What if creating events could be easy & fun?
Brand Strategy & Visual Identity for Juggle — Case Study
Planning events, even the smallest one, can be stressful.
The last time I wanted to plan a small birthday party for my younger brother, getting a cake vendor alone was a hassle.
Let’s not even talk about when my friend was planning her wedding. The frustration she experienced just to secure a venue! Phew!
Thinking about all this recently, I wondered, “What if there was a platform that could make event planning easy and fun? How would it look like? How would it sound like?”
I decided to explore the idea, starting with a brand strategy, then a visual Identity design and some content materials for marketing.
All this would be created assuming that everything is in place for this business to operate smoothly and make profit.
I usually work on fun projects alone but this time around, I assembled some avengers or should I say, I called on other benders… Lol!
I must say, this project tested my team working skills, my project management skills and my patience. Kudos to project managers merhn!
After so much planning and plotting, however, we successfully created a beautiful and goofy brand that I’m sure you’d patronize if it was real.
Now, let’s start from where it all began.
NAMING
Imagine a brand that brings together all the vendors and tools you need to create an event smoothly. What will it be called?
The brand needed a name that would embody the work it does. I came up with several names until “Juggle” popped up.
This is a brand that will bring together several vendors to handle several things to ensure that people are able to create events easily.
That’s juggling in its essence. So when the name, “Juggle” came up, I didn’t resist it. It sounded just perfect.
WHAT DOES JUGGLE DO?
It was time to establish the key things about the brand. The first question that needed to be answered was, “What at all does Juggle do?”
Juggle brings together all the people you need to create a successful event in an easy and fun way. Chefs. Photographers. Interior Decorators. Designers. Mention them!
You can find all of them on the Juggle app. Chat with them, get a 360 view of event centers and other products, pay and have access to all you need.
Juggle tackles 3 main issues:
1. The stress that comes with roaming about or asking people if they know any reliable vendors.
2. The frustration that comes with working with unreliable vendors who do not show up on time or perform poorly.
3. Issues of defrauding where people pay for items or services and do not receive it or are tricked into paying the wrong person.
Juggle does thorough background checks to ensure that every vendor on the app is legit.
There’s also a review system that makes it easy for customers to leave review or share their complaints and have them addressed with urgency.
THE STORY
To set the tone for the strategy, I wrote a story to capture the heart of the brand.
Imagine a playground where children and even adults can find various equipment to have fun with. Juggle can be likened to that.
In essence, Juggle operates like a playground that brings all the vendors and tools you need to create your event in an easy and fun way.
BRAND PURPOSE
Based on the story, I could now craft the mission & vision. The mission of Juggle is simple: to take out the hassle in event planning for everyday people and bring in the ease and fun.
Working on the vision followed suit. When you hear the name, “Juggle”, we don’t want you to just think, “Event planning” . We also want you to think of how easy and fun it can be.
Imagine a world where people can take charge of planning their weddings, funerals etc. without so much stress. That’s the world we are striving to create.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Juggle operates in Ghana and targets people who plan small and medium sized events from time to time.
These are people in our neighborhood, offices and even on the streets, who want to create events but are faced with so many challenges here and there. We call them Everyday People.
For instance, there’s Annie who wanted to rent a hall for her sister’s wedding but got scammed.
There’s Maxwell who employed the services of a caterer for his wedding anniversary celebration, only for her to show up after the celebration had ended.
There’s Helen and George who had to walk under the scorching sun and spend so much just to organize their mum’s funeral.
These are the things people go through everyday just to organize simple events. It shouldn’t be so.
With Juggle, they can sit in the comfort of their homes, get a 3d view of any event center they want, contact the manager, negotiate and book the place. They can also do this for several other services.
Juggle also caters to people who sell stuff. We encourage them to use the Juggle app to find more customers.
BRAND MESSAGE
Juggle’s brand message is straightforward. Everyday you’re crashing into stress, frustration, high costs and fraudulent people.
We want to help you dodge them, so you can embrace an easy and fun way of creating events.
