Producing Zendesk's new tagline
Role: Lead producer
The tagline work-stream was a key part of our Brand Refresh program, a year-long effort to evolve Zendesk's brand. Ethan Kanat, our Senior Creative Principal was my partner in this project alongside our product marketing, legal and globalization partners. This effort was also built on top of work from our Executive Creative Director, Olivia Kingsley, who helped define our new attributes, "Distilled, Confident, Generous, Freshhhh (the extra Hs are there for extra freshness)." These attributes and our updated messaging funnel, were the foundation of our team's work.
Strategic approach: In partnership with our cross-functional team, I outlined a roughly 5-month project plan that involved:
- A brainstorm sprint with Ethan and the writers
- Qualitative, directional feedback on initial ideas
- A secondary brainstorm sprint to narrow in on top contenders
- Quantitative testing on top contenders / initial legal and localization team review for blockers
- Quantitative testing results informing Executive reviews
- Confirmation of top 1-2 tagline
- CEO presentation, review and approval
- Handoff tagline to transcreation, regional marketing team approval
- Handoff tagline to production (printed materials for Relate event)
- Tagline launch at our key customer event, Relate
- Global launch of taglines
As with most project plans, phases moved around and timelines were adjusted for items like executive availability; but overall I'm proud to say that the contingency buffer time we allotted helped keep us on track for shipping the tagline to print-houses in time for our big customer event in May.
Team
Creative director: Ethan Kanat
Writers: Raven Wright, Kendrick Hammond
Research and product marketing insights: Paulette Chafe, Joey Edwards
Lock-up: Tim Lampe
Visual mock-ups: Faustine Gheno
Legal: Adriane Martinez
Localization: Léa Platel