Block X Wealth is a global capital management firm which uses AI technology to trade digital assets and highly volatile asset classes. They’re a tech-powered hedge fund for the digital era built to capitalise off the age of disruption. However, the complex messaging and strong crypto stance meant their team and brand were telling a confusing story.
The leadership team were too close to the business to see the bigger picture. They were stuck looking from the inside out and needed a partner with a fresh set of eyes to help shift their perspective to look at their business from outside-in. Enter Sleuth.
Sometimes when you’re renovating, you’re better off knocking the whole thing down and starting from scratch. So goodbye Block X Wealth. Hello Ecstatus. We lost all associations with crypto and developed a name and narrative which spoke to the heart of how Ecstatus created value for its clients - through its technology and its people.
We continued to dig deeper and worked with the leadership team to develop a shared language and set of stories to communicate the new narrative. Our collaborative process and methodologies facilitated collective learning and soon we had the whole team singing from the same song sheet.
Next, we took the insights and core narrative into the execution phase. The clarity we gained upfront ensured that we developed a cohesive visual identity that aligned with the business’ purpose and core values. We then created go-to-market content which was used to produce a new website, marketing material and presentation script.
Looking At The Cosmos: To Infinity And Beyond…
Visual Narrative: The Noise Is Deafening. Seek Silence In Space.
The visual language draws inspiration from the vastness of space, using it as a metaphor for the overwhelming feeling many people have with the amount of information available today. The high levels of complexity present unforeseen and unforeseeable obstacles. In today’s world, we're faced with the daunting challenge of having to navigate our way through markets with little to no visibility, relying on computers to help us plot a safe journey.
Looking out at the cosmos we're faced with breathtaking beauty and complexity, seemingly devoid of meaning. But for centuries, humans have used constellations (patterns in the night sky) to navigate their way through vast oceans and landscapes. The abstract graphic elements are representative of the individual stars and constellations and take inspiration from shape, form and texture of these elements.
Sleuth: What value did we drive through empathy & inquiry?
Grant: Sleuth’s mature & structured approach to understanding the customer frame-of-mind with objectivity allowed us to create EHIRE as a brand that resonated with our customers at an emotional level as opposed to the existing transactional one. This enabled EHIRE to build more trust with new and repeat customers which boded well for our long-term growth prospects.
Sleuth: How did the website perform?
Grant: Does the above in Business Result not suffice?
Grant purchased Exclusive Hire from the founder who ran it for 15+ years. The business was well established in the event hiring industry however it had stagnated. The new management team were ambitious and intended to grow the business. They’d made great strides forwards on the operational systems that could support industry-defying customer experiences.
However, the brand felt dated and did not tell the story of convenience which lay at the heart of what EHIRE was all about. What’s more, the brand did not have a visual identity that could support a consistent and coherent brand image across multiple digital and physical touchpoints. Enter Sleuth. We were challenged to help differentiate EHIRE by sharing a new narrative with its new and existing customers.
In the initial stages, we focused on overcoming the legacy issues associated with the previous management team as well as getting to grips with the perception of the business in the market.
We dived right into an empathetic interviewing process with the internal team and key customers. The stories and insights we uncovered helped shape the narrative for the business, brand and customer. The truths we revealed through the process informed messaging, fueled strategies and helped direct our creative efforts.
Next, we went to an execution phase to develop the processes, content and assets needed to bring the narrative to life. We then turned our attention to sales channels and operations where we delivered a basic CRM system with a consultative sales process, an E-Commerce website designed to become their lead salesperson and branded their head office and Stellenbosch store.
"With greater consistency and focus around our brand message and presence, EHIRE grew website traffic by more than 75% and online enquiries via the hybrid e-commerce website grew 250% and a much stronger conversion rate." - Grant
Sleuth: What value did we drive through empathy & inquiry?
Grant: Sleuth’s mature & structured approach to understanding the customer frame-of-mind with objectivity allowed us to create EHIRE as a brand that resonated with our customers at an emotional level as opposed to the existing transactional one. This enabled EHIRE to build more trust with new and repeat customers which boded well for our long-term growth prospects.
Sleuth: Imparting knowledge like brand positioning, customer profiles.
Grant: Sleuth focused on creating an environment of discovery for the EHIRE team that was informative and actionable. Their willingness to share vital experience-based knowledge in a constructive way helped the EHIRE management team immensely.
F5WC is the largest amateur 5v5 event in the world and aims to redefine what it means to be an amateur footballer. It’s an annual tournament which was started in 2014 and is open to all amateur players 16 years and over. The tournament hosts qualifiers with the help of local partners all around the world where teams battle it out to represent their country at the F5WC World Finals. Each year the finals are hosted in a different major city around the world.
Aaron from Augment Agency had been approached by the F5WC event owners to develop a campaign for the 2018 tournament. However, the logo and brand identity did not fit into the bold and bright visual landscape in which it had to compete. The recent rebranding of Premier League highlighted this fact. Aaron challenged Sleuth to conceptualise and create a new identity, visual language and campaign to launch the F5WC 2018 tournament.
The concept was born from a simple idea, the fact that anyone, from anywhere in the world could represent their country and become a world champion. It’s anyone's game. We fleshed out the messaging for the campaign and developed a storyline for the video content.
With a strong concept in place, we began to explore visual directions. We started by redesigning the logo to be bold, strong and appealing to a global audience. Next, we began to play with ideas for a visual language. We then developed a dynamic design program with supporting graphics assets so that we could ensure that any team from any of the 42 countries could produce content that was consistent with the campaign identity.
