Bello Opticians is Worcester’s premier optician and eyewear retailer, according to the readers of Worcester Magazine. It’s been decades since Worcester Magazine started its “Best of Worcester” readers’ poll, and Bello has been honored to receive this distinction nearly every year.
Bello serves hundreds of happy customers a week, yet just a couple unhappy customers’ reviews online can tarnish any business’s reputation. This is frustrating to many businesses because their happy customers tend not to write positive reviews. The challenge is to create a transparent digital social media strategy that aligns the brand perceptions of the real world with those that appear online. Bello needed to initiate and manage an online dialog between customers, prospects and influencers—where the happy customers become brand champions.
Branding
Bergeron Creative conducted a brand positioning and messaging analysis of Bello’s competitors. The majority of these opticians seemed to focus solely on improving the customer’s vision. This is a common branding mistake spotlighting, when a company focuses on what they do instead of the value they bring to customer—all opticians improve vision.
Note the contrast to the competition in the new Bello positioning statement: “Bello Opticians creates unique value by addressing the needs of customers who want to shape their own personal brand with eyewear. Bello carries the most desirable eyewear brands in the latest styles and utilizes recent advances in lens technology to create a flawless appearance.”
To support the Bello brand positioning, Bergeron Creative created the tagline, “WHAT’S YOUR VISION?”—a play on words—that brings the focus back to the customer and how they want to be viewed. The tagline also became a central visual asset forming an eye chart that comes into focus from a blurred state.
The Bello Opticians brand identity was in need of a complete rebranding—while the competition strived to look “clinical”, Bello’s focus is high quality and design. Bergeron Creative developed an award-winning brand identity that allows Bello to evolve its brand naturally as styles and eyewear trends change. The brand identity employs cousin logotypes, and the base logo is the word “BELLO” in a timeless “aviator lens” shape, which became the basis for a series of logos, all featuring different lens shapes.
Other visual assets include patterns constructed of different frames styles, inspired by the new series of Bello cousin logotypes. The primary color of the brand is an electric green, which radiates when juxtaposed against a palette of warm black and grays.
The Bello branding was created predominately to come to life online; we want to bring physical elements into the store to visually recall the customer’s online experience of the brand.
Bergeron Creative designed an award-winning series of business cards, each featuring its own unique version of the Bello logo. We created the cards to have a strong visual “WOW” factor, employing the electric green as the dominate color because it’s striking even in the highly visual retail environment. In addition, the cards were finished with a matte aqueous and rounded corners, giving them a subtle but unique tactile quality.
Vibrant merchandise bags were created to take the Bello message to the streets. The bags feature the Bello tagline, “WHAT’S YOUR VISION?” in eye chart form blurred on one side and in focus on the other—punctuated with an eye-popping electric-green version on the eyeglass frame pattern and handles.
Online, the Bello Opticians brand story comes alive in techno color, the homepage features a slideshow, kicked off with the “WHAT’S YOUR VISION?” tagline in eye chart form, coming into focus from a blurred state, then blurring again and revealing a series of high fashion photos featuring about every look there is, from conservative and retro to high-tech and sci-fi. The website challenges the visitor to reflect on his or her personal brand image.
The website is framed by a subtle pattern of eyeglass frames in warm black and gray hues. The footer of the site is appointed with over a decade of “Best of Worcester” recognitions. The “About Bello” section includes photos of the Bello staff wearing some very fashionable eyewear in a playful tile grid, which reveals their names and a quote—whimsically reminiscent of the Brady Bunch television series introduction.
The “Directions” page houses an inset slideshow showing the Bello storefront and retail interior, employing a “Ken Burns Effect,” which allows the visitor to virtually enter the store and look around. Even the store greeters—Enzo and Bella, two snow white Pekingese dogs—make an appearance. In this brand strategy, the role of the website is to provide context for online reviews with the realities of the real-world experience at Bello Opticians.
Local businesses like Bello Opticians can benefit from an online presence through social media. A solid social media strategy means that companies interact with customers on a more personal level, and it makes it easier for potential customers to discover and experience local high-quality service providers.
Bello Opticians has long believed that word-of-mouth advertising is one of the best ways to raise awareness—social media is like word-of-mouth on steroids. Social media is the perfect venue to experience the personality of a brand. At Bello, everyone is family and that’s how you’re treated, so that’s the voice and persona we developed on social media channels.
What sets Bello apart from their competition is helping customers refine their own personal brand with eyewear, which starts with the right mix of eyewear styles. To that end, Nick Bello travels the world to offer customers the latest fashions from top designers. Social media is a great way for customers to get a behind-the-scenes look at the lengths Bello goes to curate its eyewear collection.
Bello has reported a sharp increase in business since the launch of the site; so much so that they are considering offering contact lens sales online to reduce foot traffic in the store. Bello Opticians was once again nominated and won the title of “Best of Worcester” by the readers of Worcester Magazine. In addition, the Bello Opticians branding campaign has won dozens of national and international awards for creative excellence.
Call us at 617-834-4840 | al@bergeroncreative.com