Company

MAVENLINK – 2015

Elevating the operational and financial performance for agencies and service organizations.

Mavenlink’s mission is “To unlock the potential within services organizations enabling teams to do their best work and elevate business performance.” By unifying a project delivery system with all other systems of record we enable complete organizational collaboration, to provide rich, un-siloed, contextual data so your business can make informed decisions, scale and succeed.

WIth Mavenlink I have had one of the most fulfilling journeys of my career. Previously, my branding experience was on a per project basis, as a consultant. My role and impact was complete as soon as the project was, and I would transition the creative and thinking over to design and marketing teams to be stewarded. I had a half dozen or so longer term client engagements, where I had a longer, sustained influence over a brand, but never reached the extent of the impact I had with Mavenlink.

I joined Mavenlink in the early stages of the company. They had initial private funding, a vision, and one pivot under their belt. I worked closely with the founders, across product and marketing, designing experiences for both. As part of the founding team and the head of design I was able to influence strategy, positioning, and trajectory of a company in a way I had never had the chance to before. I could define & develop the identity branding with full control and then nurture and evolve it over time. There would not be a hand off to an internal team – I would own the success or failure of the branding.

Projects

BRANDING MAVENLINK.COM EXPERIENCES MARKETING PRODUCT MARKETING

BRANDING
MAVENLINK.COM
EXPERIENCES
MARKETING
PRODUCT MARKETING

Identity & Branding

I considered the 2015 rebrand of Mavenlink as one of the most important and pivotal moments in the company’s history. It was defining effort that established the current brand trajectory of the company for the next 3 years. I led a team of 4 to develop a complete brand platform that would establish our brand fundamentals and guide the direction of the eventual identity, visual system and messaging.

The visual system is focused around people – thematic of intelligence, performance, and control. It was important to me to create a system of rules that were defined and purposeful, but broad enough to allow the brand to visually flex and evolve over time while remaining true to principals.

This rebrand visually separated us from our competitors in orders of magnitude. There was nothing else like it in our space and it was highly memorable. It gave Mavenlink momentum, focus, and was a propellant for marketing and sales.

I considered the 2015 rebrand of Mavenlink as one of the most important and pivotal moments in the company’s history. It was defining effort that established the current brand trajectory of the company for the next 3 years. I led a team of 4 to develop a complete brand platform that would establish our brand fundamentals and guide the direction of the eventual identity, visual system and messaging.

This rebrand visually separated us from our competitors in orders of magnitude. There was nothing else like it in our space and it was highly memorable. It gave Mavenlink momentum, focus, and was a propellant for marketing and sales.

My Role

Creative Direction, Brand Identity, Visual Design, Brand Guidelines, Strategy, Brand Platform & Positioning

Credits

Ken Cook – Sr. Brand Strategist, Sean Crafts – Chief Customer Officer, Keith Weissglass – Director Product Marketing

Mavenlink.com

Though I oversaw early iterations of our marketing site before and since, I consider this launch in 2015 our defining effort. I leveraged the branding work and focused the visuals on confident collaborating professionals and layers of rich data. The color shaped overlays served a proxy for the Mavenlink platform–a filter over your business, as the data visualizations illuminated contextual, just-in-time intelligence and provided you and your team insight and control to make the right business decisions.

My Role

Creative Direction, Visual Design, User Experience, Illustration, Icongraphy

Credits

Tannie Low, Alex Lazarus, Warren Harper, Sara Kunz, Kris Poorbaugh – Sr. Desingers, John Reese – SVP Marketing, Dan Talbot – VP Marketing, Meghan Heffernan – Marketing Communications, Arthur LeMaitre, Toni Pace – Website Manager, Keith Weissglass, Ryan Montano – Product Marketing, Kevin Anderson The B Complex – Product Video Agency, Sarah Alban, Carrie Robinson, Danielle Richards – Copywriting, Ashley Riegg – Design Operations, Hunter Pollard – Demand Generation Paulette Luftig, Anna McDonald, Naomi Jacobs, Catherine Myers, Amanda Holl, Dor Dan – Developers

Service Level Economy

The Service Level Economy is a new reality of emerging challenges and business shifts facing all professional services organizations, Mavenlinks target market. We created a microsite to inform and spark a discussion on the SLE. The site focuses on critical themes and explores how to succeed in this new era of business and features data from research and reports to make the claims.

My Role

Creative Direction, Content Direction

Creative Direction, Strategy

Credits

Danielle Herbert – Sr. Desinger & Motion Design, John Reese – SVP Marketing, Meghan Heffernan – Marketing Communications, Toni Pace – Website Manager, Danielle Richards – Copywriter, Catherine Myers – Developer

External Credits

SparkPR – PR Agency: Toby Trevarthen – Chief Narrative Officer, Tim Donovan – Executive Creative Director

Utilization Gain Calculator

For services business, increasing billable utilization is the key to a profitable business. It can be difficult to truly understand the impact of increasing utilization rates even slightly. So, we created an interactive tool which helps you measure your workforce size, utilization rate, and billing rate to see how you can make a sizable impact on your company through utilization improvements.

My Role

Creative Direction, Content Direction

Credits

Danielle Herbert – Sr. Desinger & Motion Design, John Reese – SVP Marketing, Meghan Heffernan – Marketing Communications, Toni Pace – Website Manager, Dor Dan – Developer

Marketing

As Executive Creative Director I led and directed creative for all of marketing. The branding system I created in 2015 was as workhorse, leveraged by 20 or so contract designers across all campaigns, collateral, experiences, and events for 3 years. The system assured the visual signature would remain consistent across all these touchpoints and designers. However, the key to the success and longevity was the flexibility built into the system which allowed designers a large creative playground, enabling them to push the brand forward.

My Role

Creative Direction, Content Direction, Campaign Strategy, Visual Design, Experience Design, Illustration, Naming

Credits

Tannie Low – Lead Designer, Alex Lazarus, Sara Kunz, Danielle Herbert – Sr. Designers, John Reese – SVP Marketing, Meghan Heffernan – Marketing Communications, Carrie Robinson, Danielle Richards – Copywriting, Ashley Riegg – Design Operations

Product Marketing

With the dual role as Executive Creative Director for both product and marketing, I had a high level of insight into user needs, use cases, and product value we deliver. I leveraged that deep experience as I worked closely with product marketing directors helping to defining our strategic, messaging, and visual approaches across all product marketing touchpoints.