Privé Details 2020
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This is Public Persona Privé
Your Brand: Exactly like no one else’s - where 6 weeks will change everything.
(Re)think + reimagine your brand:
From head to footnote, top to bottom-line.
Public Persona Privé is a comprehensive brand development intensive that culminates in a clear, compelling and cohesive brand platform – one that seamlessly combines all of the pieces and parts of you, your business, and your big-picture vision.
Together, our fingers will find the pulse of who you are, what your brand needs, how to position your business for success and we’ll whip them into a bold, unforgettable brand vision that will help you to stand out as “the only”.
Privé uniquely combines:
Positioning Strategy
Business Visioning
Brand Storytelling
Message Development
Voice Definition
Creative Direction
Art Direction
Project Planning
….to help to ensure that you have a solid and strategic brand foundation and well as a clear creative vision that ensures that your brand is cohesive before your brand as it’s brought to life.
Consider it a private container for brand reinvention that will spark the evolution of your brand and business.
Connecting your business objectives and modus operandi with unabashed creative thinking, we will work together to (re)develop your brand's core message, brand story, visual language and voice - all unified by a unique-to-you creative concept that serves as a golden-thread to be woven through each element and touchpoint of your (re)envisioned brand.
Privé culminates in a comprehensive brand overview + creative brief that I call The Dossier that serves as the foundational strategic and creative lens that can subsequently inform and unite all design, photography, messaging, and copy decisions to ensure consistency across all of your brand’s touchpoints. It helps also helps to guide your team through implementation.
A Solid Brand Foundation
Branding means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But at its core is getting to your business’ core… and your core.
It offers a strategic and unique point of view, and helps your brand take on a unique voice, visual language, and creative concept.
It (re)positions you and clarifies your distinct ability to make an impact and increase your perceived value - not to mention actual value.
Public Persona Privé is an immersive brand-building experience that seamlessly blends strategy, story and style so you can create impeccable influence and impact.
Because:
When you re-think your brand from the very root of who you are and re-construct a cohesive, convention-busting brand that speaks to your customers in a language they will never forget...
When you re-examine and re-work how you show up: in person and online...
When you employ an expert to carefully consider each-and-every facet of your brand and custom-tailor a smart, stunning public persona...
Impact Happens.
Let's work together to uplevel your brand - and business.
Let's create a three-dimensionalized experience of you that creates an authentic connection with your customers.
Let's create a bold idea; a brand concept - a creative throughline - that creates a consistent, memorable, unique experience and sets the tone for your entire business...
Privé is comprehensive brand development & creative consulting for distinctive, cohesive personality-led brands.
It's your brand’s private think-tank that’ll spark the evolution of your brand's identity and culminate in a clear brand foundation + creative direction built on solid business and brand strategy.
It's an expert eye and vision that you can leverage into revenue and propel you into the next level of your business (and beyond).
Within this unique collaborative process, we work together to strip down your existing brand to uncover the core elements that’ll elevate you head, shoulders (and stilettos) above the competition.
We’ll work to cohesively connect the dots between who you are, your story, what you do or sell, and what makes you— as a person, business and brand— distinctively different.
We’ll collectively raise the creative bar, and, I’ll push you to take risks, get noticed, and to leave an indelible mark.
Connecting your business objectives and modus operandi with innovative creative thinking, we will then collaboratively work to develop your brand's message, visual language, and a stunning creative concept that can serve as a golden thread woven through each element and touchpoint of your re-envisioned brand.
Privé culminates in a comprehensive brand overview + creative brief that I call The Dossier that serves as the foundational strategic and creative lens that can subsequently inform and unite all design, photography, messaging, and copy decisions to ensure consistency across all of your brand’s touchpoints.
It also helps to guide your team through implementation.
The Dossier will:
+ Rescue you from unneeded experimentation.
+Keep you in alignment and on-brand.
+ help to Protect your investment in bringing your brand to its (glorious) fruition- because it allows you to 'SEE' how your brand will come together BEFORE you invest in things like copywriting, photoshoots, design.
