Author: Jen Derks

VC CommsCon 2022: Taming the Overload

Posted on May 20, 2022 by - Design, Business

There was an unofficial theme present at this year’s VC Comms Con 2022, put on by BAM Communications: marketers are spread thin! This group of high-performing marcom professionals got together to share insights that help them navigate the pressures of marketing their VC firms, as well as support the portfolio companies the firm represents. Often, they find themselves trying to influence change in an organization where they are the only one in their role.

We work with many marketers in similarly siloed roles outside of the VC world as well, from lone CMOs just starting to think about building their teams, to the fresh out of school marketing professional learning the ropes by supporting a smaller organization with everything from social media to hosting events. They all face the same question.

How can they do it all?

In service to our broader network, I’d share some of my takeaways and teachings from this year’s VC Comms Con, and strongly encourage anyone in a marketing role at a VC fund to keep a watch out for details about next year. It’s an event like no other. 

Cliff Worley gave us a list of online tools he’s curated over the years, to support any need from getting a perfect shareable picture of a tweet, to better LinkedIn analytics, which just serves as a reminder to marketers everywhere that if there’s a hack you wish you had, it’s likely out there. Another pro tip? Use Zapier to connect Twitter and Slack so you are the first to know. 

Nikki Parker gave the most sage advice to look at moving work forward by leveraging your team and taking stock in your initiatives, asking yourself what’s reasonable for you to own, and what’s not. She asks herself:

  1. What can I Own?
  2. What can I Influence?
  3. What can I Outsource?
  4. What can I Force?

Having good resources is key.

There was also a recurring discussion from multiple attendees around curating resources. In the main stage panel with Elise Brown, Nikki Parker, and Tyana Daley, the shared consensus was that PR and Branding agencies were the most sought after resources by their portfolio companies this last year. Having an arsenal of experts at their side makes them more powerful overall, and able to recommend the right resources at the right time.

Websites are an especially fun challenge.

I was invited to speak during a breakout session on behalf of Four Fin about keeping website redesigns from flying off the rails. The main takeaway? Be thoughtful and right-size the lift. Especially in the venture ecosystem where the speed of business moves faster than a new Tik Tok trend, it pays off to take a minute upfront to get clear.

The top six reasons a website redesign flies off the rails:

  1. You want the website to do too much
  2. Everyone battles for their win
  3. You use the website redesign as a chance to revisit your brand
  4. Content takes way longer than you thought
  5. New ideas emerge and you react to them
  6. Your team forgets that websites can be iterative

Have you experienced any of these site redesign pitfalls?

The main theme in the solutions presented for all of these, is that any good website redesign will not magically happen by simply signing a contract with an outside agency, no matter what they might tell you. Your team needs to be aligned internally on what the website needs to do (not all it can do), how you’ll gather and develop content to provide to your agency, and when to “park” new ideas for a phase two or future website update.

Your agency can and should help guide you, but it’s a partnership. 

At Four Fin, we strive to keep branding right-sized for the early stages of growth, making sure the work we do is impactful enough to move brands forward to their next stage, without overdoing it.

Our solution for launching an impactful brand and website in the early stages of growth (Seed-stage or early Series A for my VC friends here) is a four-month, guided exercise called Brand Splash. Splashes are designed with the following:

  • A set schedule
  • Iterative and collaborative work sessions
  • Are scheduled across a reasonable amount of time for the client to supply content with everything else they have going on, and
  • A hand-held approach that doesn’t blow your marketing budget

Thanks again to the team at BAM communications for creating this incredible experience. Your hard work created a safe place for the free-sharing of ideas that is rare, and a community that supports each other openly. I was honored to share my expertise, and in awe of the attendees present, and their tenacity for excellence in a field where doing it all feels impossible.   

Your Brand is Either Make Believe, or it Makes Believers

Posted on April 7, 2021 by - Branding Insight, Business, Making Waves

Chase Baker, Unsplash

The difference can be seen in your culture. 

A big part of our brand discovery process is to uncover the good that already exists and lean into your strengths: the differentiators, the value, the heart and soul of the business, the why. That discovery process is enlightening. 

Sometimes, you find that you’re aligning your external brand to reflect what you already know and live by internally. Sometimes, thinking about how you want your brand to show up in the world makes you realize there’s work to do internally first. 

“We are committed to our customers living more eco-friendly lives.” – Says the company that makes everyone commute into a city for in-person jobs that don’t pay them enough to live near the office. 

“We all strongly believe that by helping green-tech startups with IT support, we’re contributing to their impact on the future of our world.” – Says the CEO of a company that runs on strict processes, entry-level talent, and little internal training on the “why” itself.

