Creating a brand narrative for AI optimisation company, Satalia, which both sells today and shapes tomorrow.
Satalia felt that AI was far from the dark, dystopian threat that many saw. In fact, they saw it as an opportunity to create a completely ‘decentralised’ world – almost ‘hyper-capitalist’ in nature – giving every person more freedom to contribute to and create value for society.
When we started working together, they were a team of AI and optimisation experts, helping businesses to make decisions about how to operate efficiently and effectively. But they were driven by a bigger purpose: to help solve the biggest problems facing the world, like resource scarcity, climate change, inequality and beyond.
The challenge was how to marry a story about today’s practical products with tomorrow’s vision, so that clients would keep buying now but also be excited (and not confused by) the bigger ambition for the future.
Building the narrative
We met with their founder and some of their own ‘decentralised’ team members, to hear their story. They told us about brilliantly practical solutions they offer – helping delivery companies plot efficient routes and optimising production schedules.
They also got hugely passionate about using AI to create a utopian future, where each person is free to contribute their value and help solve the biggest challenges facing humanity.
Both aspects were part of their story. But one was practical and sales-focussed, the other a big vision.
We helped them see that this was all part of one narrative, just on different timelines. In the here and now, they were using AI to solve practical problems. They used that success as a testbed to show how it can solve even bigger societal problems. And, in the future, they would ‘give away’ their technology to create huge value at massive scale.
Creating a manifesto for action
We worked together on a clear narrative that told this story – specifically focussed on the idea of a timeline, where the impact of their technology grew over time.
We turned it into a little brand book – a ‘manifesto’ for action, that all their people could get behind. And we helped define a brand architecture, so that the practical products and solutions today were separated from but linked to the ‘Satalia Lab’, where they focussed on building their vision of the future.
For the brand’s visual identity, we partnered with Pentagram. You can see some of the design work here.