Climate Tech Startup

In the very early days of the pandemic, climate tech startup Vlinder hired us to deliver their brand strategy. Our initial calls with the team involved travel planning & delivery of our branding process in our ‘normal’ way, outdoors in nature.

But as the reality of Covid-19 hit, those conversations pivoted, and we began to explore how our work might unfold in a new direction.

At first, we, like everyone else, were scrambling - feeling the pressure to shift everything online. It felt like there was this unwritten rule that we all needed to take everything we were doing and turn it into an online course or webinar or some kind of Zoom extravaganza.⠀

And we almost did. ⠀

But something felt off. Two years ago we made the decision to do all our brand strategy outdoors. It was the smartest decision we’ve ever made and we've never looked back.⠀

And suddenly we were looking at starting a bunch of work with epic clients the 'old' way. On screens and indoors. It felt like we had no other choice - we were just going to have to suck it up.⠀

Turns out we're not good at sucking things up.⠀

We asked ourselves - is there any way we could still stick to our outdoors, immersive & experiential process even when we can't be with the client ? Can we find a way to avoid screens even though we're working remotely and with distributed teams ?⠀

So we did. We invited our clients to do it differently. We prepped them for calls while hiking. We sent each other photos of the beautiful natural spaces we were immersed in. We were interrupted by squirrels and moments of hey-guys-can-I-just-show-you-this-epic-view ?⠀

It definitely isn't the easiest way to faciliate but holy smokes it's been incredible. We made a commitment to work outdoors and we stuck to it. Nature is our co-facilitator and we're not willing to give that up.