PULSEPOINT
A Brand Evolution into Health
Being the creative director for an evolving health marketing company presented some of the most interesting challenges in Branding. How do you maintain an air of trust while pushing the boundaries of targeting? How do you speak simultaneously to legacy general market clients and new health-specific partnerships? And how do you tastefully dedicate a conference room to mullets?
Summary
The Mission
After years of success in programmatic technology for the general market, it was time for PulsePoint to focus its products on solutions for healthcare and pharma. The brand identity needed to evolve to attract clients and partners within this vertical.
The Outcome
We took the exploration process back to the beginning, starting with solidifying brand positioning and reframing our voice. This set us up for updating our logo, brand guidelines and website/content strategy to better align us with healthcare partners.
The Impact
The new website lead to a 180% increase in conversions between 2019 and 2020, and more emphasis was placed on thought leadership (both in the site's blog and in industry event presence) to cement PulsePoint's place in the healthcare vertical. The newfound identity helped the company reach one of its highest-level goals: PulsePoint was purchased by WebMD in Spring 2021.
SERVICES
Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Copywriting, Brand Identity Design, Web Design, Motion Graphics, Illustration
LEADING HEALTH FORWARD
Leading into 2020, PulsePoint needed a new face, but more importantly, a laser-focused sense of its identity. The technology had always been strong as a general market programmatic ad exchange, but PulsePoint was growing and becoming more niche. The future state of the company was a B2B SaaS platform that focused on improving health outcomes. However, it's hard to take the leap from where you are to where you want to be, especially when that means changing and defining who you are at the core. And it's harder to get people to buy in to your brand message if you can't stick a flag in the sand about what that is.
But as Sloan Gaon, CEO, would always say: "This is not a pivot. This is an evolution"
Sleek. Futuristic. Revolutionary.
The Marketing team partnered with WANT Branding to take an audit of the current company and help us to develop our brand manifesto, attributes, elevator pitch, and website copy. With a brand story in place, I could start the process of putting visuals to the newfound identity. First step was leading the executives through a Stylescapes exercise, writing and designing for three distinct client personas.
This step gives people a great idea on how the visuals tie to the voice, and for the new brand should feel. With a couple of tweaks, we landed on "Zane," our 28yo Brand Manager. That client persona represented a bold and revolutionary future state; big typography, bright colors, and a sleek design sense that says tech, but not so much "corporate." By focusing on who PulsePoint wanted to attract, PulsePoint was able to focus on what it wanted to be.
The dotted P was removed and the tagline was added to the logo lock-up, along with the purple dash to invoke forward movement and hearken back to the legacy brand color. The purple was made more vibrant, but used in a lower percentage across the board. Creating contrast with neutral greys and also playing with shape fields, this allowed for more moments of visual interest as opposed to large purple washes. The expanded secondary colors also brought identities to the products and platforms within PulsePoint.
PANTONE: 266 C
HEX: #661DE1
RGB: 102, 29, 225
PANTONE: 2227C
HEX: #5bb6c8
RGB: 91, 182, 200
PANTONE: 2344C
HEX: #EE7F63
RGB: 238, 127, 99
PANTONE: 1235C
HEX: #FBAE17
RGB: 251, 174, 23
PANTONE: 447C
HEX: #333333
RGB: 51, 51, 51
A BOLD, NEW VISION
After the launch in early 2020, PulsePoint ran full speed ahead with a fresh identity and a firm foundation as the health expertise within programmatic marketing. While COVID removed a lot of in-person activations for the year, the solid brand was able to fully show up through a ramped up thought leadership push, a dedicated pandemic response case study to help increase vaccination rates, and a virtual edition of its annual Digital Health Forum. In particular to the website, conversions increased 180% YoY from 2019 to 2020, proving that going back to the company's values to rebuild made the brand story finally clear to sought after health audiences. And with PulsePoint being purchased by WebMD in Spring 2021, one of the highest-level goals of the company was finally achieved.
