Marketing briefing: How do you market to a business/consumer hybrid?
- The gig economy is heating up. Meanwhile, corporate spend management tools continue to grow in popularity.
- All this to say, the line between consumer and business is blurring. How does a brand express that blur?
As the freelancer and gig economy continues to heat up, a new segment is emerging – a sort of cross between consumer and business: Bus-umer, if you will – an especially appropriate title for freelance bus drivers, by the way.
But I digress.
The main point is this: how do you market a product that’s part consumer-focused, part business-focused?
We sort of tackled this problem a couple of briefings ago when we looked at Lumanu, a fintech focused on Gen Z creators. Lumanu’s brand image is all about individuality, despite offering services surrounding business-related finances.
And this week we’re talking about Catch.
Founded in 2017, Catch aims to catch (heh heh) the attention of gig economy workers. Its app automatically sets aside portions of users’ income towards retirement and medical insurance.
Off the bat, the company knew it wanted a lighter look. According to CEO and co-founder Kristen Anderson, a lot of financial apps have this sort of heavy masculine tone. Catch wanted to steer away from that.
“Our lead designer in the very early days came from Care.com. [She was able to give the brand] a much more feminine touch, which I think was very helpful in getting early customers to trust us,” said Anderson. “Our customers are people who in general are not passionate about financial services, but rather their careers.”
Even though their existing brand had been working for them, Anderson said that in the last year or so, as consumers have been spending more time online because of the pandemic, companies all over (including Catch) have been making steps to bolster their digital branding initiatives.
“For the first time ever, brands are starting to acknowledge that the constraints of physical branding don’t have to be applied to a brand identity,” said Anderson. “(…) A lot of brands leading with crypto and Web3 started to create visual aesthetics that could exist outside of the real world.”
A new color scheme
Anderson describes Catch’s early color scheme as being ‘very muted.’ One of the changes it’s made though is choosing stronger colors that better reflect boldness and brightness – traits that can be associated with their core customer base.
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