Brand Direction
ClueJay is a D2C company that offers the first pet health tests that pet owners can send directly from their own home. The startup, founded by veterinarians, approached Altos to take their expertise and turn it into a viable brand. Building a trustworthy brand in the eyes of pet owners is no small ask, so I got to work analyzing their materials to figure out what makes pet owners tick. This legwork laid the foundation for a ground-up brand launch, but first I had to come up with the perfect name.
To name a company you have to understand their core values. The content team and I had to define what the brand would become through the compilation of comprehensive brand attribute lists. Once we had built out a glossary of applicable words, I created split charts (the brand is this, the brand is not that) and a handful of brand declarations that would serve to define the company’s voice moving forward.
Naming companies wasn’t one of the agency’s core competencies, so I took the lead on developing our process for name development, viability filtering, and presenting. There are a lot of things a company needs to consider when entering the market. Exhaustive efforts were made to thoroughly vet all of the names that our content team came up with throughout the process. After putting names to legal and consumer tests, I asked one final question: Do we love it?
As a company that aims to work alongside traditional vets, not replace them, we had to scrap any names using vet. As a company that plans for future expansion by partnering with farms, we had to scrap any names with pet. While we all mourned the loss of our beloved, but ultimately too consumer-centric, uPetcha, it gave way to the indelible ClueJay.
At first blush it just seems like a simple play on the word bluejay, but its relevance is abundant. The product’s users seek a high-level overview of their animals’ heath; owners seek a bird’s eye view. Through diagnostic testing, ClueJay’s labs find pertinent information to help advise decisions; the tests provide a clue for veterinarians to provide proper care. The speed in which test results are delivered can be likened to birds in flight.
While all of this helps justify the choice, I was asked by our client to provide one last reason for why I liked it. Not the rationale for creating it, but rather why I personally liked the name.
"Like it? I can’t forget it."
With a name like ClueJay, a major design decision was already made. It would simply make the most sense to consumers for the brand to have a mascot as the icon for the combination mark, and that mascot should look like a bluejay. By including droplet shapes as the eye and beak, to allude to the fact that all animal samples are combined with a liquid solution for analysis, I was able to turn a bluejay profile into a custom ClueJay profile.
In 2018 Forbes published an article titled "Pet Tech Has Venture Capitalists Wagging Their Tails" and one of the most striking things I found when researching these analogous companies was that almost every brand's primary color was some variation of seafoam. The challenge was to not only find a color scheme that differentiated ClueJay from the seafoam startups but also from the pet products that the company would share retail shelf space with.
I presented three color palette directions to the ClueJay team and they gravitated towards the one entitled "Maternal Instinct" that leaned on purples and magentas. According to my research, purple and pink tones are some of the least used colors in the tech, health, and retail spaces. These tones work together to create a color blend that is undeniably distinct in the spaces that the brand occupies.
The test kit packaging is arguably the most important advertisement for the brand. Seen on store shelves, online retailers, veterinary offices, mailboxes and doorsteps, the packaging has the most visibility of any single piece of the brand. The packaging design needed to blend the clean, clinical appeal of a laboratory's flagship product with the bold, progressive color palette and graphic direction.
I created an "atomic" illustration system for the company's branded graphics and iconography. Starting with the atoms – the "droplet" (solution), the "clue" (abstract pathogen shape), the "blend" (combining the two), and the "scan" (corner shapes) – I expanded into brand elements, or more complex iconography using these atoms as the basis for all design decisions moving forward.
These illustrations can be seen throughout all of the company's branded materials: the brand guidelines, the shopping cart and user dashboard, advertising, social media, and more.
Proactive pet owners don't have time to waste when it comes to taking care of their animals, especially if they suspect something might be wrong. For the eCommerce website design, I put the most pertinent information users would need in between "Shop Kit" calls-to-action, and nothing more.
"What are these tests? Why do I need it? How do the levels compare to one another? How quickly can I check out and have it at my doorstep?" These are the answers users want to know before committing to purchase. While their dog may enjoy digging to find things, they shouldn't have to.
From providing art direction for photoshoots (every animal, or "brand ambassador", photographed is a real pet because authenticity is everything) to coming up with a series of taglines (Grab a kit, get a clue) to email marketing templates, I spent the better part of 2019 working alongside and presenting to the ClueJay team. I am thrilled to see everything coming together as they prepare for launch. They are a bona fide game changer in healthcare, and their brand is as strong as their business model.
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