Spokeo
Spokeo’s brand guidelines aren’t public, but I can still tell the story of how we developed them.
Photo by Mayer Maged
Brand Pillars
I and my manager met with the C-Suite to discuss what set Spokeo apart from their competitors. This can be a challenging discussion with engineers, as they tend to focus on technology. The technology is important to differentiate the product! However, brand speaks to so many other elements of a company. So, we also brought in senior management from both Customer Service and Human Resources, which helped us round out the discussion to find out what made Spokeo unique: 1. Transparency, 2. Data Richness, 3. Artfulness, 4. Availability.
Brand Voice
This part of the process was the most fun but also the most challenging. I first analyzed the voice of our competitors, listing their five most prominent brand voice characteristics.
My manager and I then met with every team in the company to ask them what they thought were our top five (5) personality traits. We were pleased to find lots of overlap, but it took many meetings over the course of several weeks to find consensus. We had to dissuade some colleagues from the word “Kick-ass.” Instead, we settled on “Fearless.”
Photo by Jason Rosewell
Photo by Markus Spiske
Brand Tone
Next, we needed to identify our primary audiences and decide how each personality trait would be emphasized when speaking to that audience. I asked each of those same teams to take 15 points and distribute them amongst the voice traits as to which were most important.
Customer Service had an easier time than the other teams, it seemed, as they spoke with the customers every day. This can be a tough exercise, but the Spokeo staff had the sense of humor and perseverance to see it through. At the end, I gave those values to our visual designer. She created a visual representation of the varying tones for each audience, which we used in the brand book.