See what I mean? 

Tom Wolff, Unsplash

Your brand is only as good as the trust you build in it. 

Once we know your strengths, we can identify where the intersect is between what you want to be known for and what you can be known for. We find where you can position yourself to plant your brand in hearts, minds, and markets. Then, we build people’s trust in that position so it’s obvious to everyone how firmly you’re holding your spot.  

That trust starts within. If you’re not living it, you can’t be known for it. Period. Living it looks like passion and energy shared across the organization toward a common mission. It’s a code of ethics, values, spirit, personality, operational practices, and more. 

It’s culture. 

When a strong internal culture supports and validates a meaningful and impactful external brand, believers are made.

Not sure what you are supposed to be “living”? 

A Brand Session is a good place to start. This 3-week sprint is highly effective in uncovering your truth and translating it into a visual system ready to show the world. Living up to it is an ongoing game, but we’d love to help you get started. 

Let's do this

Our Brand Session Obsession

Posted on July 24, 2020 by - Branding Insight, Business

We talk a lot about Brand Sessions over here now because we absolutely love doing them. We love the pace, the experience, and the results. 

A Brand Session is Four Fin’s three-week branding service that we formulated in early 2018, formerly known as Brand Camp. It’s our flagship service and usually how we get acquainted with new clients. While many of those clients continue with Four Fin to paddle out and make waves, it all starts by defining the brand core. 

We created Brand Sessions as a way for us to set our clients’ brand foundations without 4+ months of development. Most businesses don’t have time for that. While the process has shifted a bit since we started and we’ve renamed the service to better align with our brand, we’ve seen great results. We look forward to adding more progress-driven brands to our roster this year while continuing to improve the experience.

So, what is a Brand Session? 

It might be easier to define by defining what it’s not:

A DIY branding tutorial, group coaching, or an online offering.
There are plenty of resources out there for those wanting to tackle their brand refresh in-house. This is a professional service for busy founders, CEOs, and CMOs who want their branding done right without attempting it themselves, capitalizing their team’s energy in the process, or waiting 6+ months to see the results.

A service for new brand visuals alone.
While the visual results of Brand Sessions are easier to see, this service goes far beyond a new or refreshed visual identity of logos, colors, fonts, etc. We are experts at defining a brand from the inside out; with strategy exercises, work sessions, and what we internally jokingly call Brand Therapy. You will get to know your brand better throughout this process and that clarity informs much more than your look. 

Superficial.
While our branding service is quicker than most, it doesn’t lack quality. We cut out time-thieves like fine-tuned presentations, time redirecting junior-level talent, research to validate what you already know, rescheduled meetings, design overthink, and an especially dangerous time-killer: backward motion due to personnel changes or stalled progress. 

All you need.
Brand Sessions are foundational, setting the course for what your brand will become when you win the hearts and minds of your audience. We do not win the hearts and minds of your audience in three weeks. That comes next.

We guarantee your Brand Session will make you smile.

Brand Sessions are introspective and aspirational, resulting in a clear guide for what will be your true brand-building efforts: external marketing, brand experiences, product releases, partnerships, employee onboarding, etc. We help clients with all of those initiatives as well, but they are not near as effective if the guidebook hasn’t been written yet. 

So, a Brand Session is step one, and if done right, every step you take afterward will feel lighter and more exuberant, almost like you’re skipping toward brand success, and skipping is contagious. 

We’d love to chat if you think you are a good candidate for a Brand Session, or know someone needing to undergo a brand refresh. While it’s not right for every company, many have found it to be the perfect fit. We are starting to see that we’re not the only ones who love it. 

Cue the reviews

FINterview Series: Hillery Kemp

Posted on March 13, 2020 by - Making Waves, Inspiration

Meet Hillery Kemp, Four Fin’s Brand Strategist and gifted marble collector. 

What lights you up?
Truly well executed brands, Ah-ha moments, paper and stationery, finding marbles randomly, and inspiring people/companies making our world a better place. 

Who do you look up to?
Anyone who marches to the beat of his/her/their own drum. By that I mean the ones out there who don’t settle for the status quo. The ones who know what to prioritize in their lives — be it family, travel, creating something incredible — and go do it. The ones who are unafraid to say no. 

Favorite thing about Four Fin?
Our posture for openness, transparency, and clarity. I can also be myself around here and I can’t say that about every job I’ve had, but maybe I am just growing up and growing more comfortable in my own skin. 🙂 

Dream Client?
Oh my. LEGO and Cotopaxi come to mind. I am always in awe of the brands that do it right. FROM is pretty cool too!

