In this week’s interview, we talk about brand storytelling with Tom Stewart, Co-founder of Sunski.
July 12, 2018
Can you tell us about your role?
I’m one of the co-founders at Sunski, alongside Michael Charley. My role has changed significantly over the years as we’ve grown from two people working out of an apartment into a team of eleven staff, but I’ve always been at the head of brand, storytelling, and overall look and feel for Sunski. This year we invested time in that part of the business by way of a brand identity and guidelines update that has really helped formalize our messaging and visuals. I’ve always enjoyed adding depth to the brand through relationships with partners and accounts, so it’s been a natural fit for me to act as Sunski’s storyteller and community builder.
How fast have you guys grown?
We’ve been around for six years, and we’re growing sustainably. We started out on Kickstarter and went for a full five of those years without any external capital. Our constraints are inventory and healthy cash flow, as much as brand awareness and marketing.
Why is storytelling important to you?
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about our marketing content in terms of voice, tone, look and feel — and ways in which we can standardize this in our growing team. As new staff join our team and new customers come onboard, there is a need to have clarity in our messaging; essentially, we are reaching a point in our growth trajectory where we needed real guidelines. These guidelines create consistency, and this consistency creates a fluency in our touchpoints with customers. It’s important to deliver the right media and copy in the right moments as part of the customer journey. To me this the ‘art’ of online sales vs. the ‘science’ of digital marketing.
How has the Sunski story evolved? What did it look like when it was just you and Michael, compared to today?
During our recent rebrand process, the first thing we did was look back at everything we had communicated over the past five years. We pinned visuals and media on the wall from each year and asked “why did we make this?” It gave us a clear picture of why we started this in the first place. The exercise helped us understand the values and attributes that we wanted to formalize and carry forward (as well as leave behind). Our biggest takeaway was that we were doing too much with our media- it was important to distil the brand into themes, rather than just facts about what has happened along the way. We began to understand the overall themes that connect multiple parts of our business, and were actually comforted by realizing that these themes had been there since the very beginning. In a nutshell, we set up the company to make enough money to surf when the sun was out and ski when the snow was good. And we evolved these values into a brand theme that focuses on a passion for entrepreneurship (doing things differently) combined with a passion for the outdoors. So today we’re making these themes very clear and digestible in all our messaging. We’ve been a member of the 1% for the planet since the very beginning and have donated more than $100,000 to environmental non-profits in our short history. More recently, we’ve undertaken our new 2020 Vision project which includes a commitment to converting all of our sunglasses production to recycled frames by 2020. These values around product design and the environment have been at play all along, but at the beginning they were not thought of quite as strategically.
So this sounds more like a reconnection to your core, rather than a rebrand. How can the average marketer reconnect with the core of their brand?
All of the disruptive brands in this Insiders group started with a strong product and spirit, then grew really fast and had to redefine who they were. In this way, we’ve had to ‘reunderstand’ why our current customers like us. We’ve also had to think about how best to approach new customers- if we only have 30 seconds to grab their attention, how much of that time should we spend on our origin story vs. the feeling the customer will have when they put on the actual sunglasses? The answer is that both the brand story and product experience have to be in balance to build a truly strong customer relationship in this current environment. For consumer products that are based on a lifestyle in addition to a product, you have to answer “why is our business here?” Simply existing to make money is both boring and in a way uninspiring. I believe that there does need to be passion beyond the return, and that we have to truly enjoy making human connections with our customers.
How does your storytelling help you compete against the established sunglasses powerhouses?
We’re not only trying to target the hardcore outdoor enthusiast or purely fashion motivated customer. Instead, we’re trying to showcase Sunski as a culturally rich brand that believes in the power of design, with its roots firmly in San Francisco where city meets nature in such a special way. We’re targeting customers who will be in the mountains one weekend, and in the city the next. We’re product geeks at heart, and spend a lot of time in the design process too; the product itself is designed to reflect the best of both worlds. From the rebrand, we realized that adding more urban style forward silhouettes is a natural add-on to our core love of the outdoors. So we’re looking to explore this opportunity further in all our future messaging. In the end, we’re independent sunglasses company committed to doing things differently than the typical eyewear powerhouses. Our unique approach and ‘wackiness’ fits right into the spirit of looking at sunglasses differently, and affects everything to the way we photograph our products to the way we’ve overhauled our supply chain to accommodate sustainable materials to make our frames.
Finally, any advice for marketers here who are interested in partnering with a charity or giving initiative?
The first question you have to answer is “Why do we want to partner with a charity?” It has to fit with your core values. To help choose which charity, simply ask yourself “What scares us about the future?” Plastic scares me as does climate change and humanity’s overall impact on our precious planet. So, we’ve invested years of behind the research to find a way to make our shades our shades out of recycled materials. Our love for the outdoors helped us find 1% for the Planet and the partner charities we work with through that network. For us, the environment has been the driving force behind our philanthropy, but there are so many worthy organizations representing causes of real value to society. To the extent that it’s possible, it’s always worth the effort to ensure your precious donations go to a responsibly managed cause that will make a real impact in the world – big or small.
