Building a Clear Brand Narrative for Complex Research
When your work is intentionally multidimensional, the challenge isn’t focus, it’s clarity.
When Lucy Ma began pitching her work, she struggled to connect the dots between her academic research at the University of Toronto, her volunteer leadership, her involvement in Canadian research initiatives, hands-on projects like balloon-based research, and her long-term vision for lab-driven innovation. Each track told a different story, and together they lacked a single, cohesive narrative.
More than anything, Lucy wanted clarity, a way to present her work that felt authentic, confident, and strategic. She needed a story that brought everything together and repositioned her from “a researcher working on many things” to a recognizable voice with a clear point of view.
That’s where Hop Skip Marketing stepped in.
Bringing clarity to a PhD researcher’s work across space biotech, mentorship, and mission-driven science
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A human-centred approach to shaping Lucy’s brand
At Hop Skip Marketing, we believe strong brands, personal or corporate, start with human insight. For Lucy, we applied our human-centred brand strategy approach, the same proven process we use with business clients, tailored specifically for personal branding.
Exploration and clarity
We asked the questions that helped Lucy articulate what motivates her, what differentiates her within her field, and how her past, present, and future initiatives connect into a single story.
Alignment
We translated those insights into clear positioning themes, focusing on how she wants to be known, the audiences she wants to reach, and the impact she aims to have through her work.
Practical strategy
We built a tangible roadmap for communicating her brand, including guidance on tone of voice and visual expression, so her positioning could be applied consistently across platforms.
Throughout the process, the work was intentionally collaborative, part coaching, part brand strategy. Our role was not to impose a rigid framework, but to help bring Lucy’s ideas into focus and shape them into a clear, confident narrative.
Our approach to developing her personal brand narrative
Above: we brough the new brand to life across digitial and print assets.
Because our marketing consultants work daily with brand systems, marketing tools, and storytelling frameworks, the guidance isn’t theoretical. It’s grounded in real-world marketing practice and designed to be applied immediately.
What made this session different
Lucy shared that the session was transformative, not only in defining her personal brand, but in helping her see her career trajectory with fresh perspective.
The takeaway
A strong personal brand isn’t about creating a polished persona. It’s about aligning what you do with what you stand for.
Through Hop Skip Marketing’s human-centred brand strategy process, Lucy developed a compelling, cohesive story rooted in authenticity and strategic intent. Our collaborative, marketing-grounded approach helps individuals, just like organizations, gain the clarity they need to grow with confidence.
The result: clarity, confidence, and momentum
From meeting PhD research demands to entrepreneurial and volunteer initiatives, I struggled to explain how my diverse pursuits fit together into one coherent story. Without a unifying narrative, my efforts felt fragmented and scattered, leaving me burned out and directionless. Liz and Moe met me right where I was, working side-by-side and helped me see the through-line across all these efforts and articulate not just what I do, but why it matters.
From the moment I stepped into their space, they created an environment of genuine trust that allowed me to share the full, unfiltered picture of my life, and no one else had heard it all connected like that before. Their holistic, empathy-driven approach went beyond surface-level exercises. They listened intently to my motivations, pressures, and aspirations as a person first, then guided me layer by layer to distill everything into a central theme and a statement that revealed my own authentic personal brand. By the end of the session, I left with a clear, confident narrative that connects my activities into a unified vision. Months later, I can confidently say the actionable outcomes from the workshop has led me to opportunities and connections that propelled my career forward.
I really appreciated how the entire experience was deeply personal and collaborative. It wasn’t about creating a polished “brand,” but about uncovering the authentic story behind myself that has now become the lighthouse to my pursuits. I am forever grateful to Liz and Moe for the opportunity to work with them. Their open-mindedness and creative out-of-box thinking allows them to work with anyone of any backgrounds at any stage of their life to excavate the real stories behind each unique individual.
Working with Hop Skip was a transformative experience that marked a pivotal moment in my journey navigating the 20s.
