Work

How Vivaldi Built CLS’s Brand Positioning and Identity System

  • Professional Services
  • Brand Strategy
  • Brand, Innovation & Experience
  • Corporate Brand Positioning

The Challenge

CLS needed to establish a clear market position in a fragmented professional services landscape. Without distinctive positioning, the firm competed primarily on relationships and pricing rather than unique capabilities.

The Opportunity

Vivaldi developed a brand positioning platform through stakeholder workshops, competitive analysis, and client research. The engagement defined CLS's unique value drivers, target client segments, and positioning narrative, then delivered a comprehensive brand identity system with visual, verbal, and messaging frameworks.

The Outcome

CLS established a differentiated market position expressed consistently through identity and messaging. The new platform gave business development teams a sharper story and aligned internal stakeholders around a shared understanding of what makes CLS distinctive.

CLS Case Study Summary

CLS partnered with Vivaldi to establish a distinctive market position in a fragmented professional services landscape where the firm was competing primarily on relationships and pricing. Vivaldi ran stakeholder workshops, competitive analysis, and client research to define CLS’s unique value drivers, target segments, and positioning narrative, then delivered a brand identity system covering visual, verbal, and messaging frameworks that gave business development a sharper story and aligned internal stakeholders.

About CLS

CLS is a professional services firm operating in the business services sector, serving commercial clients across multiple markets. The firm competes in a fragmented landscape of advisory and specialist service providers.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Vivaldi help CLS achieve with the positioning and identity work?

Vivaldi gave CLS a clear, defensible position in the market and a complete identity system to express it, which gave the firm’s business development teams a story they could actually use in commercial conversations. Internal stakeholders also gained a shared understanding of what makes CLS dis

How did Vivaldi define CLS's unique value drivers in a fragmented services market?

The positioning was triangulated across three sources: stakeholder workshops that surfaced what the firm believed about itself, client research that tested what buyers actually experienced, and competitive analysis that mapped which territories were already claimed. The unique value drivers were the points where internal conviction, client experience, and competitive whitespace overlapped, which is the only place a positioning can hold for more than a year.

Why does positioning matter when professional services firms compete on relationships?

Relationships and pricing are the default in fragmented professional services markets, but they are also the most expensive ways to win because both demand the firm’s most senior people to stay personally engaged. Positioning is what allows the firm to win on something other than the partner’s calendar, and it is also what makes the firm acquirable, scalable, and resilient when the original relationship-owners leave.

What can other professional services firms take from CLS's approach?

 

The transferable lesson is that the identity system is not the strategic deliverable, the positioning is, and any firm that buys a logo refresh without first making the choices about who they serve and what they are uniquely good at will end up looking different without competing any differently. The discipline that produced the CLS outcome is the willingness to make those choices before the design work begins.