+ Become a vital living document for your business that you can revisit as your brand continues to evolve
The Approach / Process
This immersive co-creative experience is one-part strategy + consulting sessions, one-part creative + art direction, + one part project planning - that when combined, creates an airtight brand foundation that is undeniably yours, a bold creative direction that will dramatically uplevel your brand image, and a comprehensive plan with guidelines to help guide implementation.
My approach to brand development is as thorough and comprehensive as it is collaborative and deep-diving. I work with you to take wide-angle view of your entire operation, strategy and vision before we ever zoom in for a close-up.
Since I never use a one-size-fits all approach, I can meet you where you are, tailoring my process + services to provide the exact brand-building experience that you need.
The strategies I use are gleaned from the processes used throughout my over 15+ years of working with big brands (that take over 6 months, lots of dollar signs, and often 6 trailing zeros to create), but have been refined and tailored to smaller, personality-driven businesses - like yours.
My unique, thorough approach to branding ensures no detail gets lost in translation.
Each phase of our work together builds seamlessly on the next to build a custom, perfectly-honed, cohesive brand.
THE PRIVÉ PRIMER
This invaluable compendium of self-guided questions and exercises is designed to delve deep into the depths of you, your business, and brand - stripping down your existing brand and uncovering those core elements that’ll elevate you miles (and millions) above the competition.
Not only is it designed to help me immerse myself in your business but more importantly it's designed to help you unpack your brand and business in an effort to see it from a 10k-foot-vantage-point to rethink and refine in preparation for the process ahead.
THE BRAND CO-DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS
We’ll meet weekly for approximately 1.5 to 2 hours each session to collectively take things apart, re-examine them in a new light and then work to put them back together again in a new, unique, and compelling way - one that infuses your brand into your business and visa-versa to create that airtight consistency as we work to position you. Our overarching goal is to take your hard-won expertise, story, personality, personal attributes and unique value, and package them in a compelling, fresh, and distinctive way - laying a solid, uplevelled foundation for your brand.
THE BRAND DOSSIER
Privé culimates in a comprehensive brand brief that I call The Brand Dossier that serves as the foundational creative lens that subsequently informs and unites all elements of your design, photography, messaging, and copy decisions to ensure consistency across all of your brand's touchpoints. This allows you to be able to SEE and understand - through image inspiration and associated copy - how your brand will come together before investing in bringing it to fruition, ensures consistency, and helps to expertly guide your team to create the brand we've worked to co-create.
ACCESS TO MY EXCLUSIVE ROLODEX OF SPECIALISTS
Whether you’re looking to build a team from scratch, hire for one-off projects, or add some professional development to your in-house team, I grant you access to my worldwide network of vetted, high-skilled: designers, copywriters, web developers, photographers, and videographers to bring our collective brand vision into the real world.
I can make targeted recommendations according to your brand's visual language, voice, geographic location, and budget.
COMPLIMENTARY CREATIVE HANDOFF FOR YOUR TEAM
As a complimentary courtesy, I also offer a singular video recorded walkthrough of your Final Dossier to help ensure that your creative team starts off on the right foot, leaving no question-marks on the table or anything to get lost in translation or watered down in the process.
SESSION DETAILS
The Brand Co-Development Sessions.
+ PHASE 01 - the deep dive.
The Privé Primer + 90 Minute Session
This is where we get up close and persona(l). This is where we dive into the core of who you are, what you do, what makes you distinctive, where you’ve been, and where you're headed next.
Once we make things "official" I provide you with your very own copy of the Privé Primer - designed to help you pre-think through certain areas of your business and brand as well as to help me to get up-to-speed on all things "you" prior to diving in. This will allow us to make the very best use of our time together.
We’ll meet (via ZOOM video conference) for a 90 minute session as we dig deep to begin to dissect your brand from head to footnote and top to bottom line.
It’s all about observing and discussing your competitors, your target customers, and identifying the potential to reposition you or fill a gap in your market. Where are you missing the mark? Are there any blind spots hiding? We’ll find them.
We'll also zero in on your brand story, determining how that can be leveraged to support and underscore your expertise and connect with your intended audience.
