Services
Research and Positioning
Brand Strategy
Naming
Slogan
Logo Design
Web Development
Business Collateral Design
Deliverables
Landscape Analysis
Value Proposition
Logo, Colors and Principal Typography
Brand Manual
Website
Everyone Knows Someone
Everyone knows someone affected by Alzheimer’s. We work with many VC firms to brand, or rebrand, the companies in their portfolios. Elevat3 Capital is one of those firms. Elevat3 brought AmyriAD, originally called Lezsath Pharma to rebrand from the ground up. Not just Strategy, Name, Logo and Website, but Marketing, PR, and even Branding their Clinical Trials to take them all the way through IPO,
There are many companies out there with science that may in fact bring relief to Alzheimer’s patients, yet so many will never make it without a management team that can bring it to market.
Landscape Analysis
The very best way to create a brand that performs is to learn about our client’s competitors. Learn what they do well and what they do poorly. The reason we need to know what they do well is that our client needs to be at least as good as they are. And our client needs to know what they do poorly because that represents opportunity.
The term we use for this is “landscape analysis.” It is the understanding of the competitive landscape.
All the competitor’s websites struggled with capturing their value propositions. They were either very generic, cliche or simply didn’t communicate any real value. However, based on the interview with Elevat3, we can use the following to give Leszath a value proposition with teeth.
After analyzing their competitor’s marketing strategies, we saw opportunity in Leszath’s platform approach of treatment, therapies and testing should resonate with investors. The company is laser-focused on Alzheimer’s, but they’re not just about one compound. This is a key differentiator. If one doesn’t work, they’re working on several fronts. It’s okay if a better drug comes along because they have more tools in the quiver.
Value Proposition, Strategy and Messaging
Once we’ve learned about our client’s competitors, we need to articulate what it is that our client does differently and better than the folks we just learned about.
Led by the people who introduced Aricept, Leszath wss developing a combination of diagnostics, treatments and therapies to preserve function and quality of life. Their deep foundation in Alzheimer’s disease gives them the ability to iterate on different approaches, rather than relying on a single cure.
Leszath’s own compound has achieved proof of concept and is Phase 3 ready. Beyond helping patients hold onto cognition as long as possible, it will relieve the tremendous emotional and financial burden on families and caregivers today, not in some unforeseeable future.
Leszath is confident, with their science, business acumen, and regulatory experience, that they can push it through. Again. It takes sharp minds to advance powerful Weapons.
Name and PreLegal Screening
No organization will use anything as often as they use their name. Every business card, webpage, ad, business listing, and sales pitch will feature it prominently.
Once Leszath had identified opportunity and crafted a compelling Value Proposition, they had a solid foundation to craft a name that sticks. The naming process is very personal, but also has a legal aspect to it. It’s not as simple as just coming up with a great name; we have to make sure it’s not being used by someone else in our client’s sector; even more difficult, we need to secure the domain name or come up with a compelling and memorable URL.
Our first round of 100+ names came up with 5 that resonated with Leszath: Synaptic, Engram, Bequest, BrainQuest and Cache. Cache was the favorite. Strategically though Cache failed to capture the essence of their Value Proposition: Leszath is developing a combination of diagnostics, treatments and therapies to preserve function and quality of life. Their deep foundation in Alzheimer’s disease gives them the ability to iterate on different approaches, rather than relying on a single cure.
The second round hit upon AmyriAD, as in A Myriad of options, and highlighted AD (Alzheimer’s Disease), which resonated with everyone and squarely nailed the Value Proposition. One of the biggest challenges with naming is that people make it personal. But if you want a brand to perform, it need to not only be meaningful to our client, but more importantly it needs to be meaningful to their customers.
Then we had to see if AmyriAD was usable. We do a GUN score for out top 5 choices. “GUN” stands for Google, USPTO, and Network Solutions, and we score names on the likelihood that they can be used. Our screening system awards availability scores from 30 to 0. Briefly, a 30 is a perfect score, totally available, while 0 is totally out of reach, unavailable. AmyriAD scored 28.
Slogan/Tagline
While the purpose of a great name is so people remember you, slogans and taglines are the workhorses of the branding world, and their purpose is to sell. They can be longer, more complex or very short and telegraphic. They can be humorous or descriptive of complex qualities or benefits — or they may be very suggestive and abstract. In a perfect world, we like the slogans and taglines to encapsulate the value proposition: what our client does differently and better than their competition.
