CASE STUDY

A new home. For a new Brand.

What is a house?

Is it a home? What makes it a home?

These were the questions I found myself asking when posed with rebranding a thriving Vancouver-based mortgage business. The evolution was within a phased brand architecture roll out and had lifestyle brand connections to three sister brands.

The challenge was 3 stories: Building a new brand. A new brand house. In the market for a new digital home.

Approach

WHAT I SAW

  • Limited brand legs: literal mortgage storytelling, practical

  • Effective, long-term client relationships: consistent communication and support

  • New product: mortgage insider tracker tool offered as premium subscription

  • Opportunities:

    • Multi-channel marketing

    • Standardized, formulaic industry ripe for disruption; new product is industry paramount

WHERE I WENT

  • Capture & define market opportunity for industry disruption

  • Align with Founders-CEO on product disruption opportunity

  • Establish market release timeline

  • Built & facilitated:

    • Brand values workshop

    • Brand naming exercise & trademark exploration

Competitive Research

  • Deep analysis of competitive landscape + CEOs personal expertise

  • Market disruption opportunity:

    • Analyze across industries: mortgage, real estate, fintech

    • Focus on signals, brand disruptors, & product disruptors

    • Define Brand opportunities:

      • values (the market gap)

      • look & feel

Design board: Brand Opportunities

A new digital home.

The website redesign would stand as a Brand flagship. Key to conversion & conversation, the new landing page needed a clean, minimal UX, approachable, yet premium finish, and huge infusion of warm humanity.

I owned the design and led the implementation/dev.

original website

redesigned website

People make homes. Mortgages and investments merely provide access. Inspired Mortgage’s new Brand positioning is rooted in people’s real messy-dreaming-planning-aging-birthing-exploring lives. Their new point of view provided long term for life, as it’s really lived.

Through research and collaboration, I unlocked the values inside the org’s cutting-edge product. Those values are the human-side of mortgages.

I established a new brand architecture, and leaning into warmth, imperfection, learning, and disruption. Across all channels, experiences, and touchpoints: a new Brand story was told.

To address the long term support needs of the internal, nimble team, I structured the brand tools and assets for ease of use through Canva and the Google suite.

Client: Inspired Mortgage

Location: Vancouver, BC

Season: 2023—2025

Role: Global strategy & implementation, creative & digital design direction, market research, brand design

Collaborators: Founding CEO’s, fractional CMO, and Inspired Mortgage team

Disciplines: market competitive research, trend & insights, graphic design, brand, website design, multi-channel marketing campaign, storytelling strategy

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