Connect with Hillery on LinkedIn

The “safe” choice for your rebrand actually holds a ton of risk

Posted on January 21, 2020 by - Branding Insight, Business

Courageously choosing a brand that sets you apart is not easy. Even if your stakeholders agree that it’s time for a bold change, there still might be the feeling of being unsure how it will be received.

Will our audience hate it? Will it be too out there? You might weigh the options of spending on focus groups. You might present the new brand concept to your board or investors to get their feedback. You show it to a broader internal group to get feedback. Everyone has an opinion. Some absolutely love it. Some are impartial. Others want to see what alternative options there were that lead you to this choice.  

Caution: This is where dangerous decisions are made. 

In some instances, in business and relationship building, it’s great to compromise. It’s great to meet in the middle, find common ground and please as many people as possible. In other instances, it waters down strong approaches. Chris Voss champions this concept in Never Split the Difference.

When it comes to branding, the truth is, you don’t need everyone to love it. You need a group that loves it. You need a loyal following that will help spread your brand organically. You don’t need everyone to be on board. If they “love” it, it will be because they relate to what you’re trying to do. They will be excited that you “get them.” This is true internally too. Employees that grab on to your brand will help your business grow much faster than employees who “are fine with it.”

As the old marketing adage goes, “appeal to everyone and appeal to no one.” If we’re taking stock of the risks of growing a business, “appealing to no one” should be high on your list of pitfalls to avoid.  

Tl;dr

If you compromise and settle on a brand strategy or visual identity that is safe… it will inspire no one. Instead of a core audience who organically promotes your brand because they strongly relate to it, you’ll have a larger number of people feeling mediocre about your brand… and that’s the riskiest move you can make.

Should you Invest in Branding?

Posted on January 3, 2020 by - Business, Branding Insight

When you are ready to move past your company’s humble beginnings, and develop a lasting brand based on strategic core concepts, the first question that often comes up is, “What does working with an outside firm cost, and will it be worth the spend?” 

The answer can vary from $5,000 to $100,000 depending on the firm you work with. Yeah, I realize that’s a big range. We can tell you that our foundational Brand Strategy and Identity Design programs start at $10K and go up depending on your specific goals, needs and challenges. 

We’re not about to tell you to invest in professional branding without a strong business case behind it, so we made a handy flowchart to help you decide if now is the right time for you. 

Every brand is different. This is meant to be a reference based on our experience. When you are in the right stage of growth, and choose to invest in a re-brand, it pays off.

Some of the results our clients have shared with us are below:

  • A new million dollar partnership was made due to increased trust in the vision and future of the company. – Water Purification Technology Client
  • Prices were raised due to the company reaching a new level of clientele after a re-brand effort. – Consumable Goods Client
  • Teams are re-invigorated and inspired to drive their company forward. – Multiple Clients
  • New levels of talent are attracted to the company. – Multiple Clients

It’s impactful to see the returns for our clients, which is why we love what we do. We hope you found this chart useful. If you are still not sure whether a rebrand is right for you, we’d love to learn more about your specific challenge. Reach out and let’s chat. 

Visual Identity: The company your logo keeps

Posted on October 14, 2019 by - Branding Insight, Design

There are a lot of ways to define “brand” and, even, to build them. Hopefully this post will help you understand what we mean when we talk about your “visual identity.” We’ll break down why it’s an important element of your brand, and why it’s so important to think big picture about design. 

So, what do we mean by “visual identity”? Is that the same as a “brand” or “logo”? Isn’t “branding” what we focus on at Four Fin? The visual identity is only one part of how we define and approach branding. Let’s start there first. 

Branding

We believe a brand should inform everything, beginning with the brand strategy and rippling out through core elements and experiences.

So, in that sense, the brand is the heart of the company– full of passion, driven by emotion, tested by values, and relentlessly in search of authentic connections. Any action your company takes, policy it initiates, conversation it has with consumers – should all come from the core brand, working in unison to move the brand from something unseen below the rib-cage, to something worn proudly on your company’s sleeve. 

Once you understand that the brand is the core that informs everything, you also understand how the visual identity cannot be created without uncovering it. The ‘visual identity’ is simply the visual representation and communication of the brand to the world.

“Oh, so by visual identity you mean the logo right?” Yes, and… 

Logo

The logo is one part of a cohesive visual identity, and we’d argue, not the most important part. 

Take your favorite brand. Go to their website, and cover the logo with your hand. Is it still the visual identity you know and love? Does it still give you the feelings of the brand it should?  Now, go find a company you’ve never heard of, and look ONLY at their logo. You get very little from it. Partly because you don’t know them at all. That’s the point. 

