Since launching in 2018, Unit21 experienced rapid success, developing a cult-like following with their core customer base. However, disagreement about the future roadmap, internal misalignment, and some misfires on positioning threatened to derail this financial technology darling.

I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar:

Starting out in a very specific niche and solving one problem really well
Branching out to a secondary audience within the same niche, expanding nicely

But then, where do you go from here? Stay niche and build out additional feature sets to support this defined audience base? Or go broad, trying to expand the pool, make yourself into a “one-stop shop platform,” or, worse of all, create a category?

Unit21 started hot as the no-code platform for fraud and anti-money laundering. Their unique approach, giving power typically reserved for the engineer to the frontline user, made them a popular alternative to legacy solutions.

However, attempts to pivot into the general market as the no code, monitor-anything platform, didn’t amount to the traction they were hoping for. This led the company to a crossroads — where to go from here?

We were brought on to answer this question. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the Toaster team and Chelsea Brown. (Wondering who did what? Toaster led the engagement, Chelsea led the strategy, I led the writing, and then, as a small team, we all participated in each of the stages.)

The Objectives

Drive internal alignment
Make Unit21 more attractive and distinct
Paint a clear future vision and direction for innovation

If you were tasked with these objectives, as so many executives are, what would you do? I hope this post helps you to answer that question.

The Process

Category knowledge can be a boon or a bust. Helpful, when it adds necessary context and a deeper understanding of the audience profile. Harmful when it stops curiousity, leads to broad assumptions, and results in a copycat approach.

Our team lacked category knowledge, and so we built in sufficient time to do a deep dive into the category, the company, and the customers. What did we look at?

Industry research reports, government mandates and guidelines, previous brand work, podcast interviews, conference presentations, internal and external ebooks, investigative journalism articles, and past product roadmaps.

All of this gets documented as early ideas begin to form.

Side note on this stage of the process

I start nearly every client project with a blank Mural board. Within a few weeks it starts to look like the above — a canvas full of significant thoughts, impressions, data points, details, and messages that I come across.

Often, this board gets delivered to the client after the project. A collection to look back on for inspiration.

When presenting work during the project, I'll pull this board up or share screenshots from it.

Some clients have even taken this board and presented it on their own to key executives. Showcasing the level of intentional thought and detail that was being put into the process.

Companies hire me as a copywriter. But they also wouldn't hire me without this Mural board. Even though it's not part of the deliverables, it's a key part of the process.

Anyone can write. Even computers.

But this process of gathering, extracting, documenting, distilling, and presenting. That's much harder to replicate and it delivers significantly more value — both in the end product (whatever the creative output may be) and in establishing the kind of credibility that leads to internal alignment and trust.

Conducting Internal Interviews

Once we had our baseline research done and presented, we moved into a series of internal qualitative interviews. For this project we conducted 7 of them.

The learnings for interviews such as these cannot be overstated. Nearly each time I do them, and present the findings, an executive will comment, “This is so helpful. Why didn’t we do this before?”

Strategy Presentation

At this point, we had enough data in our hands to make some early strategic recommendations. This came in the form of four potential shifts we had identified. We presented our findings to the executive team. Remember, as consultants, we aren’t here to make the big decisions for you, simply to give you more pointed information to help you make a better decision.

Get everyone into a room and…

This isn’t a knock on remote work, but sometimes it just really makes a difference when you’re able to get all the stakeholders into the same room together.

For this reason, we hosted a worksession with the Unit21 team in San Francisco. I flew into town, a nice reminder that big cities still exist. Chelsea did all the leading on the workshop, while I did the listening.

The Brand Strategy

We finally reached the stage of the project where writing can no longer be avoided. Enough learning, no more research, now we must write.

I’ve seen all sorts of components included in a strategy deck. And unfortunately, this can lead to a fair bit of confusion. Sometimes even the same terms, such as “Vision Statement,” can mean wildly different things from person to person.

Therefore, we leaned heavily on Chelsea’s expertise to not only tell us which components to include, but also how to define each one. Here’s what she elected to go with:

Vision - “A vision is a single statement of what we are fighting for. It should describe our perfect world and will help us navigate the potential of all Unit21 could be.”
Combat - “A combat is a single statement of what we are fighting against. This is the obstacle standing in the way of our perfect world.”
Purpose - “A purpose statement is a single, externally-facing, product-agnostic statement, describing why we exist and how we will make the world a better place. Combines the vision with the combat.”
Archetype - “An archetype is a character who represents an embodiment of our culture. It should answer the question, “If Unit21 was a person, how would they look, sound, and behave.”
Positioning statement - “A positioning statement is a summary of our distinction from the competition. It should quickly communicate our perspective and the benefits we can deliver to our customers.”
Personas - “A persona represents the categories of buyers we are selling to. We focus our personas more on mindsets, philosophies, pains, and gains, and less on any demographic criteria.”
Brand Pillars + RTBs - “The architecture comprises of pillars that organize Unit21’s Reasons to Buy (RTBs) and products. RTBs are the buying criteria for customers in the category. Some people may call these value propositions.”

While I obviously can’t share much from the strategy with you, I can show you some updates to their website that reflect our recommendations. Plus some before and after corporate brand statements.

About Page Before

About Page After

Homepage Header Before

Homepage Header After

Product Visualization Before

Product Visualization After

Product Messaging Before

Product Messaging After

Corporate Brand Statements Before

Corporate Brand Statement After

In Summary

This project ended up being one of the more complex brand strategies I’ve worked on. The industry contributed to this, but also the wide variety of internal perspectives and past historical approaches.
Success ultimately came down to focus and simplification. When you’re dealing with incredibly powerful software and ridiculously smart people, anything is possible. But anything can feel paralyzing. While the right something can galvanize a team.
I don’t do a ton of pure strategy projects (typically there are more concrete deliverables attached, like a website), so it was good practice to be back on one. My muscles definitely felt the strain of underuse.
If I had to pick one tactic for every company to begin practicing, it would be qualitative interviewing. This project proved once again the immense value. Whether internal or external, take time to talk to your people in a purposeful, unbiased way. Bringing in a third-party (like me), can help with the unbiased part.

LOOKING FOR A STRATEGIC COPYWRITER TO ASSIST YOUR TEAM? (SOME PEOPLE CALL THIS A CREATIVE OR ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR)

My name is Derek and I write all kinds of things for businesses of all sizes in many different industries. Do you have a writing or strategy need? This is what I love to do.

Send me an email: derek@plain.run

Brand Strategy in the Financial Industry