We are quality-driven and through every translation project

But, what was missing was our “why.” We asked ourselves, “What is our greater purpose? Why do we do the work that we do?” To continue succeeding as a business, we needed to define our “why,” to differentiate ourselves and to fortify our company from the inside out.

How We Found Our Greater Purpose

When we embarked on our rebrand journey, we worked with an incredible story branding expert, Park Howell, to define our brand story. As part of his process, we interviewed some of our current customers. A brand is a sum of what everyone thinks it is, and we needed information from our customers to ensure that how we perceive our brand matches with how others perceive our brand. Each one of our customers helped us to discover our brand story and their influence helped us to create a whole new look and feel for our company from the inside out.

But we didn’t stop there. After interviewing customers, we interviewed our translators and employees. We pulled all of this information together and focused in on the phrases and wording that each audience used to talk about Avantpage. We used those similarities to define the core values that we now build into every aspect of our company. Here are the three values that define us as a company.

• Empathy – From our tagline to our teams, we believe in empathy beyond words.
• Trust – You can trust us to be the experts in your translation project.
• Rigor – What we do we do well. Our team is rigorously driven to provide you the best translation experience at all times.

Our values didn’t come from a desire to be a profitable business; they came out of our desire as an entire company to make a difference. We all want to make a difference in our communities, and we all found that we want to be more than the services we provide. We didn’t come to an answer right away, but after many brainstorming sessions, we found our purpose.

Our Purpose And Mission

We exist to help immigrants and Limited English Proficiency speakers and make a difference in their lives through our translation services.

This means that no matter the type of project, size of project, or the audience, we empathetically think about the end-user. We don’t directly interact with the end-users of our customers, and we may never get to hear or see their reactions to our translations. But, we are an immigrant-founded company, and that fact, as well as our values, motivates us to provide the highest-quality and most culturally accurate translations. We do all of this because we truly care about the end-user.

This empathic understanding and our promise of trust extend our customers and to their end-users. Our values mean that we’ll go above and beyond to complete your translation project and that we’re changing how we interact with our customers. Each department is building empathy into their processes, communications, and interactions with our clients.

Our values and purpose are the foundation that we needed to build before redefining the look and feel of our company. We started with our story and then used that story to influence all aspects of our visual designs.

From Rebrand To Redesign

With this change comes a new look and feel to the visual aspects of our brand. Our new brand is warm, inviting, and friendly. We led with the color yellow because of its eye-catching characteristic, but also because it’s a comforting color. The imagery of our new brand puts a face to the people who ultimately use our translations. Many translations are done because of legal regulations, so we wanted our brand to be a reminder of the importance and humanity of connecting with people through language. That’s what this rebrand is all about: understanding each other to build a better world through language.

When we rebuilt our website, we focused on the user experience. This meant condensing the website to host only the important information you need, making it more organized and easier to access. We also created industry-specific resource pages, so you can find the content that resonates specifically with your industry.

Moving Forward with Value

We are also building trust and demonstrating our rigorous approach to creating value for our customers through our blog content. Our blog writing will continue to focus on information that helps you navigate the translation industry, such as how to choose a language service provider or tips to get the most out of your translation budget. We’re creating high-value content that we want to share with anyone interested in starting a translation project.

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