Stories, updates and ideas from Jellypepper

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For the past few months, we've been slowly working on the Jellypepper brand and website. We released the new site and brand a few weeks ago (hope you like it ✌️), but before this year, we've never actually invested any time into the Jellypepper brand.

It was essentially hacked together over the last few years with the content we had available and the small time between each new project where we could write a few words, update some typos or create some new pages. We spent whatever spare time we had publishing case studies.

A big contributor to the new design and language was Brand Strategy — figuring out who we really are, what we do and where we're going. If we're going to be an agency that offers branding services, it's pretty critical that our own brand be reflective of our personality and culture.

So, I wanted to show some of the discussions and thoughts we had internally that led to our new brand — maybe it'll inspire you to think more about your own brand and how to turn culture into design.

Our industry is incredibly busy — there's a new agency popping up every day. Our old website was designed to stand out and compete almost purely from our core message — a creative agency for disrupters. Our focus on "disruptive startups" (startups that are working on cool technology, or in a cool industry) is what drew people in.

Every tech startup wants to be seen as disruptive, so in a sense it appeals to their ego. But beyond that, our existing and previous clients also creates a sense of rapport through a shared understanding that we know the struggles that they're going through and we have the tools to help them get from, as Peter Thiel says, zero to one.

This is all well and good — we absolutely love working with disruptive tech startups — but it's unfair to the folks we want to work with who don't see themselves as disruptive, folks who are focused on things like social good or community-driven initiatives.

We wanted our new brand direction to take a step back from this disruptive-first attitude and focus more on the vibrant and interesting ideas people have on a daily basis. This new direction would also form the basis for a new brand identity, as well as the guidelines for copywriting throughout the new site and beyond.

We had a lot of goals for the new brand direction, a key one being a sense of coherency and quality throughout our own brand. We put a lot of effort into our client work and case studies and we wanted to bring that same level of care into our own.

As a creative director, it also helps from an internal alignment perspective, bringing the team onto the same page in terms of how to represent Jellypepper, not just from a visual perspective but in how we talk to clients, publish work, etc.

Externally, we wanted to convey the long-term benefit of partnering with Jellypepper for whatever you need help with. Jellypepper's client list has begun to look a lot like a VC portfolio. In the same way that raising money from certain venture capital firms signals you are destined for success, we'd love for that little "Website designed by Jellypepper" in the footer to mean you've been set up for success.

But at the end of the day, we just wanted our identity and language to resonate more with the people we love working with — past and future clients who share our values and vision for a future that's a bit... brighter.

To structure this massive undertaking, we had to treat ourselves like a client. We started by running an extensive Brand Strategy project on ourselves — setting our goals in stone, having conversations with our internal team and with clients, performing desk research on the wider industry and researching our target audience.

One of the most insightful aspects of this process involved aligning the way we think about ourselves with the way we're perceived by our past clients. We reached out to a few of our past clients — Lightswap and Corellium — to see if we could find dissonance between their perceptions of us before and after we started working together.

Eventually, we figured out two key things:

Agency practices are regularly stifling and impersonal. 70% of small business owners rate their agency experience ≤ 3 stars, while 45% have negative perceptions towards agencies in general. Clients feel uncomfortable when agencies take themselves too seriously and are not willing to collaborate — they're seen as a short term necessary evil rather than long-term creative partner. Working with agencies should be fun and engaging, as long as they have a genuine interest and understanding of what their clients do. Thankfully, according to our clients, our progressive and stimulating approach is a refreshing example of this.

Small companies and startups have no room for error — budget and timeline wise. Agencies have to be chosen carefully and essentially adopted as new team members, therefore the agency's reputation and cultural fit are extremely important factors. Lean business models like ours are gaining traction — the remote model leading to smaller overheads — and the mindset encourages efficiency. Essentially, we need to play to our strengths and focus on how efficient and reliable our unique business model is.

More than 80% of agencies we explored take themselves seriously with an understated and formal vibe — highly aspirational and frequently serious. From our discussions, it's exactly what can make clients feel intimidated and why we decided to double-down on our expressing our enthusiasm, integrity and problem-solving attitude in our new brand.