We'll also discuss how you'd like to be perceived - so we can perfect that.
I serve as your mirror here - reflecting back who you are and what makes YOU and that-thing-you-do incredibly unique and distinctive so that we can build on that in subsequent phases.
The Wrap: We'll wrap up our session by collectively identifying the primary areas in which to focus our efforts during our subsequent Breakthrough session.
Depending on what we determine, I often work to create an additional questionnaire/workbook of sorts containing customized questions designed to help you pre-think through some of what needs to be worked through prior to our next session.
+ Phase 02 - Meet your (new) Brand DNA.
90 Minute Working Session
OVERVIEW:
Here we’ll establish the solid foundation you need in order to watch your brand thrive, and evolve—well into the future. Together, we collaborate to co-create a brand that’s competitively-positioned in your market while zeroing in what makes you and your business great, developing a creative, cohesive system that’ll inform all design, business, and marketing decisions—it’s that important.
DETAILS:
Now that we’ve picked things apart, let’s begin to put them back together again in a totally new and unique way. We’ll start by focussing on the areas that need the most improvement (as uncovered in Phase 1), and working through them, one by one.
Here we’ll (re)define and articulate things like your vision, audience, mission, values, personality, core messaging, brand story, key differentiators, and your unique point-of-view when it comes to what you do.
We'll work to (re)define your brand's personality and tone, sharpen your value proposition and express the core vision, mission and brand values clearly.
The goal is to provide you with a solid, strategic foundation upon which you can build your brand and a plan to move things forward towards a super-successful implementation.
+ Phase 03 - YOUR CREATIVE BRAND PLATFORM.
90 Minute Working Session
OVERVIEW:
From big ideas to little details, this is where we’ll nail down things like your key messaging, pick out your visuals, get locked in with a logo direction, and make sure your complete package is cohesive and perfectly set up to sell you and your products.
DETAILS:
Now that your brand is positioned correctly and the facts are carefully culled and clarified, we can move on to determining the (dirty) details.
We’ll start by figuring out your best angle — literally and figuratively— while working on finding those unique angles that’ll help you stand out & make your mark.
We'll observe and catalogue your personal tastes, your voice, your own personal style.
We’ll then only develop your unique Creative Concept, but I'll also work behind the scenes after our session to use it as the unifying theme that’ll influence and inform everything you do from the layout of your website to the words you use and photos you post on Instagram.
+ Phase 04 - The dossier review.
60 Minute Session
After our Creative Session, I'll get to work - compiling a rough draft of your bespoke Brand Dossier. We'll meet to walk through it together - ensuring it captures exactly what we need to capture.
Depending on which areas of your brand need to be reworked, I will have also collected and curated samples of what you need so you can look at specific examples and get that spark of visual inspiration. From color palette to typography, from photography to voice - I've got you covered.
This way, you’ll be able to more effectively SEE your brand as a cohesive powerhouse prior to investing in design, copywriting, web development, or photography which will also help you direct your team through implementation.)
After a round of mutual revisions to the dossier, finalizing the contents, my design team will lay it out into a beautiful document for you to have to help to guide you and your team through implementation.
THE DELIVERABLES
Meet your Brand Dossier.
Our work during Privé culminates in a business, brand + creative brief that I call your Brand Dossier that serves as both a cohesive brand foundation and creative lens through which you’ll be able to construct the tangible pieces of your new brand’s identity. The Dossier helps to inform and unite all design, photography, messaging, and copy decisions to ensure consistency across all of your brand’s touchpoints - even well beyond our work together, and ensures that no detail is lost in translation. In other words, the Dossier’s primary purpose is to pre-define and curate your brand’s strategic, creative, and design direction - before you invest in things like copywriting, design and photography. This protects your investment and ensures that no decisions are left to chance (or bad taste).
Brand DNA
- Brand Vision
- Mission
- Core Values
- Brand Story Prompts
- Ideal Customer Profile
- Positioning Overview
- Key Differentiators
- Your Unique Brand Persona
Brand Voice + Verbiage
- Your Core Brand Message
- Your Brand’s Tone of Voice
- Brand Lexicon: A handful of clever on-brand words, soundbites and phrases to use as you please.
