Know-How: B2B | Brand Copywriting | Copyediting & Proofreading | Competitive Analysis | Interviewing | Research | Verbal Brand Strategy
Butterflies symbolize transformation; CleaPivot’s rebrand represents a metamorphosis that allows the company to shed their skin and reveal their true form.
Chris Strom, the company owner, and I also share a love of jazz, so showcasing this Herbie Hancock masterpiece for the project soundtrack was the obvious choice.
Just a Peek
Origin story creation and messaging rebrand for ClearPivot, a virtual, US-based marketing agency.
The Skinny
ClearPivot is a full-service inbound marketing agency and HubSpot partner that charges a minimum of five figures for their expertise.
However, their lackluster brand copy failed to convey their competitive advantage to potential clients or reassure marketing directors, who have a lot to gain (and lose) from collaborating with them, that they were an exceptional external partner.
Uncovering Inspiration
I’ve always been fascinated by the pivotal experiences that shape people’s worldviews. Unfortunately, many equate “pivotal” with “earth shattering,” leading them to believe their experiences are too “boring” for anyone to give a shit about, which was the case with Chris.
Successful branding happens when you’re interested in your clients and ask them thoughtful, in-depth questions. Not only do you peel back the layers of their personality, but you also reveal a signature brand in the process.
However, a complete story isn’t one sided; getting up close and personal with an audience is crucial to crafting a collective brand that all parties can champion.
In the Mood
Contrary to Chris’s perceptions about his company’s “boring” beginnings, a fascinating agency narrative did exist. I drew inspiration from the people within the organization and their interests and values, like immersion learning, soaking up knowledge, fluency in different languages and cultures, having the foresight to become early adopters of new technologies, etc.
You can draw direct lines from these beliefs to their business philosophy.
Bare Essentials
ClearPivot’s rebrand revolved around the company breaking free of their industry’s status quo, defining who they are, and tying their uniqueness to their audience’s needs to continually attract their ideal clients.
Here are the main themes that formed the foundation of their new brand messaging:
“Boring” to Bold
Define & Attract Your Audience
Jargon-Free Zone
Deep Audience Insight
Distinction
Origin Story
Fleshed Out
Below is a small sample of my copywriting sketches, including a mindmap that highlights ClearPivot’s uniqueness, common objections marketing directors (their audience) have that the agency must address and overcome, questions I used to interview members of their audience, taglines I created, and a Q & A I had with the everyone within ClearPivot (not just the CEO) about their current branding and aspirations for their rebrand.
The Full Monty
After conducting interviews with everyone from the CEO, employees, freelancers, and former and current clients—which captured their professional and personal aspirations and values—I connected the formative events that shaped them as humans to their business philosophies.
I analyzed and compared their positioning to their top competitors, used client feedback to mirror their strengths and weaknesses, and exposed their audience’s (marketing directors) deepest desires and fears on a granular level.
The result was an origin story, brand messaging, and strategy that connected Chris’s fluency in Mandarin to a tight-knit marketing agency capable of soaking up every detail of their clients’ industry and addressed the need for marketing directors to be seen as heroes by their bosses.
ClearPivot’s rebrand celebrated their unique company, story, people, and set of skills, addressed their audience directly by title, and connected their company values to their audience’s professional desires and aspirations.
The company’s previous brand copy was generic and uninspiring, like a bowl of non-descript vanilla ice cream, as you can see below, compared to their rebranded messaging, which is a signature flavor that’s damn hard to copy.
The Naked Truth
Chris Strom, Principal
“Before we invested in Taheerah’s branding services, our main concern was that we sounded too generic and were just echoing the same tired language that all our competitors were parroting.
Through her process, we discovered many different elements of our backstories and personal interests that had surprising connections to define a great personal voice for our company and help us stand out from the crowd.
I liked the strong emphasis she placed on storytelling and the origin story. I feel that gets overlooked in branding a lot, but it’s the stories that people connect with the most. Some of the other benefits of Taheerah’s branding services are:
- Her extremely thorough research
- Her honest feedback on our current weaknesses
- I could tell she really put her heart into it!
I would definitely recommend her services because she helps companies discover their personality when their first inclination is to see what their competitors are saying and parrot the same things themselves.”
Ryan Wright, Account Executive
“We had no idea what Taheerah’s work ethic was or whether our clients would like her writing style.
Before we decided to work with Taheerah, all we had to go on was her portfolio and her word. We had to trust that her skills were at the level she said they were at. We needed someone who could write well and was a cut above the others, and we hoped that she fit the bill.
Her copy is in an upper echelon of clarity and brand voice expression that we rarely see in web development.
Generally speaking, it’s not hard to find a copywriter; they’re everywhere. It is difficult to find experienced, disciplined copywriters who use a solid, structured process to produce high-quality copy.
Taheerah has taught us that good copywriting and content writing involves thoughtful research and carefully crafted questions, along with interaction with the client for whom you are writing the copy.
We learned that you get what you pay for with her writing services. She makes every word count to give our clients the kind of content their audience will consume.
One of the unintended benefits of working with Taheerah is that we learned more than we intended to about the importance of brand engagement and brand management in copywriting. She stresses that a brand and its copy are inseparable.
I would recommend Taheerah’s writing services to any company with brand awareness that has been successful for a few years but may not be expressing their brand in a holistic, clear, and attractive way on their website.”