Some of the ways we’ve helped build our clients’ brands...

Brand strategy & design, ecommerce website, product launches

VT Advantec is a tennis accessory startup. They use innovative tech, materials, and design to develop products that improve player performance and prevent injury. It's not a hard sell that shock and vibration exacts a cost on players’ bodies and performance. Yet the market's only offered superficial solutions: mask vibration with more weight and swing momentum, or muffle it by distorting impact acoustics. VT Advantec changes the game: its products actually reduce the mechanical energy a player's body absorbs during play.

Brand Therapy partnered with venture studio Breathe Ventures to help VT Advantec launch its brand to consumers. We developed personas, identified a unique "performance + protection" value proposition, and defined the brand. We led all creative, from packaging design, to website, to social and digital campaigns across all ecommerce platforms. Currently, we're working with the brand to launch new anti-vibration products for pickleball and golf.

The win: Helping an entrepreneur realize his dream. Defining a brand “soup to nuts,” turning a great idea into an actual working business, and creating the foundations of a sustainable marketing organization.

Brand Strategy

Else is truly a revolutionary product — all the nutrients of breastmilk in a 100% plant-based, non-GMO, soy- and gluten-free, hormone- and preservative-free, organic product. Else is the new standard in baby formula with a clean label and a clear conscience. The Israeli startup had hired a niche US agency to create its corporate identity and visual look but needed a broader strategic foundation to engage the highly competitive consumer and fundraising markets.

In the midst of COVID lockdown, we facilitated a series of online workshops with the founder/CEO and her marketing team. The result was a brand strategy that struck the right chord with a blend of innovative science, conscientious and mindful parenting, and the joy and surprise a new baby brings.

The win: focusing and aligning a fast-moving startup with a brand that’s true to its origins and big enough to lead a movement to raise standards for clean, simple, and healthy baby nutrition.

co-FOUNDer & PRODUCT development

The right to vote is a cornerstone of our democracy. Today, though, it faces challenges we couldn’t even imagine just a few years ago. When over 40% of eligible voters regularly don’t make it to the polls, we have a serious problem. Snowball uses relational organizing technology to put personal connections and peer influence to work inspiring sustained civic engagement. The concept is simple: people select three friends to mentor and coach through the voter registration and voting processes. In turn, each friend does the same for three of their friends, and so on, and so on.

Representation and choice are deep values for us. So when we saw an opportunity to put our money where our mouth was, we jumped at the chance to co-found this social entrepreneurship non-profit and app dedicated to “making voting personal.” In addition to corporate governance, we oversaw concept development, UX, design, technical implementation, brand development, marketing, social, and communications. etc.

The Win: doing something that truly matters. creating and launching an an organization and an app that has a real impact on our civic life. bringing to life the power of personal connection.

Brand ARCHITECTURE & Strategy

Hologic was a $3.5B medical devices company on the fast track, but growth by acquisition had created some significant branding challenges. How could a respected women’s health leader and innovator, inventor of the Pap Smear and 3D mammography, reconcile providing hair removal, body contouring, and skin revitalization? Besides creating dissonances across governance, sales channels, and global territories, this confused and alienated employees, many of whom felt a deep attachment to the company’s scientific and medical heritage.

Brand architecture projects are always problematic because invariably they become about authority and power. Lots of tension, anxiety, and uncertainty. Our programs worked because our collaborative workshops across divisions were sensitive to this. We listened, to employees, to stakeholders; we gained empathy for them, as well as the many women the company serves.

The win: Creating a clear vision for a large and fast-moving company that lets its diverse parts see how they all contribute to a singular, forward-moving whole. Creating a narrative centered on a commitment to women and their families, INNOVATION, AND TECHNOLOGy.

Strategy & organizational change

PR, traditionally, has mostly been considered a tactic. As brands have become richer, media lines more blurred, clients have realized that they need to be more strategic in how they think of communications. Edelman is a communications powerhouse: a global firm with over 6,000 people in over 60 offices. Leadership has been on a quest to ladder up the strategic relevance of their engagements and provide a broader portfolio of offerings to their clients.

