I sit at the intersection of brand identity and marketing strategy, offering strategic and tactical solutions to organizational challenges.
It all begins with a challenge to solve. Followed by informed ideas and tested creative solutions.
Home Equity Line of Credit Campaign
The problem: The HELOC portfolio at Centris had been stagnate for over six years with little to no growth despite being included in regular campaign messaging.
The need: Create demand for HELOCs from new members and encourage current HELOC holders to utilize their existing line.
The solution: This endeavor was a culmination of almost two years of work. First, my team researched competing HELOC offers; determining ours was not in-line with the market. With this information, we proposed and championed pricing and term changes with the internal pricing committee. Next, my team worked to segment members to target market special offers.
The special offers included entry loan terms presented through specialty direct mailers. These members were also bucketed by zip code and targeted with OTT and CTV advertising.
The Result: a 10% increase in new loans and usage among existing line holders for the first time in six years.
Creative concept: Sean Heyen
Media production and placement: Sleight Advertising
Brand & Attrition
The problem: The average age of Centris members was in their 60’s. Younger members were consistently leaving Centris as their primary financial institution for other local or national competitors.
The solution: Centris needed a point of differentiation and a brand overhaul to remain competitive in the market. This was a multi-prong approach.
Commissioned agency research to determine which channels in our media buy could be better optimized.
Revamped brand design and messaging.
Increased our campaign output from 10 campaigns/year to 40 campaigns/year.
Reallocated existing community funds to concentrate on financial education programs.
Commissioned new paid media creative and sponsorships.
Repositioned our creative into the prime time market and away from local evening news to reflect research findings.
The result: Centris closed 2019 with its highest year of sales in the organization’s history with net $43m in profit.
Adulting Videos | Community Commitment Video | Mad City Money
Agency support: Sleight Advertising
Strategic concept: Sean Heyen
Brand design: Jim Williams
Video production: Reliant Studios
Melissa Bloom Messaging
Melissa Bloom is an energy teacher who loves helping people understand energy and perceive their world differently. She believes you can truly create the life you want to live. Melissa works with people privately and runs Aligned Life, a loving and supportive virtual community.
The problem: Melissa needed brand messaging and a voice that resonated with her target audience but also didn’t take away the sense of joy and possibility she wants to experience while running her business. Her brand needed to feel authentic to who she was and also convert more clients to her 1:1 coaching and community.
The solution: Melissa and I worked together over the course of ten weeks doing brand exercises to identify her tone of voice, values and brand. She used key messages that were crafted to update her website and promote her services to established networking groups.
The result: Melissa closed 2023 with a wait list for her 1:1 services, up ~5% from the prior year.
PayRecs Website
The problem: In 2021, PayRecs was at an inflection point. The co-founders had established a viable go-to-market strategy and channel partner who promoted them to their target audience. However, their website was not an accurate representation of the product or brand. Parts of it had been designed by a freelancer, other parts had been designed by the co-founded on an ad-hoc basis. The lack of professionalism the website conveyed caused them to lose credibility and trust among prospects who were vetting a brand new financial services startup company.
The solution: I worked with the co-founders to select a website agency and lead the redesign process. Our goal was to add legitimacy and professionalism to our niche product. Together, with the agency, we conducted brand discovery sessions including voice, tone, appearance, and messaging.
My role included giving first round revisions on each project milestone and getting second round revisions from the co-founders. I provided feedback on design, conducted SEO research, assisted in writing and editing copy and provided clear guidance on brand aesthetic.
The result: Within six months of the website launch, PayRecs was able to secure interest from a second channel partner and five additional financial institutions as well as their largest round of fundraising.
Branding: Cody Custer
Website development: Heather New
Q2 Connect Pre-Conference Awareness
The problem: PayRecs was attending the annual conference hosted by our channel partner, Q2. We have a very small, target audience. Prior to the conference we identified 23 regional banks that fit our ideal client profile. We needed a way to create awareness of our brand and generate interest in our booth ahead of the conference that stood out from the typical postcards and emails attendees typically receive.
The solution: I created a branded swag box that created a physical juxtaposition of the bank’s current international payment solution and what PayRecs offers. The branded swag boxes included high quality tumblers, but also a postcard with a marble maze affixed to it with messaging as a physical representation of their current experience (analog) and a branded digital video player that highlighted the experience they could have with PayRecs. The idea was to create a tangible way to highlight the difference between outdated, manual and inefficient processes they’re used to with our seamless, high-tech solution.
The result: We generated 17 warm leads from the conference and secured contracts with three swag box recipients.
Copy, Connect and Execution: me
Design: Miriam Vandenbrink
PayRecs Value Maps
The problem: As the sales cycle for PayRecs became quicker, we noticed that our sales champion would often encounter a lot of resistance from key stakeholders to be part of the vetting process early on. When key stakeholders came to the table later in the project, it could easily delay progress. We needed a way to empower our sales champions within the financial institution to convey the value of our platform and why it was necessary to take a seat at the table immediately. Key stakeholders often resisted getting involved during the vetting process because they didn’t want to waste their time in meetings with a project that may not move forward. However, joining the meetings after sign-off had been given often meant that we went back in the sales process and had to resolve concerns before we could begin implementation.
The solution: We identified the most common goals and organizational KPI’s each stakeholder was usually tasked with. We created two page documents that our sales champions could provide to key stakeholders that explained how PayRecs supported and would help them meet those KPI’s.
The result: With key stakeholders involved earlier in the process, sales cycles and implementation cycles moved, on average, 30 days faster than when they were not coming to the table early in the process.
See a value map
Copy: Cody Kimmel
Design: Miriam Vandenbrink