ThinkrBelle™: Helping a new venture take flight

The challenge

Startup consulting company ThinkrBelle was in search of some magical marketing dust to help it take flight. They asked Hop Skip to advise on their marketing strategy and to develop the brand and collateral for their public launch.

The company

ThinkrBelle acts as a catalyst between Canada’s pharmaceutical industry and PharmaTech. They’re the only ones who do this, and how they do it is unusual, too: they custom-build advisory teams based on the client’s needs. Additionally, they consult to venture capitalists looking to invest in PharmaTech. Because ThinkrBelle is a new category they faced unusual go-to-market challenges, including educating both Pharma and Tech markets about the service offerings and connecting with diverse markets. Not one to shy away from a challenging strategy or branding project, our Hop Skip team jumped right in.

The solution

We tackled this project in three steps: establish the strategy, develop the brand, and create the collateral.

Step 1: Establish a strategy

Hop Skip was one of a few advisors invited to participate in ThinkerBelle’s strategic planning work. Founder Orchid Jahanshahi knew the buyers and offering, but needed a cross-functional team to help crystalize how to communicate it succinctly. During this day-long brainstorming session, Hop Skip led discussions about the category, buyer needs, key messaging and how best to present the offering on the website. By day’s end, ThinkrBelle’s offering was clearly articulated, and we had draft messaging and headlines.

Step 2: Develop the brand

Now the organization needed a mark and design system to make everything a cohesive, recognizable brand, from the website to the LinkedIn page. We welcomed ThinkrBelle to our office for our hands-on branding workshop. This is our tried and true method to quickly establish personality, promise and position. We also fine-tuned a naming convention for the services and explored how best to employ the Peter Pan pixie dust tie-in that they adopted early on.

Next on the agenda for this bootstrapped firm, was developing the concept economically. We presented three unique concepts, then the ThinkrBelle team selected parts from each concept that we combined and refined into a modern, unique look and feel. To ensure they were on the right track, along the way they sought peer feedback on the concepts. This helped them make quick decisions with total confidence.

”Liz and her talented team took our challenge and built a brand that reflected exactly what we wanted to represent. ThinkrBelle needed to be bold, yet whimsical, embracing our persona as well as our mission,” explains ThinkrBelle CEO and president Orchid Jahanshahi. “Their magic ability to distill our needs quickly into beautiful visuals and copy that describes our “pixie dust” accurately was hugely critical for me as a new founder and entrepreneur.”

Step 3: Create marketing and sales collateral

With the brand look and feel locked in, we were ready to create a suite of collateral for them. The client is on MAC and Google, so we created the collateral listed below to suit their software preferences.

While we created collateral, we also built the website; in total, it took just six weeks to write, build and launch. This is less than half the time a typical site takes! To keep the site budget low and give ThinkrBelle ample room to grow, we built the site on Wix. This platform has a great WYSIWYG editor that allows the ThinkrBelle team to make edits themself. It is also easily expandable and has a good built-in analytics tool. https://www.thinkrbelle.com/

• Printed and digital business cards QR codes
• Google Docs letterhead
• Virtual backgrounds for video meetings
• Esignature
• LinkedIn banner and branded headshots
• PowerPoint deck and theme
• Website

“Hop Skip Marketing took the challenge of ThinkrBelle in a serious and speedy way—we were ready to launch in a few weeks with our practical collaterals. After one year, I have been able to build a strong following and many of our customers comment positively on our brand and its uniqueness.”

This ThinkrBelle project is one of several new brands we developed this year, and one of dozens over the past decade. The combination of strategy and creativity makes these projects one of our favourite types. Whereas our marketing department service is best suited to mature organizations, our ability to create brands, key messaging, collateral and websites quickly and affordably makes us a great fit for organizations of all sizes and stages of maturity. If you’re considering a branding project, please reach out to us to discuss it. We’re happy for you to pick our brains and to explore the possibilities. 

Case Studies