What Shipped: Issue 3, 2020

Future Super is a superannuation fund that helps people use the power of their money to build a future worth retiring into. We’re building our product and brand in-house and documenting what we learn in the process.

Aside from (all of us) having our worlds turned upside down thanks to COVID-19, here’s what we’ve been up to:

1. Team
   Our business went fully remote.
2. Team, Process
   We defined what brave work means for us so we can increase the boldness of our creative work.
3. Brand
   We ran our third brand retro and learned to plan space for crazy ideas.
4. Copywriting, UX
   We simplified and clarified copy across our website whilst evolving our verbal identity.

Team

Our business went fully remote.

This week feels like the bravest we’ve had to be, yet. We’re all still processing what it means to work remotely, learning how to cope with social distancing, and manage anxieties and checking in on family and friends around the globe.

Some things we have started doing to be a ‘safe’ team this week in light of physically distancing ourselves from each other:

1. Morning coffee. Much like we would in an office, we hang out in the morning for a few minutes and chat about what we did the night before, what was for dinner, how we’re feeling, etc. Now, more than ever, looking after each other is important.
2. Marketing open mic. One of the things we’re really missing — and it’s only 5 days in — is incidental conversations with the rest of the team. The team started ‘open mic’ in the middle of the day for 15 minutes so that others in the company could drop in and say hi, ask questions, etc.
3. End of day check in. It’s really easy to just keep working when you’re working from home. We’ve started doing an end of day check in to say hi, wrap up work, and sign off.

All up, this is a weird time and I’m infinitely grateful for a team and a business that are looking out for each other. If you’re having a hard time, know that you’re not alone. We’re all trying to deal with change and uncertainty, and the best thing we can do right now is to be kind to each other, and to ourselves.

Team, Process

We defined what brave work means for us so we can increase the boldness of our creative work.

What is brave work?

Brave work is…

• Meaningful and backed by bold action
• A category rule-breaker; something that goes against dominant paradigms
• Standing out front and saying something without the guarantee of success
• Not shocking just for the sake of it

What does it mean?

Brave work…

1. Says what people are sensing/feeling, in a way that no one else is saying it.

2. Is backed up: walks the walk, puts its money where its mouth is; it’s creative work with bold action

3. Breaks the rules: category, dominant paradigms, dominant culture/s.

The Future Super brave work spectrum.

We want to be entering conversations with work that illuminates what people may sense subconsciously but not yet know or be able to articulate.

Sitting in this space allows us to put out bold creative work, with meaning, that speaks bravely, in new ways.

Brand

We ran our third brand retro and learned to plan space for crazy ideas.

We ran our third brand retro a few weeks ago, and while it’s easy to get caught in the weeds in the day to day, this particular retro was a good reminder that sometimes we need to zoom out and see the progress we’ve made!

Why a brand retro? We’re building our brand from the inside out, as opposed to hiring a studio to build our brand and hand it back over to us. We’re doing this, mostly, because we want to build ownership of the brand. If you’re curious about why we made that decision, you can read more here.

Brand retro is a monthly check-ins on building out our brand. Our objective with these sessions is to identify what’s working, what’s not and come up with solutions to test in the coming weeks. You can read more about how and why we’re using brand retros, here.

Getting into our third brand retro, it felt like overall we were starting to find a groove. One thing the team noted was that we did fewer ‘burn book’ sessions where we bring crazy ideas together and that we suffered for it. This upcoming month we’re booking them in as non-negotiables. You can see how much we’ve progressed the brand below — where we were in December is very different to where we are today.

What’s working

1. We’re experimenting and playing more!
2. We’re adopting a ‘talk it out’ and ‘get it done’ approach in our collaboration
3. We’re ‘making things real’ and shipping work
4. We’re fighting for clarity in our system principles
5. We’ve got attitude as a brand

What’s not (yet)

1. We want more team rhythms to help us make space to ‘go rogue’ and search for ideas
2. We’re not sharing as much work in progress as we’d like
3. We’re in a weird “in between” space regarding the cohesion of our brand system
4. We can easily get caught in the elements versus the system itself
5. We want to “flex more for impact” and push the boundaries of what we communicate

We defined some clear actions to focus our work for the coming months. Watch this space. If you’re interested in more in-depth breakdowns of our retros, you can see our first retro here.

Copywriting, UX

We simplified and clarified copy across our website whilst evolving our verbal identity.

Simplified and clarified website copy

An evolving brand means complex brand touchpoints like our website are at risk of lagging behind the rest of our communication. As the place where people will often go to research our products and brand, we wanted to test ways we could make our home page meet the experience of our new brand work.

To test this we decided adjusting the copy was a low-risk, time efficient way of bringing the site further into line with the brand.

Different versions of copy were developed and we’re now in the process of refining and implementing them, as well as streamlining this first experience to be simpler for the user.

Evolving verbal identity

On the back of some brand voice and tone workshops (read about them here), we have started to develop some principles about how we talk.

These will allow us to onboard new employees, freelancers and other teams to the new brand, and help us begin to codify who we are. It can be difficult when you’re trying to execute and evolve a new brand, if the only reference points and tools available are old hat.

One of the challenges of taking the output from workshops and developing identity cues and guides is trying to demonstrate our verbal identity in the actual act of explaining it. It’s an exercise in both showing and telling, and trying to make those two things tell the same story.

Next steps will be to add some visual context to this info and spice things up a bit. Until then, here’s a taster of how we’re trying to live in our brand, even through internal content.