Channable | Brand Guidelines 2022 by Pedro Sousa

The brand book

Story, guidelines, visual system

Channable’s brand book 2023

Connecting the dots...

This document has been created as a reference to guide the outward communication and design of the Channable brand. It introduces our new identity and explains the guiding principles for using the elements of our brand.

The way we look, sound, and behave is a reflection of who we are.

The Channable brand identity is more than a single mark—it’s a rich system that works to balance technology and design with empathy and approachability.

After reading it, we hope you’ll feel confident understanding our core principles and essence, what we stand for as a company, and how to carry our identity throughout your own work.

Introduction

In other words, it’s what people think and feel when they see our website. It goes from design to marketing to HR – and everywhere in between.

But our brand is more than external perception. It’s also the guiding spirit that informs not just how we show up in the world, but how we operate as a company.

Looking at established brands such as Apple, we know that “Think Different” is not just a tagline. It’s a promise. And it drives everything at Apple. “Always Coca-Cola” is not just a tagline. It inspires happiness no matter who you are, wherever you are.

Similarly, in the B2B space, companies like Salesforce put emphasis on collaboration

within everything they do, using taglines like “We bring selling and closing together”, while Adobe inspires creativity at every touchpoint through calls to action like “Put creativity to work.”

We know a good brand is distinctive. It doesn’t look or sound like other brands out there. A good brand has an opinion. It stands for something. A good brand is minimalistic. It doesn’t have too many competing components. It has clarity and it can convey its messaging in a simple yet effective way.

A good brand is an ongoing relationship with customers that evolves over time, while the core elements remain the same. So who are we then? Who is Channable?

A brand is the collective set of ideas, thoughts, and feelings about who we are and what we represent. This intention influences how we’re perceived in the world. It’s the sum total of how we look (our visual identity), sound (verbal identity), and act (culture and behavior).

01_The Brand 02_Tone & voice 03_Visual identity

Logo Typography Colors Geometry Icons Illustrations Photography Product Index Brand essence & pillars Our brand story Brand compass Brand identity & values Value proposition Mission & Vision Brand promise 06. 09. 13. 22. 30. 34. 37. 56. 66. 69. 78. 81. 83. 85. 91. 40. 43. 51. Voice traits & matrix Grammar and style Key messaging per stage

01 The brand

Brand essence & pillars

Our brand essence

Connections

The Channable brand identity is inspired by the idea of “connections.” We are a young, dynamic, diverse company comprising more than 30 nationalities. We wanted to create a vibrant brand inspired by our ethos and is connected to real people.

Connections define us on all levels. On a product level, we connect feeds, channels, and ads within a single platform. On a service level, we connect advertisers to

the right audience. On a cultural level, we connect people. We give them support, and we help them grow.

It’s important to note that the word “connection” will not be explicitly written in every single line of copy. Rather, it’s a word, a feeling you immediately grasp about Channable. It’s a long-term, repeatable emotion our brand can illicit in everyone interacting with us across all touchpoints.

But how do we create connections, really?

By defining our guiding brand pillars:

Knowledgeable Empathetic Carefree

Our brand pillars

Knowledgeable Empathetic Carefree

We are experts in our fields and willing to put in the hard work it takes to realize our ambitions. That makes us effective at hitting milestones, navigating challenges, staying true to our mission, etc.

We are diverse, empathetic, and openminded. We understand that people have different backgrounds and goals, but we are all trying to do our best work. We always assume good intent. We debate, we may have different opinions, but we are always fair. We listen, ask questions and respect different points of view. If we fail, we own our mistakes so we can learn from them and avoid making the same ones again.

While we are firmly rooted in technology, we are approachable and human. There’s a timeless elegance and beauty to our endeavor that connects us to both the past and the future while inspiring wonder and sparking up our imagination.

Brand story

Our story

Channable was founded in 2014 on the belief that technology can empower online businesses and advertisers to reach their customers around the world in a seamless way.

Whether you are a seasoned advertiser or you’re just getting started with marketing your products and services online, we provide technology and first-class support to help you create the campaigns you need, manage your feeds with ease, and integrate your marketplaces seamlessly.

Our story

Marketers and online retailers around the world use Channable to do everything from promoting items across the web to running customized campaigns, where they want, whenever they want. But at the very core of what we do is connection. We connect people and marketplaces. We connect feeds and applications. We help small to medium businesses do big things, with the right tools and guidance every step of the way.

Our story

We help you in a way that is refreshingly frictionless. We’re solving real business challenges and creating a tangible impact on your ROI. From managing data feeds to creating PPC campaigns, we help you grow your online business differently using the power of rules.

