Giving businesses the freedom to grow.
Building a brand that works for today with plenty of room to grow into tomorrow.
Services
- Brand Strategy
- Positioning
- Brand Architecture
- Brand Nomenclature
- Target Audience
- Messaging Platform
- Corporate Narrative
AppDirect is a subscription commerce platform that removes the complexity of building a recurring business model. Through a marketplace that enables selling any first- or third-party product, on any device, through any channel, AppDirect enables businesses to monetize and manage subscription commerce needs with confidence.
However, due to the complexity of understanding the category, navigating the world of subscription commerce can be challenging. So, as a leader in the subscription commerce industry, AppDirect set out to change that, articulating a clear value proposition that could help make digital transformation for their customers as simple and empowering as possible.
And as an added challenge, AppDirect was also transforming their own business for the future as well. This presented the perfect opportunity to build a brand around the core product offering today–the subscription commerce platform—while positioning the brand to grow into the future.
What We Learned Along the Way
Don’t be afraid to redefine the problem.
Oftentimes, when you start to dive into a business question, more questions emerge. Our practice of keeping our minds open and curiosity high led us to the understanding that we were actually solving two big brand challenges, rather than one: building a brand for today focused on the core platform and planting the seeds for the future brand transformation.
Technology can be emotional, too.
Most of the time it seems that technology ends up playing a rational role in the brand story, one that is all about features and functional benefits. However, by deeply understanding the emotional benefits the technology provides for people, you can build a much more powerful and unique brand positioning—something to truly own for the long term.
Nothing is one-size-fits-all.
With a B2B brand, there is always more than one audience layer to consider when defining the brand. It needs to work for all types of customers, their customers, and employees as well. After defining the high-level brand strategy, audience-specific messaging plays a key role in ensuring it is relevant on a practical level.
Joshua Schnoll, previously VP of Marketing, AppDirectOur team was very excited about their work and how well they articulated who we were as a company.”
Deeply understand your audience.
While AppDirect had a well-defined demographic audience, we quickly recognized the need to connect with their audience on a psychographic level in order to help build a brand that really connected with them. This meant diving into understanding and defining their behaviors, motivations, and needs.
Get all levels of the organization involved.
Building a brand isn’t just about the vision from the top. A strong brand strategy will only work if it’s influenced and adopted by all levels of the organization. One of the highlights of working with AppDirect was the opportunity to learn from employees throughout the entire company.
Engage with the outside.
Understanding the vision and strategy from the inside is just one part of building a brand. Some of the most interesting and unexpected insights came from talking with and learning from customers outside of the company walls.
Say what you actually mean.
Corporate buzzwords are everywhere. But when you’re trying to break through a complicated category, it’s best just to keep it real, simple and straightforward. It builds empathy and ensures a clear story when you use language internally that you would feel comfortable sharing externally.
Recent Work
Bringing a people-centered brand into a digital-first, product-led future.
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