More importantly, we wanted to surface some of our core values:

One of the things we value is show, not talk — we rely less on sales decks, phone calls and meetings. Instead we focus on evolving our own brand and publishing amazing case studies and blog content that shows that we know what we're talking about. During a project, we prefer delivering value in iterations rather than communicating it will all be done eventually.

If you're truly good at something, you shouldn't have to convince everyone you meet.

Another is our greatest strength, which isn't our past work, client list or even our process. It’s our ability to jump into a completely new idea or industry, immerse ourselves in it, understand it as best we can, collaborate with the internal team and produce something that looks and feels naturally brilliant.

Our clients have noted that “we’re great at understanding new, complex ideas quickly” which is kind of a must for the diverse industries that we work. They're referring to the fact we can dive into concepts like blockchain, AI, self-driving cars, etc. and achieve a relatively good understanding of how it actually works under the hood in just a few days.

We hadn't talked openly about the team on our website historically because our business model is very different to how agencies typically operate — hiring a full-time creative team, having an office, etc. We're a remote and distributed studio, which historically made some clients uncomfortable.

But here's the thing — our startup clients don't mind this difference. In fact, due to COVID-19, this model has actually made us resilient to the downturns affecting traditional agency models. It means we have smaller overheads that we don't need to pass on to clients and it means we can work with the best talent anywhere, not limited to who can work 9—5 in a bleak office.

And frankly, the kind of leads that aren't comfortable with such a modern approach to work are not the sort of people we want to be working with.

We've done a lot in the way of services over the last few years — digital campaigns, 3D and motion design, SEO, growth and content marketing, print design. This rebrand was also a chance for us to revisit our services and decide what we want to focus on going forward, but more importantly, how to frame and explain what we do to our audience.

Out of the eight verticals we've previously engaged in, we decided to continue with three, but ensure we can execute them end-to-end and perfectly. Our new focus is simply: brands, websites and products.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our new brand strategy for Jellypepper!

Jellypepper does Jellypepper. How meta! A bit of background into our recent brand strategy and identity refresh.

Revisiting the Jellypepper brand in 2021

As of today, there have been 9,776,392 confirmed cases and 493,604 deaths worldwide as a result of the infectious disease COVID-19, caused by the most recently discovered novel coronavirus.

Some countries have been quick to adapt. New Zealand reported zero confirmed cases every day for almost a month and many other countries have implemented strict lockdown laws, social distancing guidelines and border closures in an attempt to flatten the curve (rate of growth).

Other countries have been less proactive or fortunate. The United States just reached 40,000 confirmed cases per day totalling 2,467,510 cases. Countries such as Belarus, Mexico and Brazil ignored the early warning signs and are now on the rise.

While this news is troubling and the global numbers show no signs of slowing (they're actually accelerating), I'm overjoyed to see the resilience of the startup community during this time. I count us lucky to work with an industry that already hold safety, health and remote work in such high regard.

Still, the general economic downturn has given us a little breathing room and time to think - evaluate how we work with clients and contractors.

In summary, in the last few months we have made sweeping changes to the way we run projects. Here are a few key changed we have implemented to do our part. Even better, they are changes that save you money, save us time and keep us all healthy. We'll be keeping some of these changes even after the pandemic has settled.

Our first and most obvious change is switching from in-person meetings to Zoom calls. While we absolutely love catching up for a coffee with you and informally talking through the details of your project over a double espresso, your health and our ability to serve you are paramount.

When we start a project, all meetings and catchups from kickoff to handover will be managed with Zoom and Calendly.

We're also putting a stop to our in-person workshops. Previously when it was time to kickoff a project, dive into brand strategy or figure out your new website's requirements, we would run workshops where we bring in some of your team and some of our team to hash out the details. This is a harder habit to break as there's no substitute for that real energy that comes from everyone coming together for a discovery session.

However, we can achieve the same end result online. Rather than working with you to figure out the specifics, we'll be switching to online forms like Typeform to assist us in gathering this content in a conversational way.