Everything we do at Channable is about empowering our customers. We want to give you the technology and knowledge you need to build your vision — not to tell you exactly how to do it.

Brand compass

What do we do? How do we do it? Why do we do it?

Channable is a B2B SaaS platform that offers a fully integrated way to market your products online. We empower marketers and online businesses to manage, scale, and optimize their marketing.

We help customers by providing a self-service platform that automates their manual processes and allows for a faster, more flexible, and more scalable way of work. We further help our clients by providing first-class education and support so they can thrive with our solution.

The e-commerce landscape is complex and always in motion. We add value to our customers at every interaction by helping them be in full control of their strategy and, ultimately, sell more online.

Brand compass

Why is this important?

Automating processes in digital marketing is witnessing a tremendous rise. By empowering every business from small and medium to enterprise to stay ahead of the curve and reach their customers in a more seamless way, we help bring everyone closer to their goals.

Brand compass

Who’s our audience?

We typically target agencies and advertisers. Our personas are James (General Manager), John (General Manager), Emma (SEA Specialist), and Matthias (E-commerce Manager).

We mainly focus on Emma and Matthias because they are digital natives and our end-users. Their influence on the decision-making process is huge – from sign-up to a paid customer to cross-selling. Our users are seen as the experts in their field. They will work daily with our platform and give advice to their peers on how to get more value out of it.

Brand compass

How do we behave?

Channable creates an emotional, cohesive experience for our customers by always helping them feel confident, inspired, and connected. Our values are well defined and they transpire in everything we do and how we interact with our customers, partners, investors, and the team.

Brand compass

What’s our market?

We operate in the marketing enablement space under the main category PPC & Feed Management. Our market is young, dynamic and there are many parties involved. There is a strong focus on functionality and features but a lack of differentiation, especially on a brand level, making it hard for customers to get a clear overview.

Brand compass

Who do we mostly compete with?

Productsup, Lengow, Channeladvisor, Feedonomics. We also compete with all other brands that (partly) offer similar services.

Which brain position do we claim?

Channable is the authority in the marketing enablement space. We’re a self-service platform that keeps on expanding. We have an all-in-one platform with a consumer-grade UX. We offer flexible and clear pricing and best-in-class support.

Expansive Self-service Limited Service-centric

Brand compass

How do people recognize our brand?

Channable is a people-first, personable, and colorful brand in a market full of “blue brands”. We stand out through an approachable design led by warm colors and imagery of people, and content that sits at the intersection of authority, knowledge, and education.

Brand compass

What problem do we solve?

Marketers need to manage too many feeds, ads, and marketplaces, making it difficult to keep track of every element as well as to experiment with campaign optimization. There’s too much work spent manually creating and managing ads and campaigns, which instead can be done in an efficient and seamless way through the Channable platform.

What advantages do we communicate?

Channable helps customers get measurable results through a user-friendly and easy-to-use platform to manage, scale, and optimize campaigns. Our first-class support helps onboard customers from the get-go, all while providing the knowledge they need to reach their goals.

Why is Channable’s claim believable?

We are working with more than 6,500 global brands to help them grow their online sales. Our infrastructure serves more than 55 billion items a day via more than 2,500 global channels including price comparison websites, marketplaces, search engines, and social channels.

Brand identity & values

Our identity

The Channable brand is one of our most valuable assets, and we want every single one of you to become its ardent advocate–to help us use it consistently and with impact.

Our brand is expressed in many different ways – our behavior, our culture, our platform, our communications, our design, our code, and our events.

We are asking you to pay special attention to all of these ways that we all express our brand together, so we can all speak with a diverse yet strong and unified voice.

Company values

Our unique culture is a big reason why we all work at Channable. Our team is diverse and takes pride in hiring people from all over the world, but we all share our common mission and values. Check our values below to get a sneak peek at our culture.

Company values Focus

Our e-commerce landscape is always changing, and our daily lives give us so many distractions. But here at Channable, we keep our focus. We know what is important in both our day-to-day tasks and our long-term goals.

Company values Care to share

We care about being open and transparent with each other and our customers. Sharing leads to the best possible teamwork and the best results.

Company values Grow

We care about personal development. We believe that when the individual grows, Channable grows. That’s why we provide our colleagues with opportunities to develop themselves and encourage them to go for it.

Company values Own it

When we see an opportunity, we take it. When we see an issue, we commit to it. When we can’t figure it out, we ask for help. When we make a mistake, we take responsibility.

Company values Enjoy

We find it important that we enjoy the time we spend at work. We believe that building relationships is an important part of positive working culture, and we invest in activities that embrace and strengthen teamwork.

