I am honored to work with my close friend, Jonathan Barnett, CEO of Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning, to help launch his new franchise concept – Fresh Sweeps Chimney & Air Duct Cleaning! We have been working on this brand for some time and when it all comes to life (birthed) it is something special. Out of the blue the other day I receive text with an image of the new Fresh Sweeps Service Van from Jonathan. No message, it didn’t need one. It made the statement he intended and then some.

Brainstorming with Jonathan and his team is something I always look forward to because we always leave our meetings excited and focused. Although most of my work can be done from the comfort of my office, I would not be able to deliver the results without sitting down face-to-face with this talented group of professionals.

In developing the Fresh Sweeps brand we got deep into discussions about the name and went through a detailed process to determine the best possible name. And although “Fresh Sweeps” was an early favorite, we needed to explore other options before we were ready to make a final decision. In our processes we also discussed who our customer is, their expectations, and what we needed to represent in the customer minds.

As far as imagery was concerned, this was a tough one at first. We looked up “Chimney Sweeps” in a Google search and came up with the old English guy with the mangled top hat – not our direction. Jonathan had shown me a number of brands with cartoon character mascots that he liked and thought it may be a good idea to go in that direction. I had my cartoonist develop a number of concepts based on a certain style we favored and after several rounds of concepts our Fresh Sweeps guy evolved. Concurrently we were working with the typeface selection and treatment. The font had to be right for the brand and the type of service. It’s funny how the right typeface and really make the brand. And finally, Jonathan wanted the logo to be self-contained so it can be placed on just about any background. We played with borders and backgrounds and settled on the brick. To finalize the brand we got back together and played with placement and proportions until we all agreed it was spot on. Although these processes can be tedious, I love to help clients through them and it doesn’t get much better that work with the Oxi Fresh team on the Fresh Sweeps brand.

As we know, nailing down the brand is only the first step in communicating the brand to the world. We have websites, marketing collateral, social media, and more to accomplish to begin the brand building process.

If you need some work on your existing or a new brand, please feel free to reach out to me at mg@greenbaummarketing.com.