“Brand building” is the act of communicating, servicing, interacting, listening, and forming a relationship with your audience. So, the logo only serves to help you identify the brand you’ve already grown to know and love (or hate).

Visual Identity

A visual identity however, is where the magic happens and a keystone of your brand’s core elements (cue back to rad chart above). We thrive on developing them and really appreciate a job well done by the masters. (#redantler comes to mind). 

Below is a list of assets and elements that can be curated and created to form the visual identity for a brand. When done right, they come together to form the perfect harmony – like longboards and summertime. 

  • Logo and Logo set (yes, more than one)
  • Typography (Fonts)
  • Color palettes
  • Images
  • Textures
  • Illustrations
  • Animations
  • Patterns
  • Simple shapes

The AccessParks visual identity combines bold fonts, dark colors, and inspiring photography.

Once established, your visual identity allows for the brand’s core experiences  (website, social post, ad, collateral, etc.) to take shape, consistently. We already know that when these experiences are well designed with a clear message, they have more potential to grab the attention of your audience. The kicker, is that when these experiences are also consistently designed with your brand’s unique visual identity tool set, they strengthen recognition of the brand. 

Visual identity elements improve effectiveness of any visual communication, and act as brand identifiers, all at once.

So bad-ass, right?

Our point: nail down some guidelines for your brand’s visual identity (beyond selecting fonts and colors) so that your visual communications also become brand identifiers as much, if not more, than the logo is.

tl;dr

Your brand is the heart of your company. It’s formed by building relationships through actions, decisions, initiatives and communications. Your visual identity is how you consistently design your communications. Creating your visual identity starts by defining the visual assets and rules to help you stay consistent: think fonts, colors, images, logos and sub-marks. Then following those rules over and over to create an identity that has recall and brand recognition.

Brace Yourselves, the Fins Have Rebranded

Posted on April 30, 2019 by - Branding Insight, Design, Four Fin Update, Making Waves

You may have noticed if you’re a Fin fan, that recently, we have been slowly rolling out our new brand across our marketing channels.

A branding firm doing a rebrand? So meta.

I get it, but this is big to us. It signifies a new era for Four Fin that’s hard to put into words, but I will sure try.

Started as a designer, now we here

8 years ago, when I started Jen Derks Design, there was a lot I didn’t know about growing a company, let alone a branding firm with four badass employees and an inspiring nationwide client roster. But that was okay. I was a good designer, wanting to do good work for good people, and raise some good kids with my good husband. Check. Check. And check mate.

Fast forward to today. Four Fin is a team of five with a list of well vetted partners, dialed-in business systems and tools, and a successful 2-week branding service called Brand Camp. We have a transparent office culture we’re proud of, health benefits, retirement, clients who are crushing it, an official @pandr office mural, and most important of all, a beer and La Croix fridge. I mean, we’ve officially ‘arrived’ with that last one.

We’ve also seen the impact of our work: Solopreneurs gaining confidence and momentum in their early days; small companies of 2-5 growing to exceed multi-million dollar revenues; and most recently, a start-up client announcing a $125 million dollar exit.

Shoes too small

Because of all of this growth, over the last year or so, we started to feel our Four Fin brand no longer represented us. 

We didn’t want to send visitors to our website anymore because “it didn’t feel like us.” We couldn’t quickly explain who we were and how we were different. We realized just how our clients feel when they come to us for help (talk about great UX research). It was clear, we were holding ourselves back by not doing what we do for others, investing in the brand.

Evolution, not revolution

So, who was Four Fin? Cue the strategy/therapy sessions. We realized that what matters most to us has always been there but we just had never put it into clear words. It isn’t learning new marketing tricks, competing for likes, or designing things that look cool for cool’s sake. The reason we love what we do lies in this purpose:
Connecting genuinely with others to help them see differently and live out the best, most contagious version of their story.
This is what we do every day at Four Fin with our clients, and with each other. We also know that we want to do this in our own way—as partners, above the weeds, fast and fun, thoughtful and honest.

The new Four Fin

With this clarity, and other strategy pillars defined, we were able to craft a new brand that speaks more true to who we are and how we work. The personality on our website matches the personality you’ll meet on that first phone call, or tenth meeting, because the whole team is clear on what it means to be a Fin. Our brand personality is defined as:

Direct   Confident   Informed  meets  Casual   Upbeat   Collaborative

A slab-serif typeface and deeper hue of Four Fin blue give the brand a casual,  confident and direct tone: Clear is kind. BS has no place here.