Value proposition

Our value proposition is the functional, emotional, or self-expressive benefit delivered by our brand to the customer. It’s typically paired with a slogan that attracts people to read further.

Empowering your eCommerce growth.

We empower you to reach your customers and increase online sales by managing and optimizing your product data – in one platform.

We help more than 6,500 global companies including Samsung, Deloitte, Decathlon, Vodafone, TUI, and more, to grow their online sales, boost their ROI, and create a more efficient way to manage their product data using one single source of truth.

Channable helps you utilize built-in feed templates for over 2,500 price comparison websites, affiliate platforms, and marketplaces –and generate ads for Microsoft Advertising, Google Ads, and more.

Long version

Short version

Mission & vision

Mission

A mission statement is an action-oriented statement declaring the purpose an organization serves to its audience. It often includes a general description of the organization, its function, and its objectives.

“

To empower every online business to sell, advertise, and market its products globally by providing innovative, readyto-use technology, and first-class knowledge and support.

A vision is looking into a company’s future or what its overarching vision is. The same elements from the mission statement can be included in a vision statement, but they’ll be described in the future tense.

“ Vision A world where every marketer is in full control of their online strategy.

Brand promise

You’ll always be in control: We’ll always share knowledge:

We promise to empower sellers and marketers to always be in control of how they market products and services online.

We promise to always share relevant, educational content that helps you achieve your goals.

We’ll always be simple: We’ll always be there for you:

We promise to keep simplicity across our product, user interactions, and services.

We promise to always offer first-class support across different touchpoints to all users.

02 Tone & voice

Voice traits & matrix

Voice traits

We’re Informative We’re relatable We’re friendly

We write to inform, educate, help, and offer insights.

We provide customers with the knowledge and perspective to advertise more effectively. Being helpful is essential to our business. The Channable approach is to respectfully inform and educate, never “teaching down” to our audience, who are often domain experts in their own right.

We write to relate to and understand people’s challenges and needs.

We are a young, diverse company that takes pride in what we create and ship. We take our customers seriously and we always put them first. We understand the importance of relating to our customers’ experiences. We don’t talk down to them but empower them with the knowledge they need to achieve their goals. Our voice is relatable, conversational. We don’t use jargon and want our audience to feel connected.

We write to inspire, entertain, build rapport and trust.

The strength of our work gives us the confidence to communicate in an authentic, straightforward way. It’s our job to translate the complexity of our work into actionable insights for our audience but we want to do so in a human-to-human way.

We genuinely want to help customers solve their advertising and e-commerce challenges by offering high-quality content that informs and delights, a product that’s easy to use and serves as their goto e-commerce tool, and customer support that’s always on top of issues, feedback, and concerns.

Tell stories, explore big ideas, energize our community.

Ignore customer challenges, painpoints, and feedback. Don’t overlook internal and external knowledge and insights to create powerful content that resonates.

Oversell our product. Don’t push our product without offering something that is educational, informative, entertaining, or insightful.

We stay true to ourslves and our core values. We believe they should translate into how we build conections with our customers, team members, partners and our entire community. We are relaxed, confident, emotional. We want our audience to feel inspired when interacting with us.

Infuse a conversational, confident, playful voice in all of our content.

Take ourselves too seriously. Don’t be too stiff in the way we communicate and address our audience.

Confident The audience feels Don’t Connected Inspired Knowledgeable Brand pillars Description Empathetic Carefree Informative Voice traits Do Relatable Friendly

in a clear, direct way. Be informative knowledgeable and confident to support the brand’s transparency values. The strength of our work gives us the confidence to communicate in an authentic, straightforward way. It’s our job to translate the complexity of our work into actionable insights for our clients.

Voice matrix

Write

Grammar and style

Dos and Don’ts

Do Don’t

■ Speak in a clear active voice, not a complicated passive one.

■ Speak simply, clearly, and concisely.

■ Use simple, concrete words that mean something.

■ Infuse a conversational, confident, playful voice in all of our content.

■ Tell stories and analogies, explore big ideas, energize our community.

■ Avoid words that are fancy and difficult to understand, but put a little creative effort into what you write. A bit of humor is always fun, and using stories to make complicated things more relatable and easier to understand is a big plus.

■ Oversell our product. Don’t push our product without offering something that is educational, informative, entertaining, or insightful.

■ Take ourselves too seriously. Don’t be too stiff in the way we communicate and address our audience.

Before you start writing

What do you want people to learn? 03

How our platform helps them solve their pain points. Confidence, inspiration, connection.

What do you want people to feel? 02

What do you want people to think? 04

Being more productive, increasing their ROI, optimizing their campaigns.

