Over the past five years, Degordian has tripled in size, so it was important to examine what has changed. In the last stage of our transformation, we realized that we have changed more than ever before. This meant that we needed to challenge our own status quo, discover who we are now and present it to all interested parties on the market.
We began to analyze our business, as well as that of our clients, from a completely new position and saw a need for our repositioning.
Why Degordian needed to reposition
The rapidly evolving digital industry and business ecosystem, structural in-house changes, entering new markets, and focus on clients’ entire businesses instead of just marketing altered how Degordian operates. We no longer saw ourselves as a full-service digital marketing agency, but rather as a business-solving company that helps its clients achieve their goals and overcome their challenges. This positioning involves highlighting the company’s expertise in not just marketing but also in understanding its clients’ businesses and industries. We need to show that we are not just a vendor of marketing services, but rather a partner who collaborates with its clients to identify their unique challenges and develop customized solutions to address them.
Rapidly evolving digital marketing industry
You may not know that we started out as a social media agency. In 2009, being a business and having a profile on Facebook was perceived as innovative and different and was the next big thing. Funny, huh? Today, having social media profiles (yes, plural) is part of a brand’s hygiene.
That’s just how digital marketing works – and we have to keep up with the game.
Structural in-house changes
And so we do – by expanding our areas of expertise and the list of services we offer to our clients. We do it in two ways: by developing existing units and by establishing new ones.
For example, our performance marketing unit has developed marketing and sales automation services which were not available six years ago, and our employer branding unit was only established in 2021 – that means it didn’t even exist during our last repositioning process in 2017.
More than marketing
Each and every one of our 6 units tackles clients’ different pain points. Although we started as a digital marketing agency, and marketing is still our major vertical, our portfolio has diversified and we are now helping businesses with complete digital transformations, as well as increasing sales and optimizing their HR processes.
Entering new markets
These developments and expansions happened on an even bigger scale than just units. In 2021, we opened our first office overseas, in New York (and we don’t plan to stop here). Now, the USA has a completely different agency ecosystem than the one we have in Europe. Agencies there usually have very niche expertise. We mean, VERY. Imagine this: an agency specializing in TikTok strategies and content production exclusively for the pharmaceutical industry, precisely, off-the-counter medicine. That means a “creative-strategic digital agency” holds little credibility there, and we needed to address this and stay true to ourselves at the same time.
An everlasting statement
Our number one wish was to have a statement that will not only be true today, but for quite some time to come. Moreover, we wanted it to also be true for everything we’ve ever done in the past 14 years. At the same time, we had to take into account the ever-changing industry, as well as the frequent changes and rapid development of the company itself also known as #agencylife. Last, but not least, we felt that our current positioning fails to send a clear message that we are client-centric and business-oriented in everything we do, from a single social media post to the biggest employer branding strategy for an international corporation and everything in between.
How does Degordian identify now
In the process, we realized that we will have to work a little bit harder than just coming up with one sentence.
As we said before, one of our tasks was to find a positioning that will be ever-lasting: the one that was true since day one and will be applicable for quite some time in the future. However, we must not forget the number one challenge we are facing, and that is the rapidly evolving industry we are in on the one hand and our rapidly evolving agency on the other hand. After all, we do want to not only keep up with the changes, but be the leaders in the field. That means our units are constantly evolving as well, expanding their services. So, we had to be a little flexible as well when it comes to our repositioning.
That’s why we’ve decided to have two stages of positioning:
- Degordian positioning – an everlasting statement of who we were, are, and always will be as a business
- Units’ positioning – an adaptable statement for each of our units that reflects their current area of expertise and business approach and adapts to their evolvement
You didn’t think we’re gonna finish this blog without disclosing the end result of our work, did you? Enjoy our new positioning statement: “Degordian is a digital-first agency that helps businesses advance to the next level”.
Why digital first? Digital is, and always has been in Degordian’s core, which means we will base our strategies and activities on digital solutions. However, client’s business problem requires an offline solution, and if that is the case, we will be more than ready to propose and implement it.
And why helping businesses advance to the next level? Because we aren’t providing solutions that are pretty or trendy. Instead, all of our units are working in a cohesion with the bigger picture in mind – the one that will really make a difference for our client’s entire business. That is what we consider a cool project!
Always curious?
If you’d like to know more about the detailed process behind repositioning, check out this blog post.
And as for the units’ positioning statements – explore our services section!
Want to know what questions we asked ourselves in order to reach our new positioning statement? Get them here – they could be a great baseline for your repositioning as well.
