Tailwhip is my personal brand consultancy. I'm leaning in to my lifelong passion of BMX and focusing on Action & Adventure Sports as a potential niche audience because I want the Tailwhip brand to be genuine. A shared worldview and an authentic voice builds trust.
Sometime in 2022 I started a "small scale research" project (thanks to Philip Morgan) to learn more about the market. The results informed the creation of the Tailwhip website, copy, and a product offering.
Small Scale Research
The small scale research strategy needed to be inexpensive and require low emotional energy. It included LinkedIn, a CRM software, and a survey.
Questions on a simple survey (Google Forms) qualify the lead, uncover pain points, ask for a 1:1 follow-up interview, and get an email address.
The CRM (Octopus) automatically sends connection requests to leads from a LinkedIn search (for the niche audience). A link to the survey and a genuine message is sent with each connection request.
The process is almost entirely automated so the emotional toll is extremely low. And as a welcome bonus I now have a network of connections within the Action and Adventure Sports industries.
Survey Results
The survey results are meant to be interpreted as signals or patterns, not hard truths. Here are some highlights and interesting comments:
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63% developed their branding in-house
14% used an agency to develop their branding
22% thought the branding process was hard
26% thought the branding process was easy
18% thought the branding process was both easy and hard
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"We really know ourselves, but it was difficult to put that on paper.
"It is fun but it is a chore—everyone has an opinion!"
"Marketing and branding is a weak spot in our organization, primarily due to budget and staff capacity"
"It was a labor of love, so no one resented it, but it was not easy."
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Overall, the pattern I saw from the survey was:
Surprisingly, only 34% respondents said branding has achieved their goals. However, most of them (81%) developed branding without an outsider's perspective.
It might be a reach, but my hypothesis is that an outsider's perspective leads to more successful branding.
Interviews
Some of survey respondents submit their email addresses for a follow-up interview. All the interviews are done over Zoom and recorded because I want to be as present as possible to ask the right questions at the right moment. Rewatching the interviews gives an opportunity for Design Thinking style note taking. Patterns emerge and clustering notes happens immediately.
Writing Copy
The small scale research findings are found throughout Tailwhip.co's site design and copy. The basic bones of a brand story are created from the popular Storybrand framework. Copy on the site uses the same language the target audience uses in conversation and in survey results.
Website & Animation
The target audience's pains and dreams inspire the "sections" (headline, internal/external problem, success, etc) of the site. Each of these sections inspires an animated gif (created in Adobe Fresco). The animations draw the eye, reinforce the copy, and build Tailwhip's visual brand.
Bonus: Creating a Product Offering
Because the small scale research shows that 63% of survey respondents developed their branding in-house. And that, in a way, 40% of respondents admit that the branding process is difficult. Naturally, a product to help in-house teams develop branding seems like a decent idea.
The Brandslide kit is Tailwhip's first product offering. Customers can buy the Brandslide kit and have all the tools they need to run their own brand strategy workshop in a day (or less). The kit includes a 70 page user guide, 19 workshop templates, and an interactive "brand lens" pdf document to record results. Check out the Brandslide project in detail here.