Once we’d got the visual language down. We produced an integrated marketing campaign to generate interest and drive sign-ups with local partners in various countries. The campaign then moved onto the next phase which aimed to create excitement and hype leading up to the World Finals.
After a long year, the journey leads us to the World Finals in Cape Town. The goal for the tournament was to create a set of experiences which would give amateur footballers the feeling that they were playing in a professional tournament. We worked closely with Augment to create all the branding and collateral to make the experiences a reality. This included everything from the player’s kits, kickboards and ambient branding, to social media content and highlight reels.
We even created player profiles and team videos for motion graphics which were featured live on the display boards. We also capture the entire event to create promotional content and stories for the next years campaign.
Goodie Bag is an events based sampling business that helps brands put their product samples in the hands of mass participation events like the Cape Town Cycle Tour. The business has been running for over 20 years with little change occurring over that period of time.
The business owner was looking at selling the business and retiring. The potential buyer, David, wanted to go through a short due diligence process and see what potential lay within it. David was uncertain about the value of the business and whether the business could exist beyond a key individual’s involvement.
“I had a good idea of how the business operated and the motives of the business owners. I wanted to get Sleuth involved in order to flip the narrative and see what growth potential there was.” - David Bradford
Sleuth got involved to give both parties an objective perspective on the business so that they could see the business from the outside in.
We facilitated 3 workshops that were used to uncover the purpose and values of the business, give clarity on the current business model, and identify what the potential future business could look like?
Ultimately, we wanted to provide the potential buyer with an objective view of the business in order to make a well informed decision on whether or not to buy the business. In order to achieve this we facilitated crucial conversations between the buyer and seller, which generated a large degree of trust within the sale.
Through this process we realised that the Goode Bag was proving value to a customer segment however it hadn’t commercialised the opportunity. In collaboration with Dave, we put together an experimental go-to-market strategy to test the opportunity.
By the end of the workshops Dave had a well informed view of the past and future business models, understood the clarified business purpose and values as well as how that would inform the business going forward.
“We implemented the recommended changes based on our business model session which resulted in an additional R250k profit. This proved to me that there was growth potential in the business. Sleuth then helped me finalize buy-out terms and I’m very excited for the future business evolution.” - David Bradford
Frankees is a start-up business that sells their branded underwear through an e-commerce website. The business had been operating for a little over a year with two founders involved in the business, as well as two major investors. As a small business, it was going through an unpredictable period that was leaving the founder who was in charge of the day-to-day of the business, feeling as though he lacked direction.
The founder recognised that trade-offs would need to be made in certain areas in order to improve the efficiency of the operations and make better use of his time. As he was so close to the business, it was difficult to gain an outside perspective to give him the necessary direction to move the business forward.
“I was getting pulled in all kinds of directions and was struggling to keep my head above water. I felt like I was drowning in work and needed to make changes in order to grow the business.” - Tim Whitehead
Sleuth got involved in this to provide the founder with the perspective necessary to help clarify his focus and energy towards the activities that would create the biggest commercial impact for the business.
The major focus of this project was to facilitate a 4 hour workshop with the founder to provide him with a better understanding of the existing business model. This allowed him to direct his focus towards the key activities within the day-to-day and help him steer the ship in the right direction.
We focused on the high impact activities that would deliver the most reward for the effort it would take to implement. This allowed us to indicate boundaries for the founder to work within, so that he was focused primarily on the high impact activities, rather than spending time on non-value add processes.
From this workshop, the founder had a well laid out business plan that highlighted the key activities within the business that would allow him to divert his focus to what mattered most for the business.
Ultimately, this led to the business doubling its monthly revenue within one month of the implementation of the action plan, and tripling monthly revenue further within the following month.
“After a year of trading, our business was growing well, but we were unsure where to focus our immediate attention. We needed assistance in pushing the business in the areas that would give us the best return. After a strategy session with Sleuth, we streamlined and simplified the business which helped me understand the right avenues to focus on. Our revenue literally doubled a month later and tripled the month after that.” - Tim Whitehead
Frankees is a start-up business who sells their branded underwear through an e-commerce website and a distribution agreement with a major retailer. The business had been operating for over 2 years and had grown to a team of two founders, two employees and two major investors.
The business was gathering momentum and recently signed an agreement to sell its products into a major retailer chain. Previously, the brand operated organically because of the founder's personality. This made it very difficult to articulate what the business really was, why it was in business and what it believed. As Frankees focus was on their e-commerce site, they needed to string together a coherent narrative to ensure that the messaging was succinct and consistent across all touchpoints.
“We had just signed an agreement with Cotton On to go into their retail stores for the first time. It was an exciting opportunity for us and meant that we needed to ensure that our brand narrative came to life outside of Frankees' controlled channels.” - Tim Whitehead
Sleuth was brought on to this project to help clearly define and articulate the brand’s identity. Using key messaging, we were able to weave together a coherent narrative. We were also mandated to develop a product design process that would follow the brand’s identity going forward.
We needed to standardise the brand’s narrative and messaging in order to grow the business’s sales. We facilitated 7 X 2-hour work sessions to explore the brand's purpose, values, promise, positioning, market and ultimately their customers higher-order psychological needs.
We used these answers as the foundation of the brand’s narrative, and built out design systems that related to that narrative. This insight was delivered in the format of a Google Slides presentation.
We developed a comprehensive 232 page presentation encompassing everything from the brand’s identity to the product design system that was implemented within the business. Having facilitated these conversations through the process, we were able to get the whole business singing from the same song sheet.
The new brand narrative was launched in July of 2019, which is typically one of the worst retail months of the year. What followed, was Frankees’ 3rd highest revenue month since its inception, being beaten only by the previous Christmas and Black Friday months.
