The Brief

Urban (at the time Urban Massage) – the on-demand wellness platform –  asked me to help bring their mission to life. The mission was one you’ll hear a lot in the start-up world, to democratise access to a necessary service, in this case wellness, while still doing good by the therapists offering the treatment.

In the year I spent working at Urban, we: updated our positioning and narrative, used audience insights to improve marketing metrics, completed a visual re-brand, re-set our values and tone of voice and worked on some interesting policy changes.

Showing that you mean what you say

The hardest thing about brands who have missions with words like democracy in them, is actually doing it. It’s tricky to make sure both sides get a good deal. It’s also a lot harder to actually turn a luxury service into something that comes to mind when you’re feeling stressed out.

When I started working at Urban Massage the first thing we focused on was understanding who we were talking to. Not just our existing customers but our addressable audience too. What stopped them booking a massage? Why wouldn’t they want one at home? Who were they? How much could they afford to spend?

Once we understood who we were speaking to and what their assumptions might be, we were able to build a brand and marketing strategy that addressed these barriers. Immediately it was clear that there were many things causing issues, like the fact that our imagery was directly contradicting our mission – creating a luxurious impression that confirmed to our audience that massages were only for the rich.

On the other side, we wanted to prove our sincerity to the therapists on the platform too. So we did the same, we set up groups to discuss their ideas, concerns and better understand what it was like to be a mobile therapist. We asked therapists to vote for representatives and held regular meetings with a team of reps to progress our strategies.

And then with a clarified mission and real proof points under our belt we started doing more external comms, like this piece in City AM and Techcrunch as well as pulling off an overfunded Seedrs campaign in a week and a bit.