Company naming, Messaging brand guidelines, Website copywriting
What do they do?
Arcilla connect the vision of property investors with exciting prime residential and commercial property opportunities worldwide via an integrated partnership model which spans, property acquisition, development and interior design.
What did they need?
A full rebrand. When we met the founders of Arcilla they were called Capital Place Properties, growing that brand around their work in the London prime property market. But their new model and their expansion into property development in other parts of the world meant their entire proposition needed reworking to shine.
What did we do?
Phase 1 – Renaming: Sufu were recommended to Capital Place Properties originally just to help with renaming the business. As often happens, the founders had got a bit stuck in finding a name they had total confidence in and really wanted that crucial building block locked in and agreed. So I took them through our usual naming process which quite rapidly unearthed three names that they were very excited about. The final choice was Arcilla, deriving from the Spanish word for clay. This spoke to the qualities of craftsmanship and design at the heart of the brand and the suffix “property partners” was added to the form the full name, an important addition to signal the new partnership-led business model.
Phase 2 – Brand platform: With the name in place and a fantastic visual identity created, featuring a clay swirl that was inspired by the naming, Arcilla asked Sufu to stay involved with creating a new website. But we knew that before the web copy could be written, the new mission and purpose of Arcilla Property Partners needed fuller definition. I’m very grateful and Harry and Alexis, the founders, listened to my advice and trusted me, even though they hadn’t known me long!
We took the founders through a rapid version of our brand messaging guidelines process (they’re entrepreneurs they wanted to work fast!) but were able to help them express the core of their purpose in a new proposition and suite of messaging. Now we had the brand language to make a brilliant website!
Phase 3 – Website copywriting: Working alongside Arcilla’s website designer/developer I collaborated on the website structure and sitemap and was able to write a draft of all the page copy so it could be used in the page layout designs. This makes a designer’s life much easier and the design more meaningful for client review. Because the language was set it really didn’t take me very long at all to produce copy for the five key pages in the launch site. Visuals were always going to play a dominant role so the copy could focus on just hitting the key messages that couldn’t be comveyed visually.
The resulting website was produced fast and felt amazing. In fact my over-riding reflection of the project was “How did we manage to do it that well, that fast?” The answer is twofold:
- Rapid effective comms and collaboration between the client and I. Mostly done via WhatsApp and Zoom calls arranged at 10 mins notice. We’re flexible like that!
- Trusting the process. I knew the exact steps to get this done and the client didn’t fight me, they came with me. But only because they KNEW I’d “got it”. That I understood the soul of this business as well as they did.
Phases 2 and 3 of this project were greenlit on 6th April 2023. The website went live on 12th May 2023. 36 days for a complete rework of brand messaging and a completed website. A very happy client and an exhilarating project to work on.
Rebranding our business needed to be done right and done fast. It’s easy to get in a muddle making brand decisions at speed, so to achieve a successful outcome we needed someone we could trust to guide us through the right process and execute it flawlessly.
Harry Helsby, Co-founder, Arcilla Property Partners
Tom Hadley earned that trust by taking the time to prove he understood our mission completely. We’re very glad we partnered with Sufu to create the new naming, brand messaging and website copy for Arcilla Property Partners, it’s given us the platform to take our business to the next level.
