Skilo – delivering value through empathy
Becoming more open to identifying with the people you serve to give them what they want, not what you think they need – a series of workshops aimed at crafting a niche and developing a deeper way of identifying with customers to create an engaging and relevant offer for Skilo, a startup at the forefront of empowering people to live independently, safely and happily in their homes.
Project Overview
Objectives
Get in-depth understanding of two customer profiles Skilo serves
Create a visual and written narrative to inform Skilo's product marketing and make sure the story resonates with a strategic use of photography and messaging.
Constraints
Structured and time-boxed ideation.
Using design thinking and storytelling to inform marketing strategies.
Success Metrics
Clarity and confidence in the direction you want your life to go in and managing the fear of success.
In-depth understanding of your audience.
Communicating your value.
The challenge and context
Skilo was a client I worked with in the very early stages of founding the business. Skilo are a startup at the forefront of empowering people to live independently, safely and happily who set out to create a community with their vision in heart. Skilo's first product is monthly care packages – themed boxes designed to help stimulate, occupy and improve health of their clients. A simple solution delivered to your loved ones door. Every month, Skilo Pak will include a product to ease daily activities, tasty treats and inspiring projects.
Approach
Guiding Questions:
- How do I make content that's relevant and considerate for both my customers and users?
- How do I represent my brand so that it feels relevant to my customers?
Approach:
- Exploring resistance – invisible blockers.
- Problem mapping: You | Your audience.
- Value proposition: Shaping customer experience and crafting the story.
- Action plan: Applying learnings to create the marketing communications.
Outcomes
Our first workshop involved a group brainstorming workshop designed with a number of constraints to encourage creativity within the group. In the workshop I facilitated several individual and group brainstorming activities, time-boxed to create constraints helping focus and encouraging individual creativity as well as building on ideas. Warm up exercise ignited empathy for Skilo's users helping the group create more aligned ideas. The ideation exercises diverged and converged along key strategic themes identified in Skilo's market research. A theme was also used to focus further targeted idea generation for monthly content. Finally, idea evaluation tools helped us drive decisions.
"Funnelling ideas to actionable output – From all of this, a wall of ideas, we finished with that. That worked well, you trained our thought to point in the right direction."
Couple of weeks later we collaborated with two more workshops exploring the vision for the brand and the needs of target users to shape value of Skilo's offer and create a structure for marketing communications. Alongside the business avenue we explored Skilo founder's resistance around embarking on this new path.
My client wanted to be clear on how to tell the story of what they created to feel more confident to invest the time and money in a cause they truly believe in. But, as anyone starting something new, they worried what others would think when they saw Skilo launch. Also, my client was being held back by the uncertainty around the life they would be creating through this, and as much as the fear of failure they were feeling the fear of success.
The core workshops focused on analysing current communications to break down how the brand is represented, and highlight any gaps and opportunities for improvement. We got in depth on why this idea mattered to my client to uncover an authentic story and clarify the vision. Also, we explored the pain points, needs and values of Skilo customers and completed exercises focused on unpacking the emotions and values behind the needs we identified. All this was used to think through and refine value of Skilo's offer and craft a compelling story helping us create a brand people enjoy engaging with and product people love to use and gift.
"I find it hard to articulate myself and it really helped that. Doing stuff on your own it’s difficult. You don't critique it when you are doing it yourself. […] We can do this for another product in the brand. Understanding people's worries feels and pressures made the solution so much more relevant and real."
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Impact
The brainstorming sessions helped my client focus on a niche as opposed to a broader market they would have targeted otherwise, and streamline their ideas, making them tangible and cohesive.
The brand and user workshops provided Skilo with actual content to use in marketing communications. But longer term, the client was able to develop a different way of understanding clients and being more open to identifying with them.
Moreover, our sessions gave my client more confidence and clarity in what Skilo are creating. In the short term, this is hugely valuable to create focus and momentum to realise a project. But, having your original mission clearly documented and keeping track of it maintains your long-term focus and can serve as a guiding tool to ensure your are really solving the problem and not designing a product that’s not quite relevant.
I did not have many hesitations before this project - I am always interested in seeing things from another perspective and getting other people's opinions on my work. After the workshop I noticed a different way of understanding my users and being more open to identifying with them. The best aspects of the project were defining both of my audiences more and constructing a story of how they interact with the brand from start to finish. I liked being able to question aspects of the brand and understand what is valuable for the customer. Dorota helped by identifying the key areas that would resonate with my user and customer, making me confident I’d get a response from people. I would recommend the experience to larger companies who are losing touch with their brand and their main message. I would also recommend this to someone who has been in the market for a few months and needs to evaluate their progress. Doing this project has been fun and interesting and I can already see how it will benefit the brand. Dorota always listens to everything you say, no matter how silly it might be. She seems to understand the story you are trying to create better than you do!
Empowering people to live independently, safely and happily in their homes.
Interested to learn more?
Are you experiencing a similar challenges or would like to find out more about the process? I'm offering free 1 hour consultation sessions. Find out more below.