Bailey

I add a pivotal, efficiency-driving process to brand development — the BrandWorld. It’s a process that’s been honed over decades in disparate situations to rectify, reboot or invent brands. The process deploys across categories: financial services (AmEx), healthcare (Zyrtec), entertainment (Cinemark), spirits (Martini) and more. My BrandWorld process segues between data-driven brand strategies and creative development. I often have a role across it all. Here’s how it worked for startup Ellis Isle.

1 | 4C'S INVESTIGATION

Data-driven brand strategists fill the quadrants of a 4C’s Investigation. Often, I enter the late stages of their effort as a sounding board and additional mind crafting the Brand Ambition.

For Ellis Isle, our 4C’s pointed to a big opportunity in a glutted category: better for you and great flavor weren’t represented in a single product. In getting to know the brand’s founder, Nailah Ellis, we also unlocked purpose for the brand. As a Black, female entrepreneur, she could do well by doing good with her new recipe becoming a “Sugar Rebel” taking on the industry that brought so much harm to Black communities.

2 | BRAND ARCHITECTURE

The Brand Architecture — a blueprint for anything the brand wants to do — is a collaboration between strategists, myself, clients and other stakeholders. Here’s where the BrandWorld shows up as the expressive counter-balance to the Brand Ambition. In addition to adding the BrandWorld, I often help develop beliefs and behaviors.

For Ellis Isle, Feel Good Flava set the bar for robust beliefs and even more actionable behaviors that would set the brand apart from the staid tea category.

3 | BRANDWORLD

I’m well-equipped to drive several operations that typically follow the establishment of brand foundations. Having helmed agencies with remits in various channels — advertising, experiential, shopper marketing, digital, design — I have a special empathy for what’s needed in brand identities so they’re appropriate and actionable per channel (not the theoretical that often emanates from visual identity firms). And, for resource-starved (time, money, experience) startups, I have a way of working fast, iterating and delivering so milestones — particularly those necessary to attract investment — are critically met. Here’s a sampling of what followed for Ellis Isle ...

4 | NAMING

Even though there was brand equity in the original recipe, we knew we needed to create a second standalone brand that represented the BrandWorld and respected the wishes of Kevin Hart. First up, we decided to remedy the vexing nature of the original recipe’s name. Hart complained that Ellis Island Tea was hard to say. He was right. But, we also had the issue of Ellis Island, the centuries-old port of immigration, wasn’t the passageway for Black Americans. We simply changed the name to Ellis Isle retaining the equity using Nailah’s last name.

Then, we began the process of naming the new recipe. The BrandWorld not only provided the creative basis for the naming process but also provided many of the stems from which names were generated. Ultimately, the brand’s Caribbean origins won out. Wet Shuga (note the onomatopoeia) is what Jamaicans call cane juice. The name emphasizes the product’s innovation with a tinge of naughtiness.

5 | BRAND ID & PACKAGING

Given the constrained timeline, we collapsed identity and packaging development for both brands — Ellis Isle and Wet Shuga — into one process. The BrandWorld once again provided creative impetus for the packaging. Both brands needed to differentiate from the quasi-formal packaging in the category. Ellis Isle became the put-together older sister with her own verve. Its formal shield pierced with bright lime green typography and its ingredients bursting from behind.

6 | BRAND COMMUNICATIONS

We provided the internal team at Ellis Isle with a cache of boilerplate copy, design templates, easily-configured illustration and an image library of product and lifestyle images from both a Kingston and a Detroit photo shoot.

7 | INVESTOR DECK

Kevin Hart’s $1.7 million gave the brand the ability to grow but more investment was needed to keep the national expansion flush. I helped the brand strategists create a brand narrative derived from the brand foundation and subsequent creative development. Theis narrative and a go-to-market strategy became central to an investor deck that attracted a $5 million commitment from Essence Ventures.