Alexander Hanson-Smith

inploi came to Sonder & Tell to build your brand story and tone of voice. When you first came to us, what were the challenges you were facing as a business?

We were struggling to explain our product mission in a simple sentence. If you asked our team: What do you do? And why is it important? They would have given you 20 different answers, which I think is partly down to the fact that as founders we assumed that everyone knew where our hearts were and what the mission was.

For example, when we were interviewing people who were coming in to apply for roles with us, they said: I took a look at your website but I still don’t really know what it is that you do. That’s a problem. A cursory glance at our website should tell you exactly why we exist and what our product does. We weren’t articulating that properly, so that’s why we came to Sonder & Tell.

Why do you think it was the right time for inploi to invest in brand building?

We’ve been running the business for seven years and have pivoted a couple of times. The final pivot happened as we came out of the pandemic when we repositioned our product from being a labour marketplace to a SaaS platform providing enterprise hiring solutions to companies including Compass Group, Wagamama and Butlin’s. We’d reached product market fit and subsequently decided to work on establishing a solid brand foundation on which to scale our business.

I’m glad we did it at that stage as it has made it much easier to grow our team and align new hires to our company mission and our customer hero.

What was it about the storytelling process that you and your team enjoyed the most whilst working with us?

The initial workshop was super useful. It was the first time our decision makers and brand owners had been in the same room thinking about the DNA of our brand, and how we could express that through language.

Furthermore, we had a company offsite in Istanbul during which Sonder & Tell presented our new positioning. Looking around the room you could see people nodding, no matter how long they’ve been in the company, they were excited to finally be able to express our mission in one sentence: Powering the hiring journey, for everyone. The cherry on the cake was that later in that afternoon, I overheard two of our team using our tone of voice in real conversations! It was a clear indicator  that they felt connected to it and it was validation that the work was good.

How do you think your new storybook positioning around The Held-Back Hiring Hero will impact the way that inploi operates?

We’re a customer led business. Our relationship with our customers is the reason we continue to deliver value, at scale. The Hiring Hero is the perfect articulation of our customer persona and perfectly captures  who they are, the challenges they face and how we can solve them.. A range of macro-economic factors (Brexit, Covid…) has contributed to the most challenging labour market most hiring managers have ever seen. They’ve found themselves in a situation where not hiring the people you need is presenting an existential threat to lots of large businesses. They are now the heroes within their organisations who can help their business navigate these choppy waters.

The B2B and tech world are renowned for jargon. What do you think are some B2B language faux pas?

B2B has historically been a non-human thing and part of our positioning is that we’re a human-first tech company. We’re proud of our humanity and want that to come across in our brand and product. Not just because we are in the hiring space, which is obviously a very human endeavour, but everything that we do is human centric. Everything in tech is an acronym. SaaS is an acronym, B2B is an acronym. They’re inaccessible. It’s arrogant to assume people know them, so we should remove that layer and stop making it sound so complicated. We’re all trying to solve human problems through tech but let’s not let it define the narrative. Our product mission is to make things as simple as possible.

Many B2Bs focus on their product features rather than brand building. Why do you think that is? Has your mindset towards branding changed whilst working with us? Why?

I think part of the reason is that people who start/found tech businesses are financiers or engineers. If you look at an iPhone or an Android they’re very similar, but one evoques a feeling and an aspiration that the other doesn’t. The importance of the experience and the delivery of that technology you’re selling, needs to be connected to the product itself. They feed each other.

It’s a bit undervalued in some start-ups, especially when it comes to B2B and tech. There’s often a less direct correlation between the product that you’re selling and being able to empathise with that end user. I think that means that brand is often lost in that process.

Which B2B brands are you secretly jealous of and why?

I’m a fanboy of a range of  B2B brands and some of those are for technical reasons, but I would have to say Stripe. From a visual and language perspective their brand is all about simplicity and making the complicated simple. And sometimes the foundations of a brand can materialise in the way they write code. Stripe talks about their services in an easy way.

Having a tangible and practical expression of a good tone and positioning should help your employees feel empowered and more confident in doing their jobs, and also make life easier for your customers. You have to be good at explaining a message or a feature properly.

How did it feel to launch this new positioning and what difference has it made?

We are relaunching our website and consolidating our product and services around our new positioning. What we’ve been able to do now is project our ambitions to 2030. Our mission and vision is still based on the brand strategy. We power the hiring journey, for everyone, and at the moment is still UK focused but by 2030 we will power end to end hiring infrastructure for the world.