The five finalists all passed the GUN score: AmyriAD – Memories Are Worth Protecting, AmyriAD – Memories are Worth Fighting For, AmyriAD – Everyone Knows Someone, AmyriAD – Fighting the War for One in Four, AmyriAD – Remember Hope but the hands down favorite was Memories are Worth Fighting For which scored a perfect 30. G – 10 – This singular version of the above phrase is found on a tiny SIX pages. None of those is related to AD. U – 10 – Zero Trademarks found using those words. N – 10 – MemoryIsWorthFightingFor.com was available.
Logo
Once we had a name, we began the logo design process by creating three to five different families of logos and marks for AmyriAD ranging from conservative to a little bit “out there”. Conservative does not mean dull and boring though. In the kickoff meeting we discussed the things AmyriAD was looking for in a logo and made our recommendations. Everyone walked away with some idea of what the logo was going to look like. This is the conservative one. Then we do a range in between.
Our process breaks down each step into specific, measurable “sprints.” Sprints consist of 3 big meetings and 3 phases: 1) A kickoff where the project requirements are discussed 2) The initial exploration where multiple options are presented, and the direction is narrowed and refined and 3) A polish pass where the finishing touches are discussed and applied.
Once the 5 families of logos were presented, AmyriAD picked the one they “kind of, sort of” like the best and we made revisions until they loved it! This approach works especially well with large groups of people or multiple stakeholders like VC Firms and Investors. It is also an amazing focusing tool.
We don’t work like other agencies, we are advisors not labor, we massively simplify the branding process, not only because small businesses, startups and nonprofits typically can’t afford the endless mockups, countless revisions and infinite strategy sessions of those huge companies (or have tight timelines and need to get world class results quickly), but mainly, because it makes the branding better.
Once the direction was narrowed down, we explored color options, supporting fonts and practical applications. When the final design was chosen we rendered the logo as a vector file and created all the needed formats, JPG, PNG, CMYK and RGB.
Homepage Design and Brand Collateral
This is where it all comes together. Quality design needs to be a part of every one of AmyriAD’s marketing materials. The website, deck, brochures, stationery, content posted to social networks, emails, etc. all need to be designed for maximum aesthetic appeal and strategic impact. The Value Proposition is our guide.
We like to start with the website because it’s the first point of contact for an organization’s audience and we want everything we create to be useful. Before people come to AmyriAD’s offices or look at their deck, they will visit the AmyriAD website. Contrary to the adage, people DO judge a book by its cover. Since the homepage is the most critical page of a website – where in milliseconds visitors decide if they will stay or if they will go – we like to focus on that first. Then we design and code the rest of the interior pages.
Like with logos, we began by creating three to five different homepage mockups ranging from conservative to a little bit “out there”. We do 100+ websites a year so we see what works and what doesn’t. We also wanted to show AmyriAD ideas that they hadn’t thought of. Not crazy or unusable ideas, but we like to push the envelope a little and show them something just a little past their comfort zone. That way we define the boundaries.
AmyriAD then picked the direction they “kind of, sort of” liked the best and we again made revisions until they loved it!
Before we crate a brand manual, we like to do the homepage design and as create as many assets as we can. AmyriAD’s Value Proposition, what they do differently and better than their competitors needs to carry though to everything they produce. If we can explore lots of options in the early stage of branding, then the brand manual will come out much more robust.
Like many of our clients, AmyriAD doesn’t have large marketing department (often our client’s only one or two people, sometimes none), so our job was to make their job easier. Unlike traditional branding agencies, our Brand Manuals are designed to be “actionable,” not only outlining strategy but providing a complete roadmap. We not only provide messaging and graphics for AmyriAD’s website, but meta data and tags for search engines, headlines for ads, hashtags for social media, and complete instructions for using them.
The Intangible
Branding is an ongoing conversation. The road to IPO is a complex path, with a multiple goals. We need to communicate with investors as well people and families of those afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. As the AmyriAD brand evolves, we are running PR campaigns, naming clinical trials, creating specialized patient facing websites targeted towards people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, Caregivers and Medical Professionals and much much more. AmyriAD represents the very reason we created he Bureau of Small Projects. To do our small part in making the world a better place by enabling those with a unique and transformative ideas to get their message out to the world and to provide them with the tools they need to realize their vision.
