Driveway
Brand Launch
Roles: Brand strategist, Content Strategist, Copywriter
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01 - Defining the Brand
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As a sub-brand of Lithia Motors, defining Driveway was a rare challenge: how do you define a wholly new brand identity without overshadowing the parent brand, and how do you achieve alignment across all eight stakeholders, representing different areas of the business?
The definition phase sought to understand:
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What makes Driveway different?
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What are some of Driveway's non-negotiable brand promises?
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What does the voice of Driveway sound like?
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What does Driveway believe in?
After spending time with the stakeholders, a few common themes started to present themselves: everyone wanted the new brand to embody the spirit of flexibility, empowerment, simplicity and transparency.
Drilling into the spirit behind everyone's input to develop brand promises and values is more than transcribing the words shared in the interview. Reading between the lines, asking more probing questions, reiterating what I'd heard—it's all part of the research process! This way, everyone's voice is heard, everyone feels as though they've contributed from their unique perspectives.
It is through this level of collaboration that a brand can be long lasting and withstand the test of time.
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The deck below was presented to the group of stakeholders to align on the common foundational principles of the new brand. It is from this work that all other work became possible.
This deck was presented to stakeholders after 9 hours of interviews and research.
02 - Bringing Driveway to Life
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Working with a product designer, UX designer and visual designer, I created a rough wireframe of the content themes we needed. Like all wireframes, the final result deviated slightly, but the themes for each content block made it to the production build.
Challenges
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Speed. COVID-19 accelerated our timeline to deliver a car repair, selling and buying service that users could access from the comfort of their home.
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Stakeholder alignment. The organization is made up of many departments and C-level executives each with unique experiences and perspectives.
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Limited assets. I did not have access to custom, in-house photography for this project and as such, I had to rely on stock imagery that lived up to our brand values of authenticity, energy, motion and excitement.
Philosophy
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I create wireframes with as-close-to-final copy as I can. This way, stakeholders can get a richer look into the design team's thinking behind our choices.
WIREFRAME
PRODUCTION
03 - Deepening the System
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The homepage set the tone for the rest of the pages on the site. Once the homepage was built, the landing pages for the various services that Driveway offers were next.
In this section, I'll show you a peek at the wireframes and production design of our service page.
WIREFRAME
PRODUCTION
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