“Working with This Way has been an absolute dream. Charlotte took the time to review our brand in great detail and provided a comprehensive audit with a clear set of recommendations and plan. She helped us shape our content strategy with focus, leaving us to feel empowered to tell our story with clarity and confidence. I would highly recommend This Way for any brand and comms related work!”
Janaya Wilkins, Founder
Slo Active isn’t your usual eco-swimwear brand. The concept of ‘giving back’, so easily thrown around these days, means more to founder, Janaya Wilkins, than almost everyone I’ve worked with in my career. For her, the drive to give back to the ocean by supporting grassroots movements is just as important as the products she designs. Which, it’s fair to say, she is extremely meticulous about.
What Slo Active isn’t short on is authentic stories. You have a founder who lives an active, ocean-based lifestyle (here is a picture of the two of us post-surf). A superior product that has been thoughtfully developed using innovative FSC certified Yulex Pure, a plant-based alternative to conventional, non-renewable neoprene. And direct connections to some of the most impactful NGOs tackling the ocean crisis.
For Janaya, the challenge was distilling everything she wanted to talk about into a cohesive, structured strategy that was aligned to her business goals, without being overwhelming – for her, or prospective customers. In short, we needed to simplify the content and put it to work so Janaya could feel confident it was selling the brand and converting customers.
Over two remote 1-2-1s, I spoke with Janaya about her goals, ideal customers and what she wanted to achieve through Slo Active’s communication. We also discussed the very important topic of feasibility. Being a one-woman-businesses with a new product line in the works, anything we developed needed to be actionable.
Looking inwards, I conducted an audit of Slo Active’s existing content across email, website, and social channels as well as analysing audience and sales data. I then looked outwards to the market and competitors. This enabled me to get a better sense of Slo Active’s positioning and uncovered a number of opportunities for differentiation. Using this insight, a plan to elevate and hone her messaging started to take shape.
A simple, easy-to-implement, four-page content strategy that outlined the main aims, messaging, KPIs, pillars, channel breakdown and action points. Plus a tone of voice guideline, an editorial calendar broken down by week, month and year and a report template to measure performance.
For Slo Active, the strategy concentrated on telling the story of the product over anything else. As a luxury item, we needed to lean into the detail of the garments being created. Proving, not telling, why the higher price point is worth paying.
I identified the key themes of Slo Active’s content and broke these down into five pillars. These made up the complete story of the brand and would serve to make writing any communication going forward easier, quicker, and aligned to the overarching strategy. I also included a rough % split of which content should be created the most so Janaya knew which to areas focus on and which to pull back from.
Although Slo Active has a strong aesthetic and brand positioning, what hadn’t been written down was a tone of voice guide. So we worked on one of those too, outlining the key attributes, writing tactics and do’s and don’ts of the brand’s voice. As Slo Active grows, this will enable Janaya to upskill and inform any new members of staff with how (and how not) to write as the brand.
As we all know, or should, any strategy isn’t worth the screen it’s typed on without tracking what is and isn’t working. We set KPIs and I walked Janaya through my Template for Tracking Content Performance. The plan is to update on a monthly basis and use the insights it generates to keep moving Slo Active communication forward. Essentially, we set the stage for a continual loop of improvement for more impactful, easier to manage, goal-driven content.
Results coming soon!
