What is Funding Cloud?
Funding is the fuel that companies need to grow, adapt and survive. But all too often, businesses find it hard to secure the finance they need. There are too many confusing products, complex application forms and long waits.
When it was set up in 2011, Funding Options set about to transform the business finance market. Its aim was to make sure every business owner could make an informed choice and have access to instant funding decisions. Since then, it has helped more than 10,000 businesses get the finance they need, quickly and easily. That's more than £0.5bn in funding for businesses across the UK and Netherlands.
In 2021, Funding Options had been developing and building its technology stack to help offer faster funding for clients and greater transparency for their partner lenders. This development was to be launched as a new platform, Funding Cloud.
What we did
We were brought in to help develop a launch campaign and positioning for the new product. Funding Options wanted to refine its message and establish how the launch would be communicated to its audiences of businesses and lenders. We were also tasked with developing a look and feel that's consistent with the core brand but with a note of difference, and creating a product video showcasing and explaining Funding Cloud.
Funding Options also wanted a fresh tone and creative for its social activations, for SME and Advisory audiences. We created a number of animations to run as paid and organic social advertising for the Dutch and UK markets. We were retained for creative support for a period of three months to provide this.
Our approach
The timelines on the project were quite condensed. We quickly pinned down the messaging so that it could feed into all the other elements of the launch. Our role was to help review and refine it, with a strategic narrative and story that best reflects Funding Cloud’s position in the market and how it benefits its customers.
We began by identifying the product's advantages of connection, speed and empowerment. For lenders, we focused on more granular concepts around transparency, customer matching and real-time views of customers. For businesses, we highlighted the lack of red tape, precise fund matching and the breadth of Funding Cloud's lender network, using a simple tone of voice that gives confidence in Funding Cloud. Our language and strategic messaging then fed into Funding Cloud's digital presence, as a destination for customer engagement.
Look and feel
With the messaging in place, we created a visual style for the look and feel of the campaign and product launch. Funding Options had already begun stripping back its core brand elements so that it could build a new direction. This gave our design team a degree of freedom to inject new creative elements and develop a best practice for animation and video that could be used in the future.
At the same time, our design resonated with the rest of the Funding Options brand and didn’t step so far away that it distracted from other communications. We used the core colour palette to create a soft, approachable visual style, with a printed style guide for brand consistency. We created visual motifs for businesses and lenders so that they could be easily identified in the video. These audience groups continued to be signposted within other communications as well as associated live event(s).
The result
Our work launched Funding Options' new product in a clear, cohesive and exciting way. The messaging framework and the fresh visual look will also be used across wider communications, allowing the company to build on its brand awareness and increasing its customer base.
As the wider brand develops, we continue to work with the business to deliver further brand engagement.
