Brand Design – Brand Book

Although my main focus at Honey has been Product Design, Brand Design was also under my radar. I've been driving the majority of brand design works at the early stage before the formation of the creative team. After the in-house creative team was fully staffed, I still provided inputs from high-level creative direction to project reviews.

1. Brand Book 2.0

As our CEO came up with a more solidified vision statement of 'Make Money Fair for Everyone', our brand needs to grow up to cover a wider demographic with a more mature look. Orange was dominating everywhere in Brand Book 1.0. We needed a more diverse look and voice.

The Problem

HMW evolve our current brand to cover a wider audience in order to strengthen the 'Everyone' part in our new vision statement? HMW change customers' perception of 'Finding a deal is cheap'?

The impact

Funded all go-to-market strategies and product initiatives until we hit $300 million annual revenue. User grew from 5m to 17m. User archetypes have grown from 'young tech enthusiasts' to all demographics.

Process

First, I interviewed multiple stakeholders to synthesize the pain points patterns for the then brand positioning and brand book.
~Orange being the dominant color limited our scalability in both marketing and product.
~The whole brand positioning made users think 'Using Honey is Cheap'

Then, I strategized with the marketing & creative team on our new brand core, brand segmentation, and brand persona. We landed on the more 'Sage' archetype. We decided the main tone to tell our customers was 'Using Honey is smart', which was going to evolve our customers' mental model to 'Finding a deal is cheap'

After confirming the new direction with all stakeholders (CEO, SVP of Growth...). I kickstarted guerrilla user research to validate internally. The majority of the group was very excited about the new direction.

Then, I drafted up the Brand Book outline.

After finalizing the structure of the Brand Book, I started different early explorations with the focus on 'for everyone' and 'Saving is smart'

Results

The final results for Honey Brand 2.0 are as below.

2. Brand Book 3.0

In early 2021, Brand Book 2.0 has helped grow Honey users from 5m to 17m. It has been stagnant for a while. Competitors rose with similar looks and voices. It’s time for us to differentiate again. The creative team was fully staffed at that time. My input has been mainly on consulting and reviewing.

The Problem

HMW differentiate us again from a sea of similar e-commerce and non-e-commerce brand? HMW come up with a completely different angle for shopping?

The impact

Honey has evolved again to be a very unique brand with the new brand core of 'Buyers' rejoice'

Process

After tons of brainstormings, user focus groups, and early exploratory jams, we landed our new brand direction on 'Joy'. Also noted, our Brand Book 1.0 was also on 'Joy', but the difference is that 1.0 was more on the 'Juvenile, and kinda silly' but the 3.0 will be more on the 'Sarcastic and witty' side.

Results

Early explorations I made with the product design team to influence the creative design team.