Thanks A Ton — A BRANDING AND CREATIVE CONSULTANCY

Thanks a ton: digital gift card company

Problem

Thanks A Ton is a digital gift card company that had the idea to get the public educated and involved in the science of carbon dioxide removal. They didn’t know how to position themselves in an emerging market. They had trouble identifying their target audience and who they aspired to reach. They also needed to tell their story and make the science easier for people to understand.

Solution

I took them through a brand positioning workshop to get to the nitty gritty of why they do what they do, what impact they want to have on people’s lives, and what makes them different from others in their space. I also conducted exercises around marketing ideas and business goal prioritization. I conducted user interviews to validate some assumptions we made.

Stakeholders

What We Do

The stakeholders had different ideas and descriptions of what the company does. I had each stakeholder write out how they each would best describe what Thanks A Ton provides, then vote on which description was most accurate. This helped us align on a common understanding of their core offering moving forward in the workshop.

Team Alignment

I facilitated a team alignment exercise to understand what each stakeholder wanted to get out of the engagement and to align the stakeholders.

Brand Attributes

I guided the stakeholders through a brand attributes exercise, which helped form the first pillar of brand positioning. This part of the workshop guides the team in exploring how categories such as culture, audience, voice, feeling, impact and x-factor shape the essence of their brand.

User Personas

Thanks A Ton needed a crystal clear understanding of their target audience. I conducted user persona exercises to nail down the demographics and psychographics of their target audience. This allowed us to understand the audience’s needs, how best to align with them, and talk to them. We also did brainstorming on their aspirational audience for the future.

User Interviews

We needed to validate assumptions made in the user persona exercises. So I conducted user interviews with a small sample size of users in our audience.

Key Takeaways

• Value & importance
• Popularity & social media presence
• Price
• Convenience
• Meaningful

Business Prioritization

Thanks A Ton had many tasks to get done, but couldn’t decide which were most important in the area of marketing. I facilitated brand awareness exercises to help them come up with marketing ideas and which ideas should be prioritized. I also helped coordinate audience outreach in Clubhouse discussions.

Design

I designed social graphics for the Clubhouse conversations. The purpose of the Clubhouse convos was to start a dialogue with people in our community for brand awareness, and to build community with likeminded people.

User Journeys

I facilitated user journey mapping for 2 user personas. We started from the top of funnel awareness to sales conversion to advocacy. This gave the stakeholders an understanding of the step by step process of their audience’s engagement.

Impact

• The stakeholders at Thanks A Ton got a better understanding of who they were as a company and who they served.

• We created a brand statement that succinctly describes what they do, who they serve, and the impact they make.

• They gained clarity on which marketing priorities are most important in the short-term.

• Figured out who their competition is and how they can disrupt the market.

• I narrowed down their big questions.

• Helped them get more organized, kept them on track and completely the exercises quickly.

• The founders discovered they wanted to pivot and focus their energy on becoming a B2B business.