This is captured beautifully in the brand tagline, “Dodge the Hassle”
BRAND ARCHETYPE & VOICE
I envisioned Juggle as the regular guy who loved to help people.
He always has a smile on, carries a genuine heart and drops funny comments here and there!
The best archetype for this brand had to be the Regular Guy. He’s friendly but also focused, caring & resourceful.
The brand voice were embodied in 3Fs — Friendly, Fun and Focused
The brand will also employ illustrations and dialogues to pass across messages.
These dialogues will revolve around the day to day experiences of people who create simple events frequently. We will use words and phrases these people use. This is to ensure that whatever we say resonates with them.
At this point, the brand had been beautifully woven. It was time to translate it into visuals. That’s where Mann comes in.
Picture a man juggling several balls. The balls jump high into the sky and falls down only to bounce back up in such a fun way.
That fun was exactly what Mann captured in the logomark. How he did it was spectacular!
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Looking at the logomark, you’d see several shapes stacked together. Mann sought to portray the various services that Juggle provides with these shapes.
Also, as you look carefully at that “J”, you’d see the shape of a smile at the bottom.
When you juggle shapes, it brings a sense of Joy. In the same way, when you use the various services provided by Juggle for your events, you’re left with joy.
Aside being bold and adaptable, the logomark has this playful feel that makes you want to nudge it and see it bounce.
The wordmark was also brilliantly created to complement the logomark. It has that professional and focused look that contrast beautifully with the playful & colourful logomark.
Colours
What colours would best capture the friendly, fun yet focused nature of the brand? Mann decided on a myriad of bright colours that could make anyone’s heart race in utter excitement.
Not only do they depict fun and creativity, they are colours that appeal to everyday people. Everyone can find their favorite in there.
LOGO APPLICATION
The logo and colors were beautiful but were they functional? How would they look on mockups? If we wanted to communicate short messages on flyers and billboards, would they look good?
I went to work right away on short messages for the brand. I thought of how we could communicate, in simple terms, what Juggle does — — of course without moving away from the friendly, funny and focused voice.
Mann created some design templates and the result was astounding.
CONTENT MARKETING
We needed to make Juggle’s presence felt on social media.
I set the content marketing goals as well as some content pillars to guide the kind of messages we were going to put out there.
What relatable stories could we tell? The brand message and communication style established during the strategy came in handy here.
We decided to employ dialogues and cartoon illustrations to tell relatable stories that would plant Juggle in the minds of target customers.
Once again, I wrote short scripts that captured the heart the brand and would easily win the hearts of Everyday People who see it.
The scripts captured the brand message, made used of words/phrases like, “Chale” “God punish him” which are usually used by our target audience. There was also an infusion of pidgin English to create relatability.
How could we bring these short scripts to life in a creative & fun way?
That’s where Neequaye comes in.
Neequaye read the script and was immediately injected with brilliant ideas. His entire approach to the project was nothing short of amazing!
He began work on the Juggle Mascot which we named Jugo.
He also brought 3 of the short scripts to life.
The way he illustrated the characters, the expressions on their faces and the way Jugo is seen being involved & dedicated to each customer, just gave the brand that natural & relatable feel.
The interesting thing is that the Mascot can be easily animated and used for video content as well.
And of course, these illustrations would be followed by captions detailing how Juggle can help our target audience dodge the frustration, high cost, defrauding and other stressful situations that come with creating simple events.
These are the kind of content Juggle will consistently share on various Social media platforms to create awareness and win the hearts of customers.
DRAWING DOWN THE CURTAINS
If Juggle continues to provide excellent services and deal swiftly with complaints, then that’s half of the work done.
The rest of the work would be to consistently communicate the brand message using stories, dialogues, illustrations and other creative means.
As long as these two things are in sync, not only will the Juggle brand live rent free in the minds of customers, we will also smoothly move into their hearts and get them to be raving fans overtime.
In all, if Juggle was a realistic brand, I think it would have been easy to penetrate the market and win the heart of many people.
But that’s easier said than done!
So tell me, will you patronize Juggle if it was an actual brand? Let us know!