In this week’s interview, we talk about brand storytelling with Tom Stewart, Co-founder of Sunski.
July 12, 2018
Can you tell us about your role?
I’m one of the co-founders at Sunski, alongside Michael Charley. My role has changed significantly over the years as we’ve grown from two people working out of an apartment into a team of eleven staff, but I’ve always been at the head of brand, storytelling, and overall look and feel for Sunski. This year we invested time in that part of the business by way of a brand identity and guidelines update that has really helped formalize our messaging and visuals. I’ve always enjoyed adding depth to the brand through relationships with partners and accounts, so it’s been a natural fit for me to act as Sunski’s storyteller and community builder.
How fast have you guys grown?
We’ve been around for six years, and we’re growing sustainably. We started out on Kickstarter and went for a full five of those years without any external capital. Our constraints are inventory and healthy cash flow, as much as brand awareness and marketing.
Why is storytelling important to you?
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about our marketing content in terms of voice, tone, look and feel — and ways in which we can standardize this in our growing team. As new staff join our team and new customers come onboard, there is a need to have clarity in our messaging; essentially, we are reaching a point in our growth trajectory where we needed real guidelines. These guidelines create consistency, and this consistency creates a fluency in our touchpoints with customers. It’s important to deliver the right media and copy in the right moments as part of the customer journey. To me this the ‘art’ of online sales vs. the ‘science’ of digital marketing.
How has the Sunski story evolved? What did it look like when it was just you and Michael, compared to today?
During our recent rebrand process, the first thing we did was look back at everything we had communicated over the past five years. We pinned visuals and media on the wall from each year and asked “why did we make this?” It gave us a clear picture of why we started this in the first place. The exercise helped us understand the values and attributes that we wanted to formalize and carry forward (as well as leave behind). Our biggest takeaway was that we were doing too much with our media- it was important to distil the brand into themes, rather than just facts about what has happened along the way. We began to understand the overall themes that connect multiple parts of our business, and were actually comforted by realizing that these themes had been there since the very beginning. In a nutshell, we set up the company to make enough money to surf when the sun was out and ski when the snow was good. And we evolved these values into a brand theme that focuses on a passion for entrepreneurship (doing things differently) combined with a passion for the outdoors. So today we’re making these themes very clear and digestible in all our messaging. We’ve been a member of the 1% for the planet since the very beginning and have donated more than $100,000 to environmental non-profits in our short history. More recently, we’ve undertaken our new 2020 Vision project which includes a commitment to converting all of our sunglasses production to recycled frames by 2020. These values around product design and the environment have been at play all along, but at the beginning they were not thought of quite as strategically.
So this sounds more like a reconnection to your core, rather than a rebrand. How can the average marketer reconnect with the core of their brand?
All of the disruptive brands in this Insiders group started with a strong product and spirit, then grew really fast and had to redefine who they were. In this way, we’ve had to ‘reunderstand’ why our current customers like us. We’ve also had to think about how best to approach new customers- if we only have 30 seconds to grab their attention, how much of that time should we spend on our origin story vs. the feeling the customer will have when they put on the actual sunglasses? The answer is that both the brand story and product experience have to be in balance to build a truly strong customer relationship in this current environment. For consumer products that are based on a lifestyle in addition to a product, you have to answer “why is our business here?” Simply existing to make money is both boring and in a way uninspiring. I believe that there does need to be passion beyond the return, and that we have to truly enjoy making human connections with our customers.
How does your storytelling help you compete against the established sunglasses powerhouses?
We’re not only trying to target the hardcore outdoor enthusiast or purely fashion motivated customer. Instead, we’re trying to showcase Sunski as a culturally rich brand that believes in the power of design, with its roots firmly in San Francisco where city meets nature in such a special way. We’re targeting customers who will be in the mountains one weekend, and in the city the next. We’re product geeks at heart, and spend a lot of time in the design process too; the product itself is designed to reflect the best of both worlds. From the rebrand, we realized that adding more urban style forward silhouettes is a natural add-on to our core love of the outdoors. So we’re looking to explore this opportunity further in all our future messaging. In the end, we’re independent sunglasses company committed to doing things differently than the typical eyewear powerhouses. Our unique approach and ‘wackiness’ fits right into the spirit of looking at sunglasses differently, and affects everything to the way we photograph our products to the way we’ve overhauled our supply chain to accommodate sustainable materials to make our frames.
Finally, any advice for marketers here who are interested in partnering with a charity or giving initiative?
The first question you have to answer is “Why do we want to partner with a charity?” It has to fit with your core values. To help choose which charity, simply ask yourself “What scares us about the future?” Plastic scares me as does climate change and humanity’s overall impact on our precious planet. So, we’ve invested years of behind the research to find a way to make our shades our shades out of recycled materials. Our love for the outdoors helped us find 1% for the Planet and the partner charities we work with through that network. For us, the environment has been the driving force behind our philanthropy, but there are so many worthy organizations representing causes of real value to society. To the extent that it’s possible, it’s always worth the effort to ensure your precious donations go to a responsibly managed cause that will make a real impact in the world – big or small.