What do you want people to do?

Engage with us, read our content, try our product, sign up, stay loyal.

Some people will read every word you write. Others will just quickly skim. Help everyone read better by grouping related ideas together and using descriptive headers and subheaders.

Create a hierarchy of information. Lead with the main point or the most important content, in sentences, paragraphs, sections, and pages. Make it scannable through formatting (numbered lists, bullets, bold, internal linking, etc).

Use short words and sentences. Avoid unnecessary modifiers. Be specific. Avoid vague language. Be consistent. Stick to the copy patterns and style points outlined in this guide.

01 Write for everyone 03 Be concise 02 Structure the information visually

Basics

Grammar and style

■ Sentence case headlines. For articles, no final punctuation unless it’s two sentences.

■ Numbers one through nine are spelled out in the text, but not in a headline. 10 and up should be numerals.

■ No punctuation in bulleted or numbered lists, unless it’s two or more sentences.

■ We love the Oxford comma.

■ Feel free to use some exclamation points (!!), but with moderation. Almost no marketing or product copy should have exclamation points

■ Use the active voice. For active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action. In passive voice, the subject of the sentence has the action done to it. Yes: John logged into the account. No: The account was logged into by John.

■ Address the reader directly. Use the second-person narrative (“you”, “your”). We only use “we” when the content reflects our own personal stories. “You” is bottom-up. User-centric. It makes the marketing message you want to share speak “to” you and not “at” you. “You” makes you feel important. That your opinion matters, you’re being listened to, and that you’re understood.

Grammar and style

■ Only use idioms when they add real value.

■ Use an em dash (—) without spaces on either side:

■ No unnecessary connectors. Make sure they have a purpose.

■ Contractions are great, but be careful with is and are.

■ Use a hyphen (-) without spaces on either side to link words into a single phrase:

◆ first-time user

◆ Monday-Friday

◆ One of our most requested features ever-dynamic ad generation—is now available in public beta in Channable.

■ Use proper formatting for your article and sections in it. H1 is the headline, and the main section titles are H2. If a section is part of another section—a sub-section—then use H3, H4, H5, etc. to indicate hierarchy.

■ Write anchor text that adds value. Avoid general anchor text such as “this article” when it can be substituted with a keyword. Also, avoid long anchor text.

Content editing / reviewing criteria

Is the content piece free from factual errors?

Is there appropriate use of language, jargon? Are claims supported by evidence? Is it free from hyperbole and cliches?

Does the content offer original insight? Is it written in the brand voice? Does it engage?

Is the point of the content obvious?

Is every sentence easy to read?

Is there evidence the writer understood the target audience? Are the content and tone appropriate for the intended audience?

Is the content piece logically organized? Do thoughts and ideas follow a logical structure and narrative?

01 Accuracy 03 Authority 05 Authenticity 04 Empathy 06 Organization 02 Clarity

Vocabulary On social channels

Use American English. For global content, we speak and write in American English. For example, “standardized” (American) as opposed to “standardised (British).

■ When sharing content links on LinkedIn, please share the link in the comments – this is important because LinkedIn’s algorithm favors posts that do not contain links because they want users to engage with each other’s personal content rather than promotional content (aka links).

■ If sharing an interesting article from the industry, write a short educational post – not just quotes from the article.

■ Talk directly to the audience – use YOU when you refer to them.

■ Don’t start with generic, weak, and obvious statements like: “Digitalization/automation has fundamentally changed the way we do business.” There’s no emotion, no new information, and no unique angle to them. They quickly make the reader tune out. Instead, try opening with:

◆ A personal anecdote

◆ An interesting quote

◆ A funny comparison

◆ A surprising stat

■ In other words: make the reader FEEL something. It can be anything: curiosity, FOMO, joy, intrigue, etc.

Key messaging per stage

Level 01 | Awareness

■ “Gain control of your ad campaigns.”

■ “All your ad campaigns. All in one place.”

■ “Manage, scale, optimize your ad campaigns easily.”

■ “The scalable way to optimize your ad campaigns.”

■ “Infinite products, marketed your way.”

■ “Scaling your online advertising has never been easier.”

■ “Easily integrate and connect with any e-commerce platform.”

■ “You ship. They shop.”

Level 01 | Awareness

Message 01 | Control

■ Every marketer can be in control of their ad campaigns.

■ Every marketer can manage ads easily.

■ Every marketer can help their clients grow.

■ Every marketer can have access to the right insights.

■ Every marketer can easily boost/increase/grow their clients’ ROI.

■ Every marketer can manage multiple accounts.

■ Every marketer can create thousands of ads.

