Your brand is not what you do, it’s WHY you do it.
It is no easy task to define an identity. We struggle with this as people much of our lives. Defining a brand requires introspection, reflection, and clarity that can only come from the outside in.
At the root, I’m a storyteller. We all know the core components that make a story: who, what, when, where, and why. The problem most people encounter when branding their company is not knowing in what order of importance those components should be placed.
As an artist, you have to know what moves people. Most of the core components fail to move people on their own. WHY, however, has the power to inspire, to move people to action.
My work has always focused on WHY. With that in place, the rest of the components have meaning and are grounded in a mission that your customers, employees and stakeholders can get behind and be loyal to.
See a small collection of the branding work I’ve done below.
The original Cannabist logo
The new and improved Cannabist logo
The teal/blue was chosen to be both trustworthy as well as modern
Composite of the brand in imagery, used as handouts and flyers at events
We chose a few different visual personalities to anchor our readership, representative of the people that read the site
The cannabis leaf is inspired by an asterisk, here shown in closed brackets, representing digital type
We chose a few different visual personalities to anchor our readership, representative of the people that read the site
Brand logo lockups and iconography
Brand logo lockups
Our brand identity, explained for our readers for the very first time. Notice the use of the brackets in the background, framing the subject
Rebranding The Cannabist
As The Cannabist started to become a California staple, we started getting a lot of feedback when people saw our hats, which had simply the “curly q” C on the front (as you see in the old logo). They’d say “nice Cookies hat!”
Cookies was a relatively obscure merchandise only brand at the time that we had never heard of. Turns out, they trademarked their iconic “C” one month before we did. So we had to redesign the brand.
I took this as an opportunity to define the brand for the first time. This work had never been done. We were very clear on the “what” component of our brand, but did not have any solid understanding of the “why” and “who” we were, arguably the only two that need to be fully defined.
Working in tandem with the design team at HILIFE Creative, I guided and informed the discovery sessions about who we were and why we existed. This was an intense set of workshop sessions to arrive at simple clarity. That’s always how these things work. Ultimately, it was a scene in The West Wing tv show that unlocked the core identity piece we needed to anchor the brand.
Ask me about it sometime, I love telling this story.
In the end, the branding work we did led to The Cannabist assuming its role as the undisputed thought leader in cannabis journalism, right on the heels of our wildly successful awards ceremony in Vegas.
The new Mission and Vision statement I crafted
Comparison of show banners pre-rebrand on the left and post-rebrand on the right
Old website design before rebranding
Website redesigned following new branding guidelines set by me
Use of new branding and design guidelines for a show backdrop
Defining the Confident Cannabis Brand
Confident Cannabis, like many startups, had set some branding design and a little identity work in place, but hadn’t gone the full distance to creating a true brand identity and purpose. They had a mission statement, no vision statement, vague brand personality and a little bit on the “WHY”, but fell short on each component.
When I joined, I immediately got to work evolving the brand into the true powerhouse it became. This work was immediately impactful, helping the company cement a $12.5M Series A raise, and directing the content strategy we would use to assume our role as the industry’s thought leaders on the cannabis supply chain and the chemistry of the plant.
This branding work was multi-faceted and led to:
a new Mission statement: “We inform cannabis operators and simplify wholesale testing and trade to create trust and transparency in the cannabis industry.”
previous Mission statement: “Bringing transparency to legal cannabis”
a Vision statement (there was not one previously): “To foster a sustainable and vibrant ecosystem in which every ethical cannabis business thrives.”
a new visual identity, with the exception of the logo, including website redesign, all event, sales and marketing assets redesigned, new colors, new swag
a robust content strategy focused on the pillars of our message and identity that was highly relevant to all of our major client archetypes
a 35-page Branding Guidelines document that tells the story of the brand, outlines key messages and voice direction, use of colors and imagery, company objectives, an industry landscape of clients and roles within them, competition, and more
The swivl logo, created after our branding identity sessions
Hoover, the swivl chatbot personality discussed during our branding sessions
Education Bot logo, the name of the company before Swivl was branded (this logo didn't exist at the time, I didn't have anything to do with it)
Creating a Brand from Scratch
The team that built WeGrow, an AI chatbot that helps people grow their own cannabis, realized they had valuable technology on their hands. They were ready to take it to the broader business world, outside of the cannabis industry.
Their starting point was a company called Education Bot. It was obvious that brand wasn’t very powerful, and didn’t really speak to their vision of how the technology is supposed to work.
I helped them identify WHY they existed, and why people would want to use their technology. They wanted to “create personable moments out of each touch-point,” using machine learning to adapt and pivot to the human on the other end. “We’re here to make people’s lives easier and more enjoyable.”
We landed on Swivl as the new brand name. Swivl communicates a sense of whimsy, of twirling in your chair, or spinning in circles dancing in the rain, skirt flying out in a circle like a whirling dervish. Swivl stands for the ability to respond to circumstances in the moment, to swivel and to pivot. It represents how our platform adapts and learns from new conversations, constantly swiveling as it acquires new language and event flows. It’s swiveling the expectations from boring and frustrating to fun and engaging.
This branding work was multi-faceted and led to:
a Mission statement: “We are here to empower businesses to find the untapped and unlimited potential in capitalizing on brand loyalty and engaged employees.”
a Vision statement: “Our mission is to shift the status quo by proving that companies can increase profits by valuing human interaction and by creating moments of joy for people.”
a company name they were thrilled with, that spoke to and represented their values and vision, as well as the experience of using their app
a robust content strategy focused on the pillars of the message and identity that was highly relevant to all of the major client archetypes
a 32-page Branding Guidelines document that tells the story of the brand, outlines key messages and voice direction, use of colors and imagery, company objectives, an industry landscape of clients and roles within them, competition, and more