LiquidPlanner | Brand Guidelines
Process
Start with user needs
I volunteered to be on the project group that led the creation, development, and roll-out of the revised brand guide. Our first task was conducting user interviews to identify what users (the sales, product, and marketing teams) would need from this guide.
Map out the structure
We then identified three core sections for the guide. I focused on messaging.
Simplify brand messages
During our research, we discovered an important challenge: too many product messages. We had about seven key messages about the product — way too many for our team — and our customers — to remember.
After many whiteboarding sessions, we narrowed our brand messages down to two pillars: assemble and act.
Create benefit statements for each persona
During our interviews, we had learned that sales wanted a cheat sheet of feature statements that they could quickly refer to during calls. I wrote messaging around these pillars for each of our four personas.
Define voice and tone
Our product team had defined LiquidPlanner’s brand personality and values. I built on this foundational work to define our voice and tone.
Write a standard boiler plate
And finally, I combined these different pieces to create three boilerplates that we could use across all external communications.
Rollout
We knew education and gaining buy-in about brand consistency was essential. To help everyone understand the importance of brand consistency and how to use our new guide, we:
Presented the guide during a town hall meeting.
Created a branding toolkit that housed our logos, fonts, approved colors, etc. that was easily accessed on Google Drive.
Created an editorial style guide that answered questions about punctuation, grammar, etc.
Developed templates, ranging from email signatures to PowerPoint decks to letterheads.
Implemented brand training for new employees, led by me.
Results
We considered this project to be a huge success. It led to:
More consistent messaging across marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams.
More consistent branding.
More efficient content creation and approval.
A happier, less stressed marketing team.
The project
Create a brand guideline and toolkit that clearly defines our product messages, tone and voice, and brand identity.
Over the years, LiquidPlanner’s messaging and branding had become inconsistent across the company. This was confusing to customers and damaged our credibility. We needed to revisit out mission, core messaging, and brand voice.
The strategy
Create a brand guide that served as a single source of truth for everyone at the company. The guideline would offer clear direction around voice and tone, branding elements like colors and logos, and our product’s key messages.
What I did
Content strategy
Message development
Defined our tone and voice
Company-wide training sessions