Challenge
LUMA Institute's pressures were manifold, with revenue streams spanning DTC trainings and certifications, B2B on-site employee workshops, and physical products. Its unique approach to Design Thinking was becoming increasingly popular with individual consumers and a growing portfolio of enterprise-level accounts like AutoDesk, GenPact, and International Bank. This rapid expansion meant increasing pressures on its distributed and growing international workforce. Internal confusion was starting to create client confusion and disengagement. To add to the complexity, LUMA was looking to stand up a new business function: Marketing.
Approach
Work products that could serve as universal touchstones were key to getting everyone rowing in the same direction. Leveraging work that staff had done ad-hoc and independently, I led a group of staff and leadership stakeholders in crafting a new value proposition that was approved by the C-suite. LUMA's brand architecture was brought into order with organization-wide taxonomic audits. A single-source-of-truth work product was then distributed to all departments as an online reference, complete with searchable AKAs (also known as). A comprehensive brand voice guide included use-case examples and sample copy. A tagline and new website copy were produced for the refreshed website.
Results
The one-person marketing team grew to five, and for the first time, LUMA was self-producing on-brand videos and other marketing collaterals. The Sales team reported being more in alignment with marketing efforts, and downstream business functions (like Events and Onboarding) received clearer scope documents. LUMA was successfully acquired by Mural.
"Tasha was instrumental in helping us build a marketing operation to deliver value toward company goals."
- Christine Zapinski, CMO