Outsourced Brand & Marketing Director

HawkCell is a Medtech company set to change animal care for the better with the first animal-dedicated MRI hardware and software solution for the veterinary and preclinical research markets.

In 2020, Alexis Girin, current CEO at HawkCell, joined the company. He quickly realized the branding wasn't aligned with his vision for the company.

He hired me as a branding expert first to revamp the brand personality and tone of voice. Our collaboration went so well he signed for my Outsourced CMO services.

At the time, the marketing team was composed of a freshly graduated junior marketing manager.

As a busy startup CEO, Alexis needed a seasoned marketing person to:

implement the re-branding in all communication collaterals

create processes and structure in the team

give direction and manage the junior person

create a marketing strategy and roadmap

implement the strategy and report back

support the sales teams with buyer persona work and storytelling for sales decks

support the leadership team with storytelling for their investor pitch deck

I joined the HawkCell team as their outsourced Brand Director and CMO on a part-time basis.

Before I even started touching on the strategic work, I needed to create a structure to support our work. Documents weren't archived centrally, there were no recurring workflows and no sync meetings.

I offered to move the processes to Notion for more clarity and efficiency. Fortunately, the marketing manager knew the tool, so it was a smooth transition.

Alexis had never worked on Notion but instantly loved it.

We create a Brand Vault and Marketing Vault to gather all info, and set-up weekly and monthly recurring tasks and meetings.

I then collected all information and strategic and sales goals from the CEO and created a marketing plan.

From that plan, we derived all of our projects for the year and made sure they were all in Notion.

The strategy covered all areas from online marketing to KOL partnerships and events.

Thanks to our project structure in Notion, we could start implementing things.

Some actions I led:

We started from the get-go with a new website. Looping in one of my expert partners, we created a new website, from scratch, in 8 weeks.

We then tackled the company's Linkedin page with a new tone of voice and copy. Once this was set, I turned my attention to helping the sales team and the leadership team with their slide decks.

After auditing the sales decks, I realized they weren't customer-centric. I created a new sequence and gave the team a modular structure they could adjust depending on the prospect they were pitching. The goal: deliver the most tailored pitch to each prospect's pain points.

For the investor pitch, we dug back into our branding work, specifically into the Why/How/What and the Mission and Vision statements. We also use psychology and empathetic marketing to cater the storytelling to the audience (VCs). I also guided the flow of the deck to create a sequence that fit startup fundraising standards and yet felt fresh and new.

After 9 months of collaboration, all teams were set, and my work was done. I briefed the Junior Marketing Manager to take-over the lead and grow into being the Brand Director.

I offered a few follow-up calls after the end of our collaboration to support further on specific questions.