As for many brands, behind Aryel fun tone of voice, there is a ton of work, many discarded ideas, and some exhausting brainstormings on Saturday mornings.
At first, we had to start — of course — from scratch, and we only had one thing: the concept. We knew our target, obviously, and we liked the idea of treating Aryel as an actual “person”, and not as a tool. But nothing more.
We were there, in front of a blank screen, with the landing page and the tone of voice guidelines to write, jotting down random notes. Spotify was on shuffle play, and Niki Minaj was singing Starships were meant to fly out loud (cringey, we know).
AR looks like something from a sci-fi movie
We were handling this new amazing project about augmented reality, something that seems coming directly from sci-fi movies, with starships and alien technology, and it was suddenly clear *that* was the right direction, we neither have to discuss it. Aryel would have come straight from the outer space, piloting a starship and — of course — she would have been an alien.
If you are a bit of a nerd as we are (and proud to be!), working on a project settled in space is just a never-ending source of inspiration: from Star Wars movies to pop music, from Sailor Moon comics to NASA you always have the right way to say for almost every occasion.
Aryel comes from space, and space in pop-culture has always been a synonym of future, of new incredible technologies, of new worlds to explore. From the very beginning, we knew this was the perfect fit for this incredible journey, and we were ready to start our engines.
This was a good start, of course, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted to create a brand that talks on a different frequency, we wanted that Aryel could speak to different generations of users, doesn’t matter if they’re Millennials or from the 70s.
We realized that some cult-movies like George Lucas’ saga or some songs from the past decades were still resonating with younger audiences, and we found this fascinating.
Aryel’s tone of voice was taking all the perks and gems from the “space trend” of the last 30 years and mixing them in something new, a new technology that sends users directly to the future (like a DeLorean, basically).
NASA, Star Wars and pop music
We documented on NASA rockets and programs, and then we added a little touch of glam, blinking an eye to Star Wars most famous starships, such as the Millennium Falcon or the Jedi Starfighter.
We had fun hiding around quotes by Yoda or Han Solo (we are still working on Chewbacca, but that’s hard to fit in 😅 ) and lyrics from Space Oddity and Rocket Man — thank you, David Bowie & Elton John, we ♥️ you.
And then, thanks to our amazing graphic designer, we finally met Aryel. Her big one-eye reminded us of comics superheroes, and her sassy self-confidence won our hearts.
Working on “her” voice was easy: she had to be a self-confident, smart cookie, and we were ready to become her crew.
Social media tone of voice: we just want to have fun… or not?
Everyone who has read our posts on Instagram or Facebook knows we have a peculiar sense of humor, and we’re not backing down when it’s time to have some fun.
We love to take advantage of holidays and special occasions (have you seen our post for the Star Wars day?), and in general we like to keep our communication funny and friendly.
But hey, you don’t rule an AR empire just making jokes, that’s why behind our carefree attitude there is professionality, reliability, and a structured strategy to conquer the world, ahem, the market!
What we want to prove here is that you can be a strong, structured, and powerful marketing campaign builder… and have fun along the way!
An all-around branded project
It was time to export this concept to everything that was orbiting around Aryel: from social media to the landing page, from the newsletter to the pricing plan, everything needed to be personalized at 100%.
The boring, plain pricing plans’ names became rockets and starships; all our CTAs were an excuse to talk about landings and take-offs, and every occasion was good to hide references and easter eggs about movies or songs.
Aryel’s project is one-of-a-kind, and it’s no coincidence that it is the #1 WebAR marketing platform: but our fun, a bit nerd, settled in space tone of voice has contributed to bring her… to infinity and beyond!
