Maturing agency’s positioning, identity, and digital presence
Turning Diamond Hook's own identity, site, and case studies into the thing that sells the work, built on the strategy-led process the agency ran for everyone but itself.
Overview
Company
Diamond Hook
Industry
Creative agency—brand, web and growth marketing
Role
Creative Director & Studio Lead
Services
Brand Identity & Visual Identity, Web Design & Webflow Development, Content Structure & Sitemapping, Case Study Content Strategy, Verbal Strategy & Copywriting, Landing Page & Ad Campaign Direction, Email, Presentation Design, Creative Operations
Team
Designer: Natasha Navasardian, Content Strategist & Copywriter: Alexandra Toto, Webflow Developers: Alex Beige, Thomas Silva & Milan Kostic
Outcomes at a glance
Refreshed the visual identity from a two-persona creative strategy, rolled out across profiles, channels, tools, and internal applications
Launched a Webflow site with case study filtering and tagging, plus a careers page running an always-on Talent Network Application
Rebuilt the case studies to carry approach, output, and results, giving prospects something to read past the work samples
Grew the site to 30× users year over year, with increased inbound form submissions up
Context & brief
The client work kept outgrowing the brand that presented it
Diamond Hook's identity and website had been one former employee's project, refreshed on personal preference and never grounded in strategy, while the work it presented kept getting better.
Challenge
Diamond Hook was winning increasingly renowned clients, and its own brand no longer anchored anything. The identity, the site, and every client-facing material sat well below the caliber of the work they existed to sell.
What wasn't working
The visual identity and website were the brainchild of a single former employee, crafted and maintained almost exclusively by one person, refreshed multiple times at the whim of personal preference, and grounded in neither strategy nor vision
Case studies were too lean, relying almost entirely on work samples and mockups. They conveyed neither the extent of our engagements nor the impact of the work
Client-facing materials were unbranded and unpolished, and didn't represent the caliber of the work they contained
Objective
Apply the same thorough, thoughtful process we ran for clients to our own work, and build a digital presence that matches what the agency actually delivers.
What we set out to do
Create a refined visual identity that balanced trend with longevity, aspirational enough to signal where the agency was headed and true enough to reflect its warm, personable team
Build a website that organized capabilities across a breadth of services and carried case studies deep enough to survive a prospect's due diligence
Extend the identity into every surface a client actually sees: capabilities deck, work samples deck, presentation templates, email, and social
Contraints
Self-directed work removes the two forces that usually keep a project moving: an external deadline and a client's final say. Add an endless reference field and a room full of brand opinions, and the discipline had to come from the process itself.
What we had to design around
An agency world drowning in inspiration: other agencies' brands, their client output, new reference landing every week. Shiny object syndrome was real, and it stalled more than it started
No client deadline forcing the work. Discipline had to come from us
Strategy & Approach
Give ourselves the treatment we give clients
Three parallel workstreams: personify the identity as two opposing directions, constrain the reference field before opening it, and structure the website around the sales conversation.
Personify the brand as two opposing directions
Explored two distinct, semi-personified directions: the ambitious star (mature, refined, polished, deliberate) as our north star, and the kid-at-heart (playful, surprising, daring, fearless) as our compass
Gave each persona its own moodboard and reference collection, then dissected both to isolate the specific elements worth emulating from each
Combined them into a single identity that carried the tension between them, which turned taste into something a room of opinionated brand people could argue about with rigor
Constrain the reference field before opening it
Introduced mild constraints early (the persona framework, the moodboard-per-direction structure, the dissect-and-combine step) so an overwhelming reference field became a solvable creative problem
Treated the constraints as creative permissions, which is what made the work fun
Structure the website around the sales conversation
Sitemapped and content-structured every page against how the agency actually sells
Designed case study filtering and tagging so a prospect looking for brand identity work on a B2B service business could immediately find work in that shape
Planned the careers page around a Talent Network Application, keeping an always-on connection with talent across every specialty
Solutions & Delivery
A new identity, a Webflow website, and case studies built for how people actually read
A full brand refresh across the site, decks, case study format, careers page, IG, and email, plus a launch treated as day one.
TL;DR
What we did
Brand audit and full rebrand rollout across profiles, channels, tools, and internal applications
Refreshed visual identity built from the two-persona creative direction
Webflow site, sitemapped and content-structured end to end
Case study system with filtering and tagging by service and specialty
Careers page with an always-on Talent Network Application
Capabilities and work samples decks, presentation templates, email, and refreshed IG
How I led
Ran the two-persona creative direction exercise, turning "we all have opinions" into a structured decision framework
Owned content structure and case study strategy across the site: how information sequenced, what a case study had to earn its way in, how filtering would actually get used
Managed three Webflow developers through structure, QA, launch, and post-launch content population
Directed the launch as day one, with a rolling roadmap of pages, campaigns, and experiments queued against it
Handled creative project planning, workflow development, and staffing across the team delivering it
Identity: two personas, one system
Two semi-personified directions, the ambitious star and the kid-at-heart, dissected, combined, and rolled out across every channel, tool, and internal application.
Website: structured for scanners and heavy readers
Persuasive flows on Shopify lifecycle triggers, written to convert without breaking the "too cool" rule.
Case studies: proof alongside the samples
A format engineered for dual-mode reading, with skimmable visual summaries up top and full engagement depth underneath, filtered and tagged by service and specialty.
Careers: always-on talent infrastructure
A Talent Network Application that keeps the agency connected with talent across specialties year-round.
Decks & templates: finally defining what we do
A capabilities deck that presented our service offerings with a precision the agency had never applied to itself, plus branded templates so every client presentation arrives polished.
Outcomes & Impact
A brand that matches the work, and a website that started doing the selling
In the year after launch, the site became the agency's most reliable source of inbound.
A documented identity that no longer routes through any single person to maintain, extended across profiles, channels, tools, and internal applications
Case studies deep enough to carry a prospect through due diligence and structured enough to skim, plus a Talent Network Application running as always-on recruiting infrastructure
Post-launch performance: ~31× site users, ~19× total events, and inbound form submissions up from 1 to 140
Michael Tucker
Director of Creative
I always think my website and branding is great, and then my team does another refresh and I am stunned.