Shifting from the Apple mindset to the Android one.

The challenge

The client is the leading website builder. In its ten years on the market, it powers around 10-15% of all websites on the global internet, with the main user base in the US. Recently it added AI features to its products, and needed to launch them. But a wave of AI website builders is making the category look the same. The client needed to stand apart from them and reposition itself for its next stage of growth.

The insight

Everyone is trying to be Apple. Our users are an Android crowd.

I ran internal interviews, isolated the differentiated attributes, designed and led a brand workshop and held semi-structured user interviews, alongside use-case research and a competitor audit. Two findings shaped everything:

• The users are makers. They like to tinker, build things themselves and break the rules. Competitors were selling simplicity to people who wanted control.
• AI is no longer a differentiator. Selling AI is like selling wi-fi: everyone has it. Leading with it would make the client look like everyone else.
• The opportunity was a devoted community that nobody was celebrating.

What I did

• Positioning: defined a position that celebrates makers and DIY builders, and raises the brand's status by owning its legacy credibility at the top end.
• Brand story: wrote the brand narrative behind the repositioning.
• Brand architecture and offer: restructured the brand architecture, which led the client to restructure how its products and plans are offered.
• Handover: passed the story, strategic territories and inputs to the creative team, and left the client with a future positioning roadmap.