DOWNTOWN CEDAR RAPIDS.

I remember moving to Cedar Rapids ten years ago, after having lived and worked in cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Phoenix. I can’t lie – it was culture shock. Not only was Cedar Rapids substantially smaller than my urban experiences to that point, but at that time Cedar Rapids, especially downtown, was reeling from the physical and emotional devastation of the flood of 2008. The city seemed dead asleep. But, really, it was only a nap.

The significance of the awakening of Downtown Cedar Rapids can’t be underestimated. But, hey, this city has guts and resilience, a willingness to evolve – change.

Change. A word that, at worst, elicits fear but at its very best, signifies clarity. Clarity that ignites bravery in charting a journey to unlocking and achieving all the best that is possible.

As part of the Downtown Cedar Rapids landscape, Fusionfarm is an agent of change. We believe that brands have the ability to not only move customers and affect their lives, but to move the very culture in which they live. We believe that brands have profound responsibilities.

We challenge brands to reach, stretch and see themselves in new ways, with eyes wide-open. Self-analysis is the best way for a brand to remain authentic and sustainable over the long term. We will do the same for Downtown Cedar Rapids/SSMID. After all, we serve our history and traditions best by building a vibrant future filled with new opportunities – opportunities destined to become time-honored traditions in their own right.

With that in mind, we won’t be delivering you the same tired, banal tropes. You’re in motion – let’s stay in motion. Let’s get to work.

Just over 6-years old and located in Downtown Cedar Rapids, Fusionfarm is no cookie-cutter agency. We are a collective of diversified minds. And that doesn’t just mean in skillsets, it means in life experiences. Sure, we have strategists and creatives, account executives and programmers. But it’s not just the expertise that our team has, it’s the people that make up our team.

Our strategy of diversification doesn’t stop with our team. Our client list is diversified by design as well. It’s dangerous when an agency specializes in a single vertical. That danger is something we call “drift”. It means that when only working in a single vertical, there is far too often an unconscious drift into “sameness” across clients and projects.

We combat that with analogous research. Analogous research looks to other industries and customer journeys, analyzes them to understand how what is working there can be applied to other industries and brands, giving them a transformative edge over their competition.

Branding is too often misunderstood and outright dismissed as an esoteric marketing gimmick, who’s value to an enterprise’s bottom line is tenuous at best. So, really, what is a brand?

Comprised of the intangible, experiential promise points that lead to awareness and positioning, a brand is ethos, and most significantly, must appeal to key human desire. From a business strategy perspective, branding is a long-term, risk-averse investment that safeguards products and services from becoming transactional commodities, creating a fickle customer base.

Simply put, branding is the key, foundational component of a successful and resilient business and marketing strategy because humans are constantly searching for and longing to connect with entities – brands – with conviction.