HANDLE
“We have a great product.
We need a great story.”
Handle had a bold vision. Founder Shawn Carolan (Partner at Menlo Ventures) wanted to do for digital work what Henry Ford did for manufacturing cars. Workers spend 20+ hours per week in their email, and growing bodies of research show the tools meant to make our days easier instead distract us to the point of getting very little done.
Handle leveraged the best of productivity methodologies to sort your email, covert it into to-dos, prompt you to action at the right time and allow you to focus at others. They just had one problem. “Email productivity app” isn’t a phrase that wins hearts. We needed to put a face on Handle the customer could love.
STRATEGY
The hard-core David Allen “Get Things Done” productivity disciples already had a system (and a little red book). We needed a way to connect to the mainstream customer, and tug at their heartstrings.
Our message was mindfulness.
“We believe in making the most of our time.”
Productivity is what my boss wants, not what I want. I want moments to myself. I want to be empowered to choose how I spend my time. I want my technology to serve my life, not to feel more consumed by my phone.
In creative, this would mean a voice that spoke to results rather than process and features, messaging calm and empowerment, and a design system infused with humanity, tranquil imagery, and white space.
In the product, it meant reflecting the customer’s own priorities back to them. Thoughtful guidance like suggesting tasks from your personal to-dos when your professional ones were lighter than normal, or prompting you to tackle a task that had been pushed multiple times first thing in the morning.
In the end, we inflected the messaging, product, and startup in a bold new direction.