■ Every marketer can connect to thousands of channels

■ Every marketer can say goodbye to manual work

■ Every marketer agrees that manual work is now canceled

Message 02 | Support

■ We made this ad to help you make more ads

■ We made this ad to help you optimize your ads

■ We made this ad for advertisers who need to advertise better

Message 03 | Empowerment

■ Hey marketer, you can make your ad campaigns better

■ Hey marketer, you can now create thousands of ads from one place

■ Hey marketer, you can be in control of your ad campaigns

■ Hey marketer, you can easily grow your clients’ ROI

Level 02 | Consideration

■ “Learn how leading brands successfully increased their revenue.”

■ “Check out what other leading brands had to say about our product.”

■ “We know we’re biased but the reviews say it all.”

■ “We know we’re biased but we loved helping these brands grow.”

■ “We know we’re biased but check out your social proof.”

Level 03 | Conversion

■ “Join 6,500 leading brands that manage ad campaigns seamlessly”

■ “Connect to 2,500 channels to generate revenue for your clients”

■ “Promote your products on Amazon, Ebay, Google, Microsoft and get seen. Sign up now.”

■ “Connect your brand to thousands of channels and promote the products your clients want.”

■ “Infinite products, marketed your way. Channable is the all-in-one platform that helps you easily manage, scale, and optimize your ad campaigns. Sign up now.”

■ “Easily manage, scale, and optimize your campaigns now. Sign up.”

■ “Start managing your products on more than 2,500 channels.”

■ “Promote your products on 2,500+ channels today. Sign up now.”

■ “Manage all your ads in one platform. Sign up now.”

■ “The solution to managing all your online advertising automatically. Sign up now.”

03 Visual identity

The logo

Three colorful hexagons intersecting to form a cube at the center.. Channable’s logo is an abstract, geometric construct with multiple meanings: the combination of multiple functionalities into one solution, the integration between imported data and exported ads.

For us, it represents connections, and how they help creating new things and more solid concepts and ideas.

Logo versions

The logo has six different displayable versions divided between primary and secondary uses.

The primary versions have priority on display and each version (horizontal, vertical, icon) should be used according to the available space.

The secondary versions can be used colorful backgrounds in order to maintain higher contrast and legibility.

Primary use High priority Low priority Secondary use Horizontal Vertical Icon

Light vs dark

The logo was designed to be adapted to both bright and dark backgrounds.

The color should be adjusted to create appropriate contrast and legibility.

Color vs outline

The most important factor when chosing between the colorful and outline verisons of the logo is to have clear contrast with the background.

This is true for when we use our brand colors, but also for alien colors.

Here you may see some examples of what to do and whant not to do with our logo.

Exclusion zone

For complex graphic backgrounds, sometimes the logo needs a breathing zone to be preserved.

The area is determined by the icon dimensions placed around the logo.

Minimum size

When applied to small media or with reduced space, the logos should never be smaller than their minimum determined sizes.

80px Digital Print 15mm 50px 10mm 40px 8mm

Graphic treatment

The logo is strong enough to withstand different graphic treatments without losing its identity, so long as the colors and core shapes are maintained. This should only be applied to the icon version of the logo, but not to the horizontal or vertical formats.

Any designs of sorts should be approved by the Channable Brand Marketing team.

Don’ts

Don’t displace elements

Don’t distort the logo

There are limits to what can be done with the logo. Any changes that compromise its legibility, structure, or its identity should be avoided.

Here’s a list of what not to do with the Channable logo:

Don’t crop or remove lements

Don’t scale elements

Don’t add elements or effects

Don’t change the colors

Don’t add colors to the secondary version

Don’t change the typography

channable

Secondary logos

As a technology company, Channable has multiple initiatives.

In some cases, these initiatives might lead to sub-brands that should have their own characteristics, while staying true to Channable.

Here are some examples of secondary logos.

Vertical

Horizontal

Color scheme 1 Color scheme 2

Logo builder

When creating a secondary logo, you should follow a set of guidelines.

Take, as an example, the potential channacademy logo:

The proportions are standardized based on the width of the logo, including spacing, positioning, and typography size.

This standard should be followed while creating any secondary logo for the Channable brand family.

5x x x

11x

Icon: Geometric / Primary colors

Font: Museo Sans 700

Icon: Geometric / Primary colors

Horizontal Vertical

The fonts

Corporate font

Designed by Julieta Ulanovsky, the Montserrat typeface was created to rescue the beauty of urban typography that emerged in the first half of the 20th century.

It is a sans-serif, geometric font family with 9 different weights in both roman and italic formats.

Montserrat Black