- Your Social Media Conversation: Key content categories that help to express the multiple facets of who you are.
Brand Visuals
- Your Brand Style: Your brand’s visual language: Captured in keywords and a curated moodboard.
- Art Direction: Visual references and creative direction to help inform the look of your logo, color palette, photography, typography, patterns, website layout to ensure a cohesive, consistent presentation of your brand across each touchpoint.
-Social Media Alignment: Reference Images to suggest how to visually tie in your social media to capture your new brand aesthetic.
Holding all of this together is a unique Creative Direction that serves as a golden thread for your brand - creatively connecting the dots across who you are, what you do, and how you do it differently. This unites and informs each and every visual element across every touchpoint. It makes your brand memorable.
It makes it distinctly and distinctively YOURS.
Here's how this helps to guide your team through implementation:
I incorporate notes and visual references throughout the Dossier to brief your copywriter, photographer and designer to help guide them through implementation and ensure that nothing gets lost in translation.
For your designer that means:
+ Ideal Customer Profile: So that they understand who they are and how to visually speak to them.
+ Your Key differentiators: So that they can further help to amplify what makes you unique.
+ A Clear Visual Language that can help to inspire and inform their work along with helping them to get to know and understand your “style” from the outset.
+ Specific visual references and direction to help to guide logo design, font pairing, color palette, patterns as well as visual references to guide your website design aesthetic. This saves you both a lot of back-and-forth (and headaches) upfront.
For your copywriter that means:
+ Ideal Customer Profile: So that they understand who they are and how to woo them with their words.
+ Key Messaging: So that they convey exactly what you need them to.
+ Your Brand Story: Prompts to help ensure they incorporate the best and most resonant iteration of your story into your website and marketing copy.
+ Your Key Differentiators: So that they can capture + express your unique value.
+ Your Brand Voice: What it is + what it's not so that they can write to sound like you.
+ Brand Lexicon: Words to use vs avoid.
+ Soundbites: Clever on-brand and conceptual one-liners and phrases to use as you please.
For your photoshoot that means:
+ A clear visual language that can inspire and inform everything from the colors you’ll wear to the type of photography that is most appropriate for your brand (studio? lifestyle?).
+ Visual references that can help to inspire and inform your photographer as you plan your photoshoot together, suggesting tonality, look + feel, setting, lighting.
Please note: If completing Photoshoot Planning (detailed below) we'll also take this much further.
““When I came to Sarah, I was ready for things to feel cohesive... and it just didn’t feel that way before. I had already easily spent well over $20K working with a designer to uplevel my brand who never really GOT who I was and what I was trying to achieve - but I think that’s because I just couldn’t see all the parts of the brand as a whole myself.
The experience was so much more revealing and far-reaching than I had initially expected - I was surprised that I ended up deciding to shift so much throughout this process - not just in my brand but in my business. Once I saw how all of the pieces of the brand began to come together, I realized that it was time to let go of some parts that didn’t fit as well.
Admittedly, look and feel is what I came to Sarah for but had never thought about how that needed to be tied to the brand voice + message as well. This cohesion has been incredibly powerful for my business and was not only helpful for my rebrand but has helped me to confidently shape everything moving forward as my business continues to evolve.””
““I never knew that branding my copywriting business would (pardon the melodrama here) → alter my life, forever.
I never knew that living my brand would impact everything (including my haircolor).
As a result of the work that I did with Sarah - I was able to achieve unparaleled clarity in my brand and business, DOUBLE my rates in less than 6 months and TRIPLE them within one year (I know, kind of obnoxious to boast but it’s true).
This is without a doubt the best investment that I could have ever made for my business...””
The Options + Investment
The investment for Public Persona Privé is:
$8,000 USD*
*50% is due upfront to book, the other 50% is due approximately mid-way through our engagement.
