Salesforce
Building a Team and a Sales Community
At Salesforce my team and I were focused primarily on the flagship product Sales Cloud. We created a lot of amazing marketing campaigns, websites, events, and programs that not only improved our brand consistency as Salesforce, we also identified the little things that allowed our flagship products to stand out more on their own as part of a larger brand system. From events like Dreamforce, to product content on the blogs and landing pages; my team and I took a leap by having a little more fun than usual, and using that to create community across all of our platforms.
The north-star I put in place with the team was to create a dedicated community within the Sales Cloud space. The omnipresent objective always being to champion the Sales Cloud Product and grow product revenue, which we did by 1M year over year from 2020 through 2023.
THE PROBLEM
An unspecified product suite that focuses solely on product offerings that are similar from one product to another. How do we differentiate, show value, and explain clearly how these products work better than the other guy’s?
THE BRIEF
Create an iconic impression of Sales Cloud, increase awareness, create community that drives engagement and ultimately product sales.
INSIGHTS & LEARNINGS
Sometimes the simplest things are what make products stand out. Leaning into them and owning what they have inherently can be what generates customer interest.
BUILDING PROGRAMS, EVENTS, and A TEAM
Starting out with a small team of freelance creatives we quickly built a full-time team comprised of designers, art directors, strategists, copy, and project management. Simultaneously we were tasked with building out a program that roots itself in what makes Sales Cloud special.
By digging into the available color palette for each product and learning about logos, iconography, and illustration assets that had been previously underused outside of the in-product experience, we were able to craft truly own-able assets. This helped create customer recognition over a short period of time both in market online and at company events and trade shows leading to a spark of community and a need to be identified with the product that helped so many. From here we started taking more risks across social with silly posts featuring meme-able sales moments, cats, over-the-top actors, and rallying an online community together to eventually form the “SalesBlazers".”
the SALESBLAZER
After establishing a system focused on the Sales Cloud product, customer recognition improved and the need for community behind it was stronger than ever. We started with the social presence dubbed the “SalesBlazer.” Ironically taken from the golden blazer jacket for all who had completed and graduated as Salesforce TrailBlazers, which also spawned the idea to create an identifier for members of the community while attending events or just to wear around because it looked so damn cool!
With the success of the SalesBlazer community across social and at live events, and the subsequent success of expanding the Salesforce product character library with “Brandy” the Marketing Cloud fox, Sales Cloud was next up on the list to develop a cuddly product character. Honestly, we all thought a hawk or bird of prey type creature would be perfect for Sales Cloud. We even explored a tiger that had arrow shaped stripes, derived from the Sales Cloud chart logo. In the end we ended up with “Zig” the zebra, where the name zig, you guessed it, is taken from the zig in the Sales Cloud logo.
Re-DEFINING DIRECT MAIL KITS
On a quarterly basis, the Sales Cloud sales and marketing teams would send out direct mail kits to educate current and potential clients on new products, company updates, and just to show that we’re here for you. Occasionally my team would provide high-level concepts that were fun, engaging, and went just a bit deeper on design and product story-telling. This particular kit was sold in hundreds of thousands of times within the 2021 fiscal year and sent out to multiple clients and potentials. It went deeper on the details in a simple and approachable way that easily linked people to key content and insights that helped make decisions easy.
SLACK Acquisition
Towards the end of 2019 and just before the Pandemic, Salesforce acquired Slack. Slack was fairly well known within the market of internal business messaging systems but Salesforce wanted to open it up to a more public and community focused platform. In order to do so we needed to get the word out. Thankfully my team was assigned to the task and we developed some amazing and simple approaches using the brand assets and materials Slack was already very well known for. The project was lightning fast, taking up only 1 week before final delivery.
My Role: Creative Direction, Design
Instrument: design support, brand building, and brand guide development
Trendy Minds: design production, campaign support