The Values
The Chemistry of Color
04
DyeRecycle’s scrambled brand was equally a symptom of scrambled purpose. If my benchmark was outside in, I needed to turn the company inside out to understand why the company actually exists. I asked for two three-hour workshops to break down the fundamentals of brand, vision, and values. I was given one two-and-a-half hour time slot and a snack budget.
I started by building the team's visual-verbal confidence. I flashed a series of competitors’ landing pages on the screen, and each participant had to assign brand values from a set of descriptive cards. Every image also served as a quick primer on key design features, training them to notice details like white space, illustration style, and color grading. With an expanded sensory repertoire, our scientists then selected five words that did and did not describe the company, in addition to five images from my pre-selected references spread across the table.
Playing right into my hand, several participants (most notably the CEOs) chose images which directly contradicted their selected words. Descriptors like edgy and reliable sat uneasily together, and images featured in beauty campaigns were paired with words like precise, straightforward, and engineered.
I asked the CEO to envision a product her palette might be advertising. She laughed, and I could see the exercise had worked. “This makes no sense, does it? Am I schizophrenic? Why do I like all of these different things?” And there was the company’s brand laid bare, so I wiped the slate clean.
Can you describe what you do in the simplest language? To a very impatient customer? Try it on an 8 year old like our scientists during the workshop.
So what was left? Well, my direct attempts at understanding team culture had flailed (DyeRecycle’s 10 Commandments went down in awkward silence), but as my shy engineers tentatively argued for ‘their own’ values, for the first time all day, I caught small snippets of why they actually came to work. “We constantly try new things. We always question, we never know or settle for right now.” It was a crack of shared purpose, and a rich territory to shape who the company is. We could finally get to a few more reflective exercises, and some of the 2030 headlines were pretty bold and futuristic, now strong contenders for values!
Bold
We show up with color, declarative statements, and design-forward imagery.
Joyful
We use wit, puns, and humor when appropriate to be accessible.
Futuristic
We speak and look toward future problems with future answers without losing touch with present realities.
Passionate
We care about everything that we put out in the world.
Scientific
We are precise and rigorous with our research, and our North Star is always the lab.
Straightforward
We never lose the pubic in jargon. We use clear and simple language without getting bogged down in sustainability terms.
The original Powerpoint slide (top) and my first iteration (bottom) got bogged down in outputs versus outcomes.
The Strategy
Truth in Simplicity
05
Bolstered by a short research sprint, I returned to the pitch quagmire. Until this point, DyeRecycle drowned investors in outputs. Product descriptions highlighted physical materials recovered, which were packaged as the ‘triple stream revenue’ of polyester, cotton, and dye. But DyeRecycle was selling a chemical solvent, and in fact because of its licensing model, it was actually selling its processes, operating conditions, and service set up. Decolored fibre is not even a recognized commodity in textile manufacturing.
So what are DyeRecycle’s actual unique selling points? Within the short list of companies at the frontier of dissolution recycling, DyeRecycle’s entire process was quite simply, simple. It required one solvent which was low cost, easy to fabricate, and entirely safe to use. By contrast, competitors offered flammable and highly toxic solvents, at best relying on highly pressurized (read: explosive) and very expensive supercritical CO2.
My linguistic playground borrowed from clean beauty. DyeRecycle produces fibre that is free from, removing colors and blends to reveal clean threads ready to be respun. I carried this message into our MVP website by animating one white fibre which follows the reader as the company’s narrative progresses.
By contrast, DyeRecycle lives in a world of complexity. It uses real world waste that is messy, mixed, and overflowing. And no one can sell it. In keeping with the spirit of transparency, I sidestepped most omnipresent sustainability jargon in favor of directness. As opposed to emissions reductions, I talked about using unusable waste. Instead of circular economy, I emphasize remaking, reusing, and preventing waste in our processes. There are enough buzz words to flag the crusaders, but the everyday technicians and recyclers who make up the lionshare of DyeRecycle’s customer base won’t be distracted by environmental evangelising.
