Sift is a promising ex-SpaceX startup that offers an observability stack for machine inventors across several industries — including aerospace, robotics, renewable transportation, and energy.
The company is still in its early growth phase, but in order to attract new customers and investors, it needed a demand-generation ecosystem and sales enablement toolkit. There was a deeply felt altruistic undertone to be found at Sift, and it quickly became the basis for the new brand identity we created for the company.
In order to deeply understand Sift’s core audience, we conducted our own consumer research, asking emotionally-based questions that would help us understand their motivations. A series of interviews focused on human need were conducted with both Sift employees and their target customers to uncover the deep emotional connections on both sides of this new brand.
Sift’s customers are exceptionally mission-driven, and they’re in the business of creating what
they want to see in the world. From product support to customer education, we designed the company’s brand to connect with its partners on an empathetic, human level.
As a company, taking on this idea of groundbreaking change requires a healthy amount of passion and devotion to the mission at-hand. So, when we think about Sift’s brand identity, it’s important to take a step back and see that it’s much more than just an observability stack. Sift makes data easier to visualize, investigate, store, manage and review — so that its customers can scale faster, and the world can be a better place.
We developed Sift’s persona as the first building block of the brand, taking the shape of the Jungian archetypes Sage and Outlaw. These personas would inform the voice and visual style, as a thoughtful blend of wisdom and rebelliousness that Sift’s customers identify with.
The Sage
Sift is leading the industry on telemetry, offering assistance and guidance with their unique and specialized knowledge.
The Outlaw
The Sift team makes it a habit to question accepted norms. They’re always asking if traditional rules of thought still apply, providing a catalyst for their customers to do the same.
Sift’s personality and voice needed to sound like the Sift team — intrepid, diligent and futurist. With an alloy of grit and vision, the Sift brand would communicate with clarity and ease, intuitive collaboration, world-class expertise and reassurance.
In honor of its dual Sage/Outlaw persona, we established Sift’s voice with overarching notes of optimism; focused on the future, and providing nonstop progress through unparalleled support.
The Sift tone would encapsulate the kind of boldness and authenticity that stops people in their tracks, while imparting a sense of humanity and a higher purpose.
We wanted the Sift logo and font to feel solid, reliable, and a little bit interesting — in order to best emulate its Sage mentality. This sturdy foundation was meant to exude a sense of support, determination and established prominence.
The Sift logo symbol was inspired by a data wave, when points from a sensor system are connected together. Here, we established two data waves that are connected and in-sync — representing Sift’s commitment to its customers.
To bring it together in-line with Sift’s brand persona, we slightly skewed the waves, as a depiction of how Sift is challenging the norms of what data used to be. In this way, the logo also takes on a contrarian element, much like an Outlaw.
We dominated Sift’s brand palette with colors black and white, to visually communicate Sift’s dedication to absolute clarity. Vermillion interrupts the juxtaposition of black and white, representing lightbulb moments that lead to the world’s greatest innovations.
Packed with symbolism, a vermillion hue — classically known to the Pantone palette as Warm Red C” — reminded us of the spark, a bright fire, passion, intensity and drive of complex machinists. Its intensity is known to invoke strong emotions — it never fails to draw attention. It excites the viewer, giving us the feeling that we’re tapping into a powerful engine that will drive Sift further toward its goals.
To create Sift’s iconography, we focused on clear, clean shapes and lines, taken from the logo symbol’s bell curve, and custom-drawn to illustrate Sift’s product features. We also used a grid system to hone in on the precision and dynamism of the Sift brand.
Simplified, easy-to-digest messaging is the key to gaining attention — even when the key audience is made up of the world’s most advanced engineers.
To hit target buyer segments with messages that would resonate, we extrapolated the value that each layer of the Sift software stack would bring to target buyers. Then, we broke down this value into simplified messaging that speaks to each customer’s unique point of view.
Budgets are always tight with seed-stage start-ups, so we decided to build a simple, cost-effective website that focused primarily on hosting an effective product education journey, as well as a simple-yet-smart thought leadership experience.
When you’re just starting out, making your product memorable is a primary signpost on the road to success. After breaking down and simplifying the value of each layer in Sift’s observability software stack, we created a branded iconography set – so that each layer began to make a visual imprint in our customer’s mind. Then, we brought these layers to life through simple animations. This animation layer conducted a product journey that created a simple but compelling impression on the buyer.
Building on Sift’s budding reputation through earned media, we carved out a place on the Sift website for sharing the team’s critical thoughts and insights. The Sift blog, called Mission Critical, serves as a place to connect to Sift’s audience in a “for-engineers-by-engineers” manner. Taking a journalistic approach, Sift’s voice comes through as the founders deliver their thoughts on the future of complex machines in their unique, unfiltered, intrepid brand voice.
Sift needed a core kit to support their inaugural sales team, and we delivered. Building on their brand voice, unique story and value-driven product messaging, we built the basics to help Sift grow revenue from the initial tens-of-thousands range to their first couple million.
Sift’s inaugural toolkit included base presentations, templates, one-pagers and videos, as well as a lead-scoring system that helped the small team prioritize their efforts.
In order to announce Sift’s entry into the universe, we launched a few strategic media moves to gain the attention of our peers and buying audience. Relevant publications including the Economist, TechCrunch, Payload and more lit up with stories about deep tech’s hottest newcomer.
Shortly after we launched Sift’s overall brand and marketing ecosystem, the startup transitioned into its Series A fundraising phase, bringing in an additional $17 million to their financial pool.
As the company continues to grow, these brand and marketing elements will adapt and evolve to contain new ideas and new features. We created this system to be versatile and modifiable, built in a way that makes things easier for Sift’s customers, while encouraging the potential of today’s most brilliant innovators.