ADD-ON Options
Post-Privé
If you desire more hands-on direction in planning out your website as well as planning and preparing for your photoshoot, here is an additional way to create an even more comprehensive, tailored-to-you Privé experience.
I can help to support you through what I refer to as “The Planning Phase”. This is perfect for you if you plan to handle your photoshoot on your own and would just like to ensure that you’re fully prepped for your big day, providing plenty of guidance for your photographer of choice.
This also (and just as importantly) helps to prepare you to work with your copywriter and website designer in that we will also work to determine your new website navigation, primary content and key messaging on each page. I do things this way to ensure that the photography aligns with the page content and the messaging upfront.
What this phase yields is a comprehensive photoshoot treatment and shotlist, and a “website content direction” document that breaks all of your web pages down into basic wireframes to show what content can and should go where. I also include guidelines to help you to block out your website content prior to handing it over to your copywriter of choice.
*Please note that we do recommend booking this along with Privé so as to be able to segue seamlessly from one phase to the next or you can choose to add this phase on at any time once we have completed Privé. We do have very limited availability and our time is booked on a first-come, first-served basis.
The Planning Phase
Website + Photoshoot Direction and Planning
(Because Planning Makes Perfect.)
Your website is a container for your content. The success of your website in sending a clear and compelling message is all about conveying a very clear message both visually and verbally. In order to do this, we must plan for the images on each page of your website to match the copywriting - this ensures that every single image down to the tiniest of details serves a very clear purpose. This not only paints a very clear picture for your prospective customers but it also protects your investment in a photoshoot. This content is not something that a website designer will help you develop. They’ll expect for you to hand your copy and photos over to them before they start to design. And because we are ALL about brand cohesion across all touchpoints, we’re here to serve as creative and art director to help you block out all of your website content and plan out your website to ensure that nothing gets lost in translation…
PART 01
Website Planning + Direction
Your website is a container for your content. It’s important that the copy and photography are carefully planned and curated to send a clear and cohesive message (visually, verbally, and viscerally) to your visitors.
We’ll kick off this phase by having you work through my in-depth Website + Digital Content Planner so that every asset that will need to be created or tweaked is accounted for upfront.
This will help us to determine:
Your website’s primary and secondary navigation
The navigation naming conventions
The content needed for each page - what should stay or go, what to expound upon, or what needs to be created from scratch.
The primary message that needs to be front-and-center on each page (so that we can ensure that your photography matches the copy.)
Any additional digital brand elements that will need to be created and/or revamped.
Once you’ve worked through the document on your own, we will then meet for an in-depth 90 minute Zoom Website Planning Session to review and discuss everything in detail. We will work to collaboratively plan out each page of your website with your user experience in the forefront of our minds in order to create a seamless experience for them as well as a seamless handoff to your copywriter and your website designer.
This includes:
Determining the gist of the content and copy that will be needed for each page.
Determining the specific images that will be needed for each page - ensuring that they correspond with the page content.
Following our session, I will work to finesse the document in an effort to guide you and/or your copywriter of choice to help to help to ensure that nothing is left in translation as you work with them to (re)write or polish your website copy. Your completed website planner will also serve as an invaluable resource to hand to your website designer.
PART 02
Photoshoot Planning + Styling
Image is everything. Especially if you’re leading your website with a singular image. You cannot simply tell a story, you must tell the right story.
Taking the direction we established in your dossier and using your final Website + Digital Content Planner as our guide, we’ll work to plan out each key shot for your website (assuming 10-15 key images*)
We’ll hop on Zoom for a 90 minute photoshoot planning session where we’ll go through to plan the key images of your website shot-by-shot, co-developing an initial shotlist in Google Docs that aligns with your website’s photography needs.
During our time together, we’ll discuss each shot in detail, determining the specifics of each scenario and the associated details for each.
We’ll discuss and determine:
Wardrobe
Hair + Makeup
Props
Environment
Lighting
Poses
Post-Production effects and/or treatments (if applicable)
Following our session, I’ll clean up your photoshoot shotlist, adding further details and visual references (where applicable) to help to direct the photographer, hair + makeup artist as well as to help to guide you as you source items for your photoshoot.
