Unbounce Brand Rollout

Concept Brainstorm

We used our brand pyramid, the core of our brand strategy, and positioning as a foundation of our campaign concept and messaging. We had to think of a tagline and slogan to drive the campaign. At Unbounce, we’ve always been about providing a delightful experience for our customers, which aligns with our brand strategy, especially our people-first attribute. The team invited Unbouncers with customer-facing roles to an initial brainstorm for the campaign key messaging. It started with sharing experiences of times we had delighted our customers. Based on all of the insights, the second part was for the team to throw ideas and bounce them off of each other. They were then grouped into buckets on the board.

Our art director, content manager, and campaign strategy manager were responsible for pitching three campaign key messages (tagline and slogan), to the group. They gathered all the ideas, organized them and ideated three concepts based on the initial brainstorm. They presented the three key messages on a Miroboard. Each concept was supported by a list of ideas from the first brainstorm, a brief explanation of the concept, various headline and subhead options, and a test to see whether the concept aligned with the brand strategy. The group had some time to discuss the presented options, and everyone was given a chance to vote for their favourite concept. The winning concept was “make extra your new normal”.

Art Direction Development

Based on the finalized campaign key messaging, the core team met and brainstormed the visual direction of the campaign. Again, we bounced ideas off of each other and ideated three visual concepts. The first concept leaned towards a more on-brand approach, following our general brand composition—a portrait of a marketer front and center, while different layers with various patterns resembling “make extra your new normal” laid out behind the marketer. We had another idea of a marketer jumping from an old world to a new world, and that really resonated with us. We developed this into two visual approaches—one with patterns representing the two worlds, and the other with real-life props to represent each world. The idea behind that was to show a marketer jumping away from a mundane or “stale” setting to a new world, where they would achieve crazy high results because they’ve chosen to go above and beyond in their work. I sketched out the three visual directions and found references to support each concept sketch. These were later pitched to stakeholders, and the visual approach with the jumping between worlds represented by patterns was the final chosen concept.

Photoshoot Prep

Our brand relied heavily on photography and people portraits. We didn’t want to depend on stock images, especially when showcasing people to represent our marketers (our customers); therefore, we got a photographer to shoot curated custom photography for us. We decided on producing two sets of photos for the launch—marketer portraits for general resources (mainly the website) and photos for the external campaign rollout, which also included people.

Since the subject of our shoot was primarily people, specifically marketers that represented our customers, we conducted some research on our customers baser on our three target segments: agency, SaaS, and e-commerce. Our team knew what our target demographic was (age ranging from mid-twenties to mid-forties), but we needed references of what our customers looked like and their attire so we could accurately represent them in our photographs. We got a list of customers from the three target segments that product marketing interviewed, and creeped analyzed their social media (or whatever images we find of them on the interweb). We added their images onto an Invision board, where they were separated into different sections based on their segment. Based on our findings, we created a mood board for outfits for both men and women in each segment. The team then looked for portraits of people to develop various archetypes. Diversity played a major role when considering our archetypes, as it’s one of our business’ core values. We printed all of our research on the wall for visibility, as well as more collaborations and discussions.

While we were conducting our research, we found multiple potential photographers to work with, and we decided to work with Lindsay Siu. We sent her a brief that included references from the research we did and met with her a couple of times to plan the shoot. The team developed a shot list that included specifically what each image was in detail (i.e. Shot #1 | Name: Front-on Marketer Portrait Pose | Type: Full Body | Environment: Neutral light grey background with neutral shadow | No. of Models in Shot: 1 | Description: ¾ pose – looking at camera – natural smile – holding laptop). We showed her compositions we created for our generic visual standards as reference for the marketer portraits, as well as sketches and a mood board for the campaign images. While the marketer portraits were straightforward, the campaign images needed more planning and discussion, as the composition required more complicated props. I mocked up several high-fidelity iterations of how the campaign image would look like to see which one would be the most appropriate and feasible. We sent the finalized mockup to Lindsay and her team and decided that we would have four campaign images with a different model in each. Concurrently, Lindsay searched for talents based on our archetypes and sent us photographs of a couple of models for each archetype to choose from. At that point, we felt like we were a model agency. Lindsay also worked with a wardrobe stylist to find the right set of attire based on our references. We scheduled one full day for a photoshoot for both marketer portraits and campaign images. In the end, we agreed to have a total of six talents for the shoot. All six of them were in the marketer portraits, and we shot four of the talents for the campaign photos.

The Photoshoot

We did a full-day photoshoot at Lindsay’s studio. She worked with a team of people, including a retoucher, two assistants, a stylist, and a makeup artist. A few of us from Unbounce was there as well to give directions and make decisions when necessary. The stylist brought an entire wardrobe based on our references, and we helped pick out the outfit for each talent. Each model was scheduled at a different time so we had to be efficient with each shoot, especially for the ones with both marketer portrait and campaign shots. We also had props, such as notebooks, mugs, pens, and laptops for the talents to hold while we were shooting the front-on marketer portraits.

The campaign shots required the model to be in front of panels; however, we shot the models and the panels separately and composed them together during post-production. That way, it would be more scalable, as they could be in separate layers. We shot the models first, asking them to pose as if they were moving from one side towards another. Some models were leaping, while others were walking. As Lindsay photographed the models, the retoucher mocked up the campaign photos in real-time, placing the models in front of blocks of colours, which were mocks of the panels. The retoucher showed us the mockups for us to give him directions for the composition (colours to use, size of the panels, and positioning). The panels were shot last that day. The team used v-flats for the panels and shot them independently. It was mainly to capture the real shadows so that it would be realistic in the final composition.

Scoping

Every project needs to be scoped, this one was no exception, obviously. Our core brand team scoped out the project and made sure it was a full-funnel experience. The marketing team worked with the customer marketing team to make sure we produce the appropriate collaterals for each part of the customer journey. With the handy Miroboard, we created a campaign flow for the brand rollout. Even though we had quite a large team, we still had a deadline with limited resources, so we decided to launch in phases. But of course, we prioritized the things that would contribute the most to a big splash in our brand awareness. The biggest part of the campaign was actually a sub-campaign, the ChooseExtra campaign, which is too much to include on this one portfolio page. Feel free to check that out too.