Account Planning was tapped to be a fulcrum for this shift. The Health Practice brought us on board and committed to making every assignment strategy-driven. We opened things up, helping shift the culture to a more client service model, implementing tools such as personas, user journeys, and marketing strategy.

The Win: Helping a global leader evolve its offering. delivering the goods by winning and completing the office's only enterprise site build, brand architecture, and full rebranding assignments.

Brand Strategy

Queen Anne enjoys 80% of the retail cherry cordial market and has been a holiday favorite for almost a century. But it faced some formidable challenges: brand equity existed mainly in an aging customer base, a growing trend among younger consumers for fresher, healthier snacks, a changing wholesale and retail distribution market. The CEO was looking for a pathway forward and for clear insights for making the brand resonate more with new and younger audiences.

We put personas at the core of a brand strategy definition program highlighting the cordial’s classic appeal while constructing a new platform around experimentation and expanded product formulations.

The win: helping a family-owned business innovate and embrace a new identity as a consumer facing brand, not just a manufacturer and distributor. Creating a roadmap for how audience empathy can power innovation.

empathy-based personas, WebSite Strategy & design Prototypes

The National Association of Realtors, with over a million members, is the nation’s largest trade organization. It provides members the tools and information they need to be successful and profitable in their businesses. Realtor.org is the organization’s primary digital member resource.

We identified the most important online audiences, including two new core constituents, created a member-focused experience strategy, and developed a proof-of-concept design for the association’s next generation website.

The Win: Helping the association move beyond it's own complex governance structure and create the tools and processes necessary to develop a truly member needs-focused online experience. 

WebSite Strategy & Redesign

The Chicago Yacht Club is an institution among Midwest sailing and racing enthusiasts, a social community devoted to excellence. Like many longstanding organizations, it faces the challenge of conserving its legacy and tradition while keeping up with the times and remaining attractive to new, younger audiences.

We created a vision for a new site experience. Focusing on members’ emotional needs, we built consensus across a broad set of stakeholders’ tastes, and successfully met extremely complex technical requirements. 

The Win: CREATING reusable TOOLS AND PROCESSes FOR SEEING THINGS THROUGH MEMBER EYES, Reducing institutional inertia, and promoting more nimble action in an organization with a complex leadership structure.  

Brand Strategy, Website Strategy & site redesign

CARA is the largest running organization in the Midwest and the third largest nationwide. It is primarily known for its marathon training programs and advocacy for runners to race organizers. This creates a “leaky bucket” syndrome, because once a runner’s goals are met, why should they remain engaged and part of the community?

We helped CARA refocus its value proposition, broaden its purpose, and reposition itself as a leader against the landscape of civic and recreation organizations. 

The Win: Helping leadership reconnect with CARA's grassroots history and brand promise; creating crucial decision-making tools that can better position the organization in the larger civic landscape. 

Consumer Value Proposition & App Experience Strategy

Good2gether is a leader in technology for fundraising and philanthropic giving. It is creating a hyper-local mobile commerce platform that brings together local merchants, local non-profit causes, and regular everyday shoppers. It allows people to do good in their neighborhoods with businesses that support their communities.

We turned insights about “givers” and why they give, into a consumer value proposition for the brand. We facilitated a series of on-site workshops to develop the creative strategy and UX design for the mobile app. 

The Win: Working with a lean startup on bringing the consumer value proposition front and center to clarify, align, and prioritize the many challenges a new venture faces as it seeks partners and investors.

Site Strategy & ReDesign

CIMA is Chicago’s largest local organization for digital marketing professionals. It provides members an opportunity to network and stay involved with the community. The organization struggled with its reputation, however, and found it difficult to attract members beyond a narrow group of agency and media sales types. To truly serve the Chicago community it had be more than a social hub; it had to attract a broader group of leaders and experts and showcase cutting-edge and interesting thought.

We helped CIMA redefine itself around its purpose of helping professionals learn and grow. We created personas, a new member experience UX strategy for a “knowledge community,” and oversaw the organizations’ website redesign.

The Win: Helping an association regain control over its image, define a new focus on thought leadership, and develop a website to communicate this message and attract the right members for propelling it forward.