The logo for the name Four Fin was carefully crafted to make sure the letterforms were arranged in a fun, upbeat way, as if they were enjoying their successful collaboration.

A secondary mark was created for a more casual representation of the brand that nods to our surf-inspired name. We all thought turning a ‘Four’ into a surfboard for the ‘fin’ to catch a ride on was very clever. Killed it Kendall!

Alongside new marks, fonts, colors, images and visual language was a new upbeat and informed tone of voice—like a trusted friend who drops truth bombs in your best interest and has no problem poking fun at themselves. You’ll see it in our copy, and on the phone with us when you call to say hi. We think you’ll enjoy getting to know us.

Onward

Take a look around our new website and get to know the new Four Fin. An updated newsletter will hit in a couple of weeks so sign up to see it, and our social channels are always poppin’ with good conversations—don’t be shy out there!

Meanwhile, we’ll be over here—enjoying every branding project, every human interaction, and every gift this work provides as we head into the next 8 years of branding companies with passion.

Thanks for riding along with us to learn about this moment in Four Fin’s evolution. We wouldn’t be here without you. 

See the new site

Making Waves: Allison Evelyn Gower

Posted on June 7, 2018 by - Making Waves

We’re taking a light and fresh approach with this installment of Making Waves, as we interview one of our favorite partners, the witty and talented Allison Evelyn. Because one of her many talents is concise messaging, we decided to give her limited room to answer our questions, in the form of a mad-lib. We hope you enjoy her humor.

1. You got started writing copy because   words are magic    and it was all    rumpus    from there.

2. Copy is to design like    a helpful, welcoming host    is to    a 5 course dinner party   .

3. You are the    Emma Stone    of copywriting, because you    are direct yet sassy    .

4. If you didn’t live in San Diego, you’d live    in The Shire #Hobbiton    , but never    the coldest city in the world: Oymyakon, Russia    .

5. Tone of voice is every brand’s    shimmering personality + way to connect with the right people   , so use with   careful intention   .

6. When writing copy, you always   unroot the company’s “why” & ultimate goals    first, and you consider your efforts successful when the client    exclaims, “Yes, that’s what I was trying to say!”   .

We hope you enjoyed this short and sweet Making Waves interview. Stay tuned for our next installment with local creative genius and the founder of Sock Problems, Ryan Berman. Don’t want to miss it? Sign up for the Surf Report!

Branding your Business: Charge and Recharge

Posted on April 13, 2018 by - Branding Insight

We say that we are “a hard-charging branding and graphic design studio.” What does that mean? Well, inefficiencies drive us crazy, we treat our clients’ needs with respect and urgency, and we enjoy music and positive energy. We approach projects and challenges with a can-do spirit and best-intent attitude, excited to push our client’s brand forward. We charge hard.

We also recharge hard.

I don’t mean we play ping pong or blow off the afternoon, though we have been known to go on creative breaks. What I mean is, we take time to pause. We start every week in our Monday meeting reflecting on the week prior, celebrating successes and learning from failures. We seek feedback from our clients. We listen to what they are dealing with to better craft our offerings. We immerse ourselves in the community and celebrate those who are making waves so that we can have a pulse on what’s happening around us.

Growing up surfing has taught me to value the re-charge as much as the charge. Obviously, riding a glassy left is really fun, but the pause is also impactful. Call it reconnecting. Call it observing. Call it what you want, but sitting and feeling the movements of the ocean, becoming in-tune with the currents and swell shifts, is a skill in itself. That skill leads to the fun times ahead. When you know the ocean on a deeper level, you land more waves and the right ones.

So how does this all relate to company branding?

Basically, you don’t know everything that will help you charge, unless you also recharge. We know that our brand design agency doesn’t know everything either. Strong designers realize this. Designers are curious by nature. We want to know the landscape and context for the work we are doing. We don’t have an in-house research team, so we look to you, our clients, for that insight. We know that if you recharge occasionally, you’ll know a lot about your market, your customers, the chatter, the politics, the waves of consumer habits, feedback from your employees, etc. It’s all deepening your understanding and awareness. When you take it all in and use it to shift your brand, you’ll move toward the right spot for the waves coming in.

So, yes, we look to you for insight. Then we help your brand charge forward – based on this insight. It might be that you decide you need a brand refresh. It might be that you’re feeling like your messaging isn’t hitting it. It might be that you want to branch into a new market. It might be that you aren’t SURE why, but somehow your brand doesn’t seem to hit the mark. Sometimes, we meet a business owner or marketing director who only charges. They’ve come to us to keep their brand charging forward, but they haven’t recharged recently. We might suggest that they do so. It’s an important part of the process.