MADEINC
For six months, I did it and it was probably
the most valuable six months I would have
spent at the company because I got to know
not only our product inside and out, but
also our customer base. I was able to speak
their language and learn about what their
pain points were, what their needs were
and how to work with our entire team to be
able to deliver to them. When I did transition
out of that space and finally into marketing as
I had intended, I had so much more insight
and credibility in speaking to and with our
customers. people don’t really read and so it’s also very
important to able to really scale down the
essential messages into as few of words as
possible. It was all about extracting the fluff,
extracting the BS and get down to the core
essence, but in the process of doing so I
think we developed a very succinct brand
voice, especially for Bevel.
MADE: What makes Walker & Company
Brands different from the many hair and
grooming products that are currently on the
marketplace? IN TODAY’S DAY AND AGE,
THERE ARE SO MANY
PRODUCT OFFERINGS
ON THE MARKETPLACE.
BRANDING IS ESSENTIAL
FOR DIFFERENTIATING IN
A CROWDED SPACE.”
Cassidy: I think for Bevel, we are a first of
its kind in speaking to men of color about
their grooming issues and their grooming
needs in a way that’s been traditionally
ignored. What I mean by that is, you
either have a big conglomerate that is like,
“Shaving requires 5 blades. This is the one
way you do it and this is just the manly man
way of doing it,” and there’s no education
about it. It’s just a product delivered to an
individual. Or you have other brands that
believe Black men have [grooming] issues
and we’re going to deliver them a kind of
dangerous product, and put a dude in a
towel drinking some cognac because that’s
what this image of what black culture is. But
again, it’s just product direct to consumers.
We were the first person to be like no,
that’s not an accurate representation of this
community or what their needs are or what
they need to learn about. We really kind of
came in to not only deliver a high quality
thoughtful product experience, but also one
that was also backed by education and the
same goes exactly with FORM. It’s all about
educating people on their unique needs and
how to use the products. Also, delivering to
them an experience that for the first time is
not a second class one.
MADE: Walker & Co. has done a great job at
doing that. Can you describe the process in
finding the brand’s voice?
Cassidy. They say that if first you don’t
succeed, try, try and try again. For Bevel
it was really interesting. There’s so many
copy exercises where I’ll get copy delivered
to my desk and I’m like this is good, but
take out like 70 percent of the words. We’re
being too verbose here. Say more with less.
It was also a function of realizing that in
such a swamped digital landscape, in the
land of Twitter, Instagram and Newsfeed,
MADE: How has your experience as a
blogger help you in your branding role?
Cassidy: One of my greatest skills is writing
and I think that that’s been able to really help
me in the space of marketing because writing
on the creative side is an art. On the business
side, it’s communication at all levels. For me
as a blogger, being able to communicate and
connect with people via the written word
and convey not only a sense of my identity,
but also convey different ways of doing that
via storytelling via humorous anecdotes via
events. All of these things I had to pick up as
a blogger in order to grow my online entity
and presence and it really laid the foundation
for me being able to do that here at Walker &
Company where we do similar things.
We have content sites and I will write
content, I’ll write press releases, I’ll write
copy for ads. My blogging experience really
allowed me to hone that really sharp skill
and precision in writing and to do it very
fast. When you’re at a startup, things move
so damn fast that I don’t have days to knock
out an article or press release or even a set of
ads. I have minutes, I have hours, I have half
hours, so I need to be able to do it quickly
and do it well.
MADE: We really love the way FORM’s
launch was executed. What other innovative
ideas have you developed for Walker & Co.
Brands?
Cassidy: For Bevel, I say a lot of that work
is reflected in our editorial and some of
made-magazine.com |
52