How I helped an eCommerce brand find its voice – and built a brand that feels like home
When two data-driven founders decided to move beyond Amazon, they knew a logo wasn’t enough. They needed a message they could stand behind – and a brand their customers could believe in.
The Situation: A product with traction, but no clear identity
Pulse of Home had a strong foundation. Over 75,000 customers. Great reviews. A growing team. But all of that lived on Amazon (so they couldn’t access vital customer data), with a placeholder brand that didn’t reflect what they were really building.
They were ready to move to a direct-to-consumer model. But they knew they needed to do it with intention – not just a prettier shopfront, but a brand people could actually connect with. When they came to me, they were clear on what they didn’t want. No vague storytelling. No overly poetic fluff. They wanted a message grounded in truth, empathy, and a deeper understanding of their customers.
The Goal: A brand that resonates – and scales
The founders weren’t trying to be influencers or interior designers. They were pragmatic, operations-focused, and working behind the scenes to create a brilliant customer experience. They’d seen a gap in the market that coincided with their skills, and they’d built their business around that.
But they knew that wasn’t enough. Their ideal customers – style-conscious renters, design lovers on a budget, people who wanted their home to feel like them – needed more to go on than shipping speed and price point. They wanted me to create a story around the brand.
Our goal was to create a message that could do three things:
- Reflect the values behind the business (without making them up)
- Speak directly to the customer’s real-life challenges and aspirations
- Provide a practical foundation for content, design and future campaigns
The Process: Listening first, then writing
Usually when I’m building a brand story, I start with the founder/s. That’s where I listen to how they built the brand, tap into the emotion and story behind that. But, with Pulse of Home this wasn’t going to work. The emotion – the story – needed to come from somewhere else: their audience. So I went digging.
Over five weeks, I worked through a combination of:
- Discovery calls with the founders
- Forum and review mining for voice of customer data
- Interviews with five home and lifestyle influencers whose audiences matched their target market
From this, I developed a full brand messaging guide, including:
- Brand mission, values and positioning
- A clear brand voice (optimistic, warm, and encouraging without being overly casual)
- Two customer avatars drawn from real behaviours and motivations
- Key messages mapped to different points in the sales cycle
- Practical copy guidance for social, product pages and customer comms.
The Outcome: A message the team could actually use
By the end of the project, Pulse of Home had a clear brand message they could hand off to their web designer, social media manager and future collaborators – confident that everyone would be working from the same core narrative.
The messaging now runs through their new homepage, product descriptions and social posts. And because it was built around the reality of their customers’ lives, it has made content creation easier, more focused, and more effective.
They’ve seen a steady increase in visibility and sales since applying the messaging – but just as importantly, the brand now feels like something their team can grow with.
They have stories they can tell, pictures they can paint, and emotions they can be sure will resonate with their audience.
So what?
If you’re a founder who’s used to thinking in numbers, customer service tickets and logistics dashboards, it’s not always easy to talk about brand.
This project shows what’s possible when you pair strategic clarity with human insight. You can create messaging that feels like a natural extension of the business itself, while tapping into the exact emotions your audience are feeling. Meaning they actually want to buy from you!
Is this you? Are you struggling to excavate a compelling story from your successful (but sterile) brand? You can find out more about my Brand Messaging Guides here.
Then you should book a call – and I’ll show you how I can help.