We sometimes send out gift baskets and swag to our clients and contractors to say thanks for their hard work. New studies suggest that the coronavirus may remain on surfaces for days, so we've decided to press pause on these and start spreading the love in Slack. Hopefully once the pandemic has settled, we can start bringing this back.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Jellypepper is a remote and distributed creative agency, so working from home means you rely on a stack of tools on a daily basis. Given how much these tools impact our productivity, we are starting to invest in our own tooling and plan to make them available to other agencies and freelancers once they're ready.

In the meantime, stay safe and wash your hands.

We are living in unprecedented times as a new pandemic sweeps the globe. Here's what we're doing to stop the spread.

Changes in response to COVID-19

A few tips and tricks for designers hoping to kickstart their own studio or agency, from our own experience.

From Product Designer to Agency Director

Ask any designer about their portfolio and they will tell you they are too busy to create, update or launch it. Portfolios are incredibly important and not just for showing off your visual design talents - it's arguably your greatest ambassador. It tells your story, showcases your work and closes leads while you are busy living your life.

Freelancing and agencies are a sales-based business where brand is everything. First impressions count for a lot, and the rest comes through in your case studies. Put yourself in the shoes of a lead  -  a visitor to your portfolio can only really judge you on your brand and case studies, so make them count.

Once you have enough great case studies, clients don’t hesitate to reach out, or compare you with other agencies, as they can see that they will get a great results. While some clients are interested in creating something new and bold, many clients tend to want something contemporary, so a portfolio ripe with versatile, high-quality content can make that initial conversation a lot easier.

If it helps, think of it like a SaaS product: investing in Google Ads won’t help if your homepage doesn’t communicate that you can solve the problem they have. Your sales funnel becomes that of a leaky bucket  - good marketing will fill it with more water (pushing more people through top-of-funnel) but you will lose them where it matters  - deeper down in your sales funnel, near conversion or activation (which for us, means getting in touch or hiring us).

Stories are the foundation of how we communicate as a species. The insights and things we learn from stories we hear, tell and experience form who we are as a person. If you can tell a brilliant story, you will have your audience hooked. This is the power of a case study — not showing a finished, polished product but taking your reader on a journey, explaining the highs and lows, trials and tribulations, of a project.

But, if that is not measurable enough: long case studies are fantastic for SEO. At Jellypepper, case studies are the primary way we receive new visitors. The in-depth storytelling around how we created a brand, designed a website or built an app frequently contain popular keywords for Google searches.

Also, it is great when potential clients are searching for “who redesigned X”.

At the end of the day, your brand is all you have as a creative. Your name, reputation and body of work is definitively what positions you in the hierarchy of your competition and makes clients want to hire you to work on their products. Having confidence in your online portfolio can make talking to people much easier to sell yourself as you are not apologising or hiding it.

The long-term effects of having an up-to-date portfolio are compounding and distinct. Over time, it can also help position you as an industry expert if your case studies are thoughtful and your work is brilliant. Running a business is a lot like having a brand. You’re going to have one anyway, so you might as well invest in it and make it great.

Great case studies make it easier for bigger companies to hire you, as you are able to show the reasoning, results and context of your project, which shows that you know how to think. This is just as important (if not more) than being able to produce beautiful work.

Good clients will hire you because they have seen your past work and know you can design beautiful things. Great clients will hire you because they have read your past case study and know you have the ability to deconstruct complex problems, collaborate with others on a beautiful solution and balance intuition with standards and data when making decisions.

Typically, your best leads come as referrals from previous clients. But that does not immediately negate the usefulness of a portfolio in showing visually that you can not only do the job well, but that your thought process and your ability to solve problems is solid. It’s not proof, but reassurance that you can do the job to a high standard.

So, where do you even find the time to produce case studies? It's like going to the gym or cleaning the house: you don’t find the time, you make the time. It’s a time-consuming investment that you’ll only pursue if you structure your approach, carve out time and make a dedicated effort.

But if you’re looking for a tip  - start collecting documents, resources, pitch decks and meeting notes during your next gig. It’s very difficult to remember the little details which made the project successful after the fact, so having a cache of content you can dig through helps immensely.

Using case studies and quality content to improve your personal brand and streamline your sales process.

Stories, updates and ideas on Agency Life

Revisiting the Jellypepper brand in 2021

Changes in response to COVID-19

From Product Designer to Agency Director

The long-term impact of building your portfolio