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Launching a brand

Client: Mayple Global

Project: Launch of the Mayple Global brand and their new website

Capabilities: Research, Workshops, Copywriting, Brand Strategy, Landing Pages, Wireframes, Blogs, Press Release


Are you going to be launching a brand soon and wondering what it takes to quickly spin up a website, early messaging, and content?

This was exactly the case Mayple Global found themselves in when they reached out to me for help. I’ll walk you through my process and show you photos from the journey. (As a reminder, click on the image thumbnails below to expand them and see them in more detail)

Enjoy!

Derek

Understanding the landscape

In our first conversation, I wanted to quickly understand the existing assets. What did they have and what was lacking?

  • “Do you have designs or wireframes?” No.

  • “Do you have brand or messaging guidelines already in place that you’re happy with?” No.

  • “Do you have an agency or internal team guiding this?” We have an in-house designer.

  • “Was there anything in particular about my portfolio that stood out to you as relevant or a good fit for your project?” Yes, the work you did for Flexport was great.

Asking good questions

Missing information can come from several places, choose wisely for your project:

  • Internal stakeholders

  • External partners, prospects, or customers

  • Industry research, reports

  • Competitors

For Mayple Global, due to the quick timeline and also the fact that they were brand new, we didn’t have the luxury of talking to prospects or customers. Instead, I conducted a 45-min work session with key internal stakeholders.

With these quick answers in place, I set to work making a list of questions that I needed answers to. Here was the agenda:

  • 5 min — Intro

  • 10 min — On your business

  • 10 min — On your audience

  • 10 min — On your sales cycle

  • 5 min — On your onboarding process

  • 5 min — On your website

Steal my questions for your own work session. But make sure you customize it to your unique situation.

Moving into wireframes

Don’t let the word wireframe throw you off or intimidate you. It simply means we need a way to consolidate our learnings and express them in a prioritized way combined with early thoughts about the user flow. Whew! What a sentence.

In short, I determined we needed three key pages:

  • Homepage

  • How it Works

  • Contact Us

Based on this, plus what I knew about the audience, and some pretty strong messaging concepts that I had gathered from the work session, I created a first draft, which quickly turned into an edited second draft.

Some of the copywriting I was especially happy with:

  • Next stop - global domination

  • Set yourself free to sell to anyone, anywhere

  • Online sales shouldn’t be restricted by physical boundaries

  • From you, to us, to…everywhere (84+ countries and counting)

  • Proactive warehousing

Take a look at the two wireframe drafts below.

Mayple Global’s talented designer, Freya, translated my wireframes into some very beautiful designs

Click to expand

Supporting the sales and distribution side of the launch

With the primary pages of the website designed and written, now I turned my attention to the supporting pieces. These pieces answer the question, “How will customers hear about the launch and what content is needed for those channels?”

For Mayple Global, they had a sales team who would be prospecting, a press release, and then wanted to start the long game of building organic search traffic.

To support this, I created:

  • 3 long-form blog posts aligned to long-tail keywords and answering common sales questions or objections

  • A “how much could you save” calculator

  • A press release

Additional images of the messaging out in the wild

Remember, you can click on any of these images to expand them and see them in more detail.

In Summary

  • This was truly a global project, not only because of the brand and service but also where each member of the team was located. Dubai is in a very different time zone than Seattle!

  • While the industry is complex, I was very happy with how we were able to simplify the message to speak to the ambitions of growing direct-to-consumer brands.

  • This was the most complete “launch package” I’ve ever done by myself. It really was building all the pieces they needed from scratch.

  • Their team was extremely pleased with the work and asked how they could give a testimonial, to which I did not have a great answer and it made me think more about how I might better collect and showcase client quotes.

  • Lastly, ask better questions. If you’re looking for the one big secret to better creative outcomes, this is it. Work on your questions, how they’re asked, the format, your ability to listen, curiosity, and everything related to digging deeper.


Looking for a strategic copywriter to assist your team? (Some people call this a Creative Director 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