”It’s Easy For You, ’Cause You’ve a Company” – A cool designer in Transylvania: Zsolt Rancz and the Wameleon Design

In 2016, when I first participated in the Meeting of Hungarian Entrepreneurs of the Carpathian Basin in Mezőkövesd, I didn't officially have my own business, only Wameleon Design as a brand on Facebook since 2013. Then, a year later, I found the courage to become an officially registered company. At first, I was on my own, but then I was joined by a few colleagues, relatives, and friends. Our advertising graphics studio - which we can slowly define as an advertising agency - is now based in Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfântu Gheorghe), but through our clients, our colleagues, and our history, we cover the whole of Transylvania and Romania. We mainly design packaging, logos, and corporate identity.

We believe in the effectiveness of branding, combined with marketing.

The word "Wameleon" brings up interesting associations. Why is that your name?

We needed a name that represented us. A good place to start was chameleon, which everyone thinks of as being able to change its colours to suit, but if you type it into a search engine, it gives you thousands of results. We changed one letter, which makes this brand name unique. It's clear where the name comes from, but in that form, only our content is found online.

What does branding mean to you?

My goal is that when someone comes to me, they get a piece of advertising artwork that is effective - and that's the key word. We help entrepreneurs who are thinking about image building, or visual branding, to make decisions that are not only beautiful and interesting, but also work. But it's easy to make a mistake here. Many clients came to me saying "my company is going down, make me a logo to do better". This is a false idea: many people think that if they have a similar logo to the big and successful companies, they will be equally successful. It was tiring to explain to each and every customer "Stop, let's come back to Earth for a moment because that's not how it works". That's why I started editing publications and writing books for my target audience, so that I wouldn't have to explain to everyone a hundred times how a business works well, but I could say instead, 'Look, here's a book, read it, then come back and then we can start building your brand together. My first book, "It's Easy for You, 'Cause You've Got a Company" is a satirical, humorous, easy-to-read book, with the subtitle "Brand Awareness in Transylvania". It's about how I became an entrepreneur, so the reader can decide whether this Zsolt Rancz is worth listening to. I write about how I imagined my future when I was at school, then after university, I became an employee, then I started my entrepreneurial journey – and how I was constantly slapped in the face and then I came to my senses. I shared all of these in my book and then wrote about my practical experience of the situations and cases I encountered while working with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last ten years.

This book has brought us fame in the Transylvanian Hungarian market, with over 2500 copies sold since September 2020.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it is quite outspoken. Weren't you afraid it would scare off your customers?

True, my language is quite outspoken and rather vulgar, so it's dangerous, it even says so on the cover: "Warning, foul language", not recommended under 16. I wrote the book in the way I talk in everyday life. It's not my style to talk in literary language, I speak simply, so I can't write in a way that isn't me. This actually was appealing to many people who would not otherwise read a book. I got a lot of feedback saying "I thought it was a humorous book at first, then I accidentally learned something from it". That's my mission: to teach in an entertaining way. 
I wrote my second book together with comedian Botond György, called "Mitől döglik a légy" ('Know What's What'). It's about the role of humour in advertising, with lots of examples. Then we looked for other, more youthful ways to get our brand across to different target markets. This is how the comic "Nyakleves!" (Slap!), a comic about Hungarian entrepreneurs in Transylvania, was born, which we created together with illustrator Timea Kalabér after nearly one and a half years of work, and it was published in 2021.

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Wameleon Design team

On social media, you have very attractively drawn attention to a special colouring book, which is modelled on all the cities of Transylvania. How does this fit into your portfolio?

We are constantly thinking about how we can reach a wider market with our services and products. This year we published the adult colouring book "T*sylvania", which contains all the cities of Transylvania. This means that each town has its own page where we have arranged the drawings of its representative buildings, sculptures, and landmarks into a composition. We have thus created a product that is not only beautiful, not only fun but also is of cultural value in its own right. The illustrations are also a testament to the wonderful drawing skills of my colleague Timea. This publication is also an opening to the Romanian market because a huge percentage of the consumers are Romanian: the headline is in English, the subtitle and all the internal information is in three languages (Romanian-Hungarian-English/German).

Romanians living here care about Transylvania just as much as Hungarians do, and for tourists visiting the region, this can be a very cool product to bring home as a souvenir that shows our region.

On social media, you have also linked personal stories to the cities. How important do you think it is for a team to have a "face" in the company, to express their individuality?

This was part of the marketing of the colouring book, as we want to set an example for our customers on social media. I can sell my own services in the market if I do a good job marketing my own products, i.e. the shoemaker must have good shoes.

I believe that my business will thrive in the long run if it not only serves my needs, not only profits me, not only builds a good reputation for me, but also if we can build the personal brands of my colleagues. Everyone prefers to work in a workplace where they receive positive feedback and praise for their work.

We are a Hungarian-Romanian company, because I have Romanian colleagues. I, as a Hungarian entrepreneur, believe in a borderless entrepreneurial mindset: our first priority is to be human and to be fair to each other. My latest book, which we are just starting to promote, is about altruism as a marketing tool.

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Wameleon Design staff at a team building event- Photo: Zsolt Rancz

Altruism and marketing, that is, wanting to sell something - these seem to be contradictory concepts. How do you manage to combine them?

The key phrase in my latest book,”Jószívű balf*sz” (Good-hearted s*cker), is the people-centred entrepreneurial mentality. This is what I want to promote. In today's world, it is a common stereotype that a business leader is a villain because the market, the media, or society requires him to do undignified things as an entrepreneur. I want to break down this image.

I think a good leader is someone who can see beyond self-interest. You don't have to exploit your employees and it's possible to build a brand decently.

As part of another parallel project, I also invited people like these to the "Man behind the company" discussion sessions in the conference room of the Sepsi Industrial Park. To prove that there are good and lovable company managers, whom time has proved right.

I've been taken advantage of for my bona fides obviously, but I believe that in time all the goodwill will be returned from the universe or karma or God or whatever you believe in. That's where the essence, the title of the book comes from, that the good-hearted are usually taken advantage of. However, I feel that in the long run, goodwill pays off.