COMPANY
GIR
Acquired by Pattern Brands ($74M funding) in June 2021, GIR makes elevated kitchen tools for everyday use.
gir.co
SERVICES
Marketing & Content Strategy
Copywriting
Project Management
Customer Experience (CX) & Community
ROLE
Marketing Consultant (Contract)
Background
True to its current branding, GIR initially made its name through premium kitchen tools. Anchored by their existing design expertise and production capabilities, GIR started producing reusable silicone masks in April of 2020, in response to the global pandemic. I partnered with the team at this wild juncture in the company journey: peak COVID-19 and fresh off a product pivot.
Mask demand exploded. We faced the challenge of balancing global logistics hiccups with ensuing customer experience complications, while also crafting steady messaging around the existing kitchen product lines. Peak COVID-19 also means peak homebody stage, for much of GIR's community who were able to invest in their homes.
Marketing & Content Strategy
Given the exponential growth, I jumped in on marketing needs across the board. I wrote and edited SEO-oriented blog posts, email newsletters, social captions for digital ads, and design award submissions. Specific to the blog, I set up a style guide covering verbal standards, visual formatting, and SEO recommendations.
I designed and curated graphics (example below) for two Pinterest boards I built from scratch—for digital ads and web traffic—yielding the organic MoM growth results below, in May/June of 2020.
Customer Experience (CX) & Community
GIR hadn't yet developed community strategy, so I spearheaded the efforts. Times were emotionally tough; people were figuring out how to be alone, together. Yet our team witnessed many small joys through GIR customers (adults and kids alike!) excitedly sporting their masks as they safely ventured into the outdoors. We wanted to share those joys, especially for all the backend work it took to get there. To that end, I set up an internal tracker and archive for user generated content—to celebrate GIR's community across digital channels and start relationships with social influencers and community members.
I also supported the CX team as bandwidth allowed, jumping in to address service tickets while working with engineering and marketing teams to optimize CX flows. This involved analyzing tickets and translating learnings into automated flows across e-commerce, logistics, and CX software. I wrote and edited customer responses to address shipping and product concerns in an accomodating and honest tone.
Project Management
GIR has operated remotely since the company's inception, and the main team members I worked with (founder, marketing and CX team leads) were distributed across all U.S. time zones. Thus, they had well established remote workflows—but also needed to upgrade their marketing and creative project management system, as their marketing campaigns grew in frequency and complexity.
Using their existing project management software (Asana), I established a system between marketing and creative to efficiently plan and run campaigns. This included a content production board and a campaign management board—connecting the up-close view to the big-picture, the production details with longterm timeline and strategy.