A website is the core of personal branding and requires the perfect balance between representing the individuals personality and professional identity. That alone is a challenge, imagine what happens when you undertake the same task for a legendary branding professional.
Zvonimir Pavlek, a renowned branding professional, educator, author and consultant approached us with the mission of creating his personal website. The idea was to develop a platform through which he could showcase his lengthy and successful career, as well as connect with potential clients in need of his consulting services.
Throughout the Balkan region, prof. Pavlek is recognized as an expert in branding and experience marketing, and has built up some of the most popular brands such as Čokolino, Vegeta, Dolcela just to name a few. He has been involved in optimizing sales processes through experience marketing for numerous retailers in Croatia and abroad. He has been instrumental in bringing up numerous generations of students and professionals that are in key marketing and advertising positions today.
The question put before us was, how do you “brand the branding professional” and create a website that honors his achievements, style and specific identity?
This project had a special significance for me as prof. Zvonimir Pavlek was one my professors at university and one of the greatest motivators that led me to pursue my career in advertising. Considering his extensive knowledge and experience, as well as his playful, passionate and energetic approach to life and his work, the challenge of creating and branding prof.Pavlek was even greater.
An agency team consisting of our lead content strategist, user experience specialist, designer and project coordinators was formed to delve into creating a website that would successfully transmit prof. Pavlek’s story to the world and allow him to share his knowledge and advice through a blog. We kept in mind that the website was intended as a place for entrepreneurs, business owners and marketing professionals to connect with prof. Pavlek and potentially establish new partnerships.
The first step in the process was studying the work and style of prof. Pavlek and defining what differentiates him from other industry professionals. It was clear from the very start that we could not create an unemotional and overly minimalist website which is a style we often find amongst personal websites of industry professionals. On the other hand, creating a website that overemphasizes his playful and energetic personality ran the risk of lacking a “professional touch”.
The balance or the core of the website lay in creating an easy to use architecture that gives visitors small insights into his biography and an opportunity to gain added value through his blog and downloads section. By giving users only “snippets” into the world of prof. Pavlek we motivated them to follow his work and connect with him.
From the design aspect our mission was to visually convey prof. Pavlek’s personality and refined approach in everything he does. By intertwining a minimalist layout with specific dominant elements (typography, colors and photos) we wanted to indicate his professionalism, experience and qualities but at the same time his distinct and recognizable style. It was of great importance for us to use the visual structure of the website to emphasize his story because that is what truly differentiates him and makes him the expert that he is.
Emphasizing the “story” of prof. Zvonimir Pavlek was possibly the greatest challenge of this project, one that our Lead Content Strategist Verica Katić embraced with great care and passion. Through face-to-face conversations, a detailed study of his work and his publications, our specialist developed the unique tone and structure of content that would bring in the expert, capture the key message, stimulate interest and leave people yearning for more.
The content strategy structured the website in a way that allows users to read an entertaining biography of prof. Pavlek or access his blog and publications to gather useful knowledge through real-life examples. This structure also allowed users to discover “just” enough about the services he offers as a consultant that it would encourage them to fill in a contact form and hopefully meet him in person to discuss possible collaboration.
The effectiveness of this structure also relied on the work of our development team and SEO specialist who ensured that the website would in a very short time reach top organic positions on Google search. In addition, inquiries regarding marketing, branding and similar topics would bring in conversions in the form of a relevant wave of visitors.
Although nobody can deny the power and significance of social media in the process of personal branding, it is my firm belief that a well structured website is still the epicenter of personal branding. A true industry professional will use his website not only to showcase himself and his experience but also as platform to provide added value through white papers, blog posts or opinion pieces. Social media will then serve as a tool to catapult this provided value to a wider audience, which will in turn stimulate the reach of the brand that is in our case prof. Zvonimir Pavlek.
Thinking about a personal website? Don’t hesitate to contact us and create your online story.
A multi-lingual professional, genuine foodie obsessed with advertising and travel. Loves coffee and people (most of the time). Great at understanding international contexts and solving pop-up challenges.