Brand Building
Client: GCS (Girls Carrying Shit), Pinky Magazine
Project Details and Deliverables: The GCS brand was rapidly expanding beyond its Instagram home base by building a website and selling its magazine and new primary focus, Pinky. To maintain and grow its audience, GCS needed a Brand and Tone Guide, Welcome Page (About Us Page), Welcome Email, and Product Descriptions for an Instagram Post.
Tone: welcoming, silly, optimistic, casually insightful, big sister energy
Target Audience: Non-men and queer individuals aged 20 - mid 30’s who are currently or are interested in freeing themselves in terms of identity, expression, and sexuality.
Brand and Tone Guide
I sent the GCS Founders a Brand and Tone Guide questionnaire to fill out. The document is theirs to keep for all future marketing-related projects. It asks specific questions to uncover specifics about their ideal target audience, the intention behind GCS, and how they see consumers interacting with GCS and Pinky.
Welcome Email
Challenge: Sell the pinky community, magazine, and events. Tease the possibility that they could potentially be a future pinky creative.
Strategy: I pitched the idea that the newsletter be referred to as “the group chat.” The founder loved it because it automatically created a sense of belonging with the reader and the brand. This sense of belonging seeds loyalty and excitement. I balanced a refined mix of cultural language and unique brand personality so that the target audience can personally identify with Pinky's aesthetic and morals.
This format of this first email became the go-to formula for other promotional emails sent by GCS.
Subject Line: we just added you to the groupchat🤳💕
Snippet Preview: come hang out with us at one of our Live Events!
Product Description Instagram Post
The Challenge: Sell the new GCS (girls carrying smokes) Hats in the playful and familiar tone that consumers are used to.
Strategy: Tap into the whimsical, nostalgic language of preteen magazines that this demographic would have gravitated towards in their earlier years. Simple sentences and a silly sense of humor shine the brand's personality.
Instagram Caption: never worry about which hand is responsible for your joint/lighter combo again. from now on, they’ll be on your head! (talk about a head high!)
Welcome Page
The Challenge: Welcome potential and current pinky community into a space that uplifts and inspires a diverse non-men community of artists, storytellers, and playful thinkers. Advertise the pinky magazine, promote upcoming events, and encourage readers to join the GCS group chat. (aka the GCS newsletter) Shed light on how pinky financially gives back to the surrounding community. Explain the origin of pinky as a name and brand.
Strategy: Tap into the whimsical, nostalgic language of preteen magazines that this demographic would have gravitated towards in their earlier years. Simple sentences and a silly sense of humor shine the brand’s personality. Balance a refined mix of cultural language and unique brand personality so that the target audience can personally identify with the aesthetic and morals of pinky.
