GroundTruth (formerly xAd) is a global location technology company that drives results with real data. Through their proprietary Blueprints technology, GroundTruth delivers superior consumer insights by seeing more people and places than anyone else. GroundTruth currently serves 21 countries globally with an unrivaled first-party database of 95 million active monthly users and 17 million active daily users, across 100 million places and points of interest. In this SMPL Q&A we speak with Nancy Hansell, strategy director, and Austyn Stevens, creative director, about our engagement.
Nancy Hansell, strategy director
Why did GroundTruth engage Siegel+Gale?
GroundTruth was really at a pivotal moment in their business growth. They had the ingredients that set them apart—superior location technology through BluePrints, a hungry startup culture and a CEO with a big vision for location. Our brand development really was in service of their business transformation story, helping them accelerate the transition from startup to grownup. They engaged Siegel+Gale because they needed a way to tell their story—to differentiate their offering—to clients and prospective customers in a breakthrough way.
What was unique about the experience of developing the brand?
Working collaboratively and directly with their CEO and founder Dipanshu “D” Sharma, Board Member (and marketing legend) John Costello and their CMO Monica Ho to develop the brand was unique. That direct access allowed us a deeper understanding of where their business was heading and the potential of their BluePrints technology. Perhaps most importantly, it gave us the feeling of the organization. They’re a great group of people and we wanted to create a brand that “bottles” that uniqueness.
How would you define the new GroundTruth brand?
There are countless ways businesses can utilize location data. GroundTruth’s proprietary Blueprints data location technology offers customers precise targeting to gauge business health, shape product design and drive sales. The new brand expresses their unique ability to reach people in the moments that matter. That’s significant because location reveals your behavior, your priorities—and what’s important in your actual life. The rebranding effort reinforces how harnessing the power of location reveals customer behaviors, business health and intentions like never before.
Austyn Stevens, creative director
What were some of the unique challenges of creating the new brand?
Their business is moving so fast and location technology is being refined and developed as we speak. This rebrand is soup to nuts—we developed brand strategy, messaging, naming, sales decks, a visual identity and a website. So that meant everyone on our team had to keep pace with GroundTruth’s evolving business and brand needs across numerous work streams. Working in such an agile way was not only a challenge but also part of the fun.
Tell us a little about the concept behind the visual identity?
We needed to develop a visual identity for GroundTruth that was iconic. Our design elevates the value of location—beyond the technology that underpins it—and humanizes. The logo resembles a location marker and a GT monogram representing GroundTruth’s mission to create location as a category and as a timepiece symbolizing the real time precision of location. The bright, neon color palette reflects the personality, tone and energy of GroundTruth.
Read our press release about our engagement here.
