Project Overview

‘Complete Expense Nirvana’. That’s our mission statement for our customers and employees.

Cape is a spend management platform that combines banking, accounting and expense management functionality to allow businesses to achieve complete expense nirvana. Our first year as a startup was reactive to current trends, from a brand perspective. Post launch our creative department was tasked with evolving us towards a more meaningful and longer-lasting brand.

From its inception, the meaning behind Cape was always about empowering customers. The ‘cape’ embodied this. By going back to our roots we were able to come up with a rebrand based around the idea of a ribbon mascot that could represent anything from a simple cape, to a receipt, to a character, to a product – a device that was flexible and adaptable enough to represent the many features that we as a company aim to deliver to our customers.

From focus groups and brainstorming sessions we realised that we had a common vision and style that we felt represented us best – something fun, quirky, and full of character. We scaled back the coldness of other fintech brands and pushed to introduce some warmth to the industry.

Organisation

Cape Pty Ltd

Team

John Penney
Andrew Fanner
Alanna Symes
Ana Yeung
Will Blunt
Maeve Couch
Ryan Edwards-Pritchard

Project Brief

With our rebrand concept decided, the next step was to roll out across both our website (the public-facing embodiment of our culture, energy and character that led with a storytelling, immersive experience) and our web app (the customer-facing functional face of Cape). The flexibility of the rebrand meant that we were able to push the creative boundaries of interactivity within our site, while creating a strong application that balanced professionalism with character.

The end result was months of strategy with our marketing team; content creation with copywriting teams to deliver our value propositions, mission statement, and core values; working with our product team and UI designers to bring the app to life through the rebrand; and to overhaul all marketing content from animation and video output, to podcast production with top CFO guests from the likes of Who Gives a Crap, Thank You, and Koala among others.

Project Innovation/Need

By breaking away completely from the traditional big four banks, Cape is transforming SME business spending, so our website and app had to work in tandem to convey simplicity and transparency to our customers.

Cutting out stuffy jargon often associated with banks and lenders was a must, so we cut through the B.S. with a unique tone of voice, as well as a straightforward and functional, yet inclusive design filled with personality.

Cape’s technological platform needed to be expressed in such a way so that it wouldn’t alienate early adopters and could help them understand the benefits it would bring to them and how to use it, allowing users to ‘Power up their payments, policies and people’.

From a UX perspective our product team reviewed our existing website and app, built out an array of wireframes for each feature, page and product, and handed over to our UI designers to bring them to life, prioritising simplicity, functionality and accessibility.

Design Challenge

We needed to create a brand that not only gave us a long-term vision and new direction, but also kept the essence of Cape for our existing customers.

For the public-facing project we switched up the primary typeface from Circular Std to Walsheim Pro (two similar fonts but progressing to a more playful type). The colour palette of hot coral and navy blue evolved to softer tones of warm coral and steel blue – a nod to the more earthy tones of the 70s-inspired works we love. And the ribbons gave us a much-needed playfulness across site, along with user interactions and 3D elements.

The app took the essence of the rebrand and switched up coral for steel blue as the primary colour for two reasons – accessibility and providing a contrast between our public- and private-facing entities.

Effectiveness

Our marketing strategy for the rebrand was to drip feed teaser content to our followers on LinkedIn and our early adopters through the Cape Shapers Newsletter. We have shared everything from card design concepts to promo animations and even subtle colour tones and imagery to garner first-hand feedback on the new direction.

We've also been A/B testing design elements on our website and the customer dashboard to monitor user experience and drive positive interactions with our brand.

For the brand reveal, we coordinated across all teams, from marketing and design, to product and engineering to ensure that when we flicked the switch, the website, the app, social promos, card printing, all collateral, internal and external comms, promo videos and animations, and advertising were all in sync from day one.

The immediate post-launch timeframe involved further A/B testing and customer feedback surveys to fine tune our marketing output.