Fuze
Fuze (now an 8x8 company) was a global cloud communications software company that connected users through an enterprise-grade unified platform with a best-in-class experience for calling, meeting, chatting, and content sharing across any device.
Client
ThinkingPhones –>
Fuze
Category
Unified Communications
Output
Agency Management
Brand Awareness
Brand Relaunch
Brand Strategy
Category Creation
Competitive Research
Demand Generation
Employee Engagement
Logo Development
Naming
Positioning
Product Design
Thought Leadership
Working as Fuze's Worldwide Brand and Creative Director was a dream job. From day one, many complex brand strategy conundrums needed to be solved.
ThinkingPhones (known for VOIP and Chat) was building a new category of Unified Communications through a series of acquisitions.
The acquisition of Fuzebox, a renowned video conferencing platform, was a pivotal move in the company's strategy. It was the linchpin in the vision of a unified voice, video, and messaging application that could seamlessly operate across desktop, mobile, and browser.
I worked with the CMO to create the strategy and business case for the C-suite Executives and the Board to rename, reposition, and relaunch ThinkingPhones as Fuze.
Over a span of 3.5 months, I led a dedicated internal team and collaborated with external agencies to execute a comprehensive brand transformation. This involved crafting a new brand narrative and platform, adopting a B2C approach for our B2B go-to-market strategy, and unifying diverse teams, technologies, products, websites, and company cultures under a new brand.
Five years of firsts across all touch points and channels: a new logo, tagline, messaging, website, events, campaigns, demand generation, employee branding, and product development.
This video was created in-house as a TV spot to launch the Fuze tagline and served as the essence and expression of the Fuze promise. In addition to the tagline, I co-wrote the script and wrote and recorded the jingle with friends and family, doing the music and voice-overs with stock and existing Fuze footage.
The Fuze website underwent many changes over five years. Messages were constantly tested and adjusted.
Over five years we launched many engaging and successful campaigns across mediums and channels.
GameChangers was a thought leadership and customer success initiative with an integrated series of activities and campaigns featuring selected CIOs bringing digital transformation to their workplace.
Fuze participated in 30+ events each year. Events ranged from large international trade shows and mid-sized regional city-based specific technology shows to exclusive thought leadership dinners with prospects, customers, and subject matter experts.
FLEX was a custom-branded thought leadership initiative sponsored by Fuze geared toward Chief People Officers, HR, and other C-level executives. All content was created to address the Future of Work and the need for companies to be flexible in enabling their people to work from anywhere.
I collaborated with the Fuze Product teams to develop critical aspects of the product and built the sonic branding system composed of ringtones, alerts, and notifications.
As a people-centric company, Fuze focused on external and internal workforces and employees. Working closely with HR, the Fuze Brand Team executed many initiatives across various tactics to engage, motivate, inspire, and educate each employee.
The Fuze brand was heavily based on thought leadership and an early voice in the Future of Work. The cornerstone of Fuze's messaging was the empowerment of workforces to stay productive by providing them with the tools to communicate and work seamlessly from anywhere. Data-driven research was commissioned yearly to fuel reports that explored variations on the Future of Work theme, which were leveraged across all touchpoints, from Brand Awareness to Demand Generation globally in 5 languages.
The Fuze Communications Index below was used to identify trends shaping how people communicate at work. The report analyzed 5 million workers, 20 million calls, 33 million messages, and 2.5 million meetings. This content was leveraged to fuel landing pages with gated brochure downloads, digital ads, and direct mail.
Results:
Downloads: 737 Engaged accounts: 278 Qualified accounts: 31 Qualified MRR: $243k
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Breaking Barriers 2020