Ticketless travel isn’t something I’d thought much of since I stopped using an Oyster card to travel in London. That changed when I started working with a transport ticketing SaaS platform company that wanted a new brand identity to stand out from the competition.
Step one: a clever identity
My first task was to liaise with the creative director who was working on the new identity. It was my job to help him understand the business and ensure that the identity could work beyond a tagline and be truly embedded across the entire company’s communications.
The key to the company’s identity was to focus on its Unique Selling Point (USP). Both the client and the competition had ticketing tech. But the client had something extra: decades of experience in solving transit problems.
Therefore the USP was that they would bring the most appropriate solutions based on lengthy experience, rather than simply throwing potentially expensive software at every problem.
The line used to demonstrate this identity was:
Forget TaaS, MaaS, and FPaaS. Try Clever as a Service.
Step two: make clever work everywhere
“Clever as a Service” is a great line, but it was vital that the rest of the company’s copy incorporated it so as to create a strong, reinforced impression on the prospect.
I rewrote the home page, the service pages, the careers page, and the about page to incorporate the term “clever”. Clever became almost a noun, a thing that the company wielded to deliver great results.
It was vital not to make the company sound arrogant, so I steered clear of statements that implied the company itself was clever. Instead, they “used clever to deliver results”, or spoke about how “our team brings clever to the table”.
This latter line expanded into a new approach to the about us page. Rather than simply having static photos of the management team, I interviewed key members of the team to create “brand ambassador” content. This content not only demonstrated the expertise of the team (their “clever”), but also gave both prospective customers and employees a glimpse into the company culture.
Step three: give the client the tools to embed clever
Rewriting the client’s website to make the most of the new brand identity was just the first step. The next was ensuring that all of the company’s communications reflected that identity too.
To that end, I worked with another writer to create a new tone of voice (ToV) document. This is something often seen as a supporting document, a nice-to-have rather than a have-to-have.
The truth is a ToV document is fundamental to the success of your content.
For instance, what will a prospect think if the website talks about Clever as a Service, the sales rep talks about clever-as-a-service, and the tech support talks about CaaS? How can they trust that you know what you’re talking about if your team doesn’t know how to talk about it?
And this identity was, as already mentioned, fraught with the risk of seeming arrogant. I’d avoided that, but what if a customer service agent started talking about “how clever we all are”?
Disaster for the brand.
So the ToV document outlined exactly how to use the identity and the “Clever as a Service” line. It also laid out the tone to strike, how to talk about the company, the team, competitors, as well as the usual details found in a ToV.
So now the brand identity was rock solid across every channel, leaving prospects with a clear picture of the company’s offering and its vision.
If you want your prospects to know who you are at every step, get in touch. Let’s craft content that’s perfectly aligned with your brand identity and sells it to your prospects.