I will also include suggestions (and links) on where to source key wardrobe items and props to make shopping for your shoot a breeze.
The Investment for The Planning Phase is
+ $4650* USD
Should you wish to add The Planning Phase Upfront, we can transition into this phase just as soon as we complete your final Dossier.
*This assumes the standard 5-7 web pages. Should you have/require a more robust website and/or photoshoot, we can customize and adjust your project proposal / scope to reflect this accordingly.
QUESTIONS?
Frequently Asked Questions
+ What is the average budget + ROI of a full rebrand?
As the savvy business owner that you are, you’re probably wondering two things: What is this going to cost me, and is it worth it?
Smart cookie. Weighing the financial implications of your brand and business development is a smart thing to do. It will help guide you to make the best decisions for your individual needs and figure out when the rewards outweigh the risk.
How much does a full rebrand cost? The answer is - as much as you want it to. I believe that your brand doesn’t have to break your wallet. There are solutions - custom, semi-custom, etc that fit everyone’s budget - and those options do open up to you when you co-build your brand from the start - because you're then able to guide the creative ship and keep things clear and consistent.
First, Consider the ROI
A FULL branding budget is one thing, but it’s very different from thinking about how you might see a return.
For example, spending $5,000 on brand elements that result in only $5 of new sales is ridiculous.
But - paying $5,000 for something that could net you $50,000 or even $500,000 in new business is a no-brainer.
I've had clients come to me who have wasted tens of thousands of dollars on pricey rebrands that didn’t work. See Racheal Cook's testimonial above for example.
I've had other clients spend a few thousand dollars on just a FEW key elements we identify through the process of working together, which then provide a massive return on their investment to the tune of doubling or in a few cases, even tripling their annual gross income.
The key here is making the right branding decisions that will yield the highest reward (which is what I happen to specialize in).
Do the math.
How many new clients/projects would you have to win to justify the costs of a rebrand?
Which elements are the most important for creating a cohesive brand experience (and where can you save)? **
What projects / clients / income are you currently leaving on the table because you’re not presenting a cohesive, professional, or upscale brand experience?
without naming names - as afterall - client confidentiality is of utmost importance to me)
One (private) client tripled her annual revenue with her uplevelled rebrand.
Another? literally quadrupled her online following - IN.ONE.WEEK- which in turn led to her QUINTUPLING (don’t rub your eyes it’s true) her revenue that year - that means that she made over 1.5 million dollars in gross revenue that year as a result.
All of my clients have been able to charge what they are worth by through increasing their percieved value and making their unique value shine through their brand - thus being able to raise their rates as well - some by as much as 3x.
All of this said - here's an average breakdown of various specialists' fees commonly associated with a full (re)brand
Identity Design Development - You could go minimal and opt for a simple type treatment... or you could go all out with a custom monogram with corresponding text treatment and custom signature captured in a full usage guide - The point being - the cost of your logo development is wide-ranging. It could cost anything from $50 and a visit to MyFonts.com to upwards of $4500.
Copywriting - Full 5 pages of copywriting (polish and/or from scratch) - $2800+
Photoshoot - Variables include - geographic location, skillset of photographer, retouch and/or post-production fees, hair + makeup artist fees, wardrobe + prop items purchased and/or rented, location scouting vs studio fees – $2500+
Website Design + Development - Variables include platform (Wordpress vs Squarespace), Custom vs. Semi-Custom, Total number of unique pages, Designer/Developer's skill +experience level, Project Management fees (vs you managing the project yourself) – $2000+ for a semi-custom solution and $6000+ for custom solution
+ What is the average timeline for a full rebrand?
If you're looking for "the works" - ie: Copywriting Overhaul, Photoshoot, Custom Website design and development as well as Custom Identity/Logo Development - the answer is that it's all up to your creative team's availability, your own availability, and how much work has to be completed in total, rounds of revisions, etc.
3-6 months is the average timeline - However, with Privé under your belt, dossier in hand, your web planner complete - this will significantly cut down and/or entirely take care of any of the preparatory work necessary.