<aside> š About Naranja
Naranja isĀ a FinTech enterprise modernizing banking and credit card servicesĀ for nearly 5 million customers across Argentina. They offer an app with balance to transfer money to friends, pay bills and pay in-store with QR codes, plus debit and credit cards.
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In 2017, Naranja initiated its digital evolution process with the goal of conveying the new essence of the brand. To achieve this, they formed a multidisciplinary team that includes specialists in SEO, CRO, email marketing, paid media, digital marketing analysts, and UX. The only area that was missing was related to digital content, which was previously outsourced. That's when they hired me and my colleague, Carolina Raspa, in May 2018, to start the Content department at Naranja. However, our first task, before anything else, was to create a style guide.
What is a style guide? It's a tool that harmonizes brand, design, and writing guidelines to create clear and consistent content across all channels.
Why did the need for a style guide arise at Naranja? One of Naranja's pain points was that many people were generating content without anything to connect them. Each person wrote according to their own criteria or objective, making it difficult to unify the brand identity. Naranja not only embarked on its digital transformation but also evolved from a single product to a whole ecosystem of products and services. Naranja had more stories to tell than ever, making it essential to align its voice to present itself more strongly across all its channels.
1- We told the story of Naranja š§”
Every brand has a story. And to make sure all teams tell it right, they first have to really know about it. Naranja's Human Relations team took charge of drafting the vision and mission, the company's values, and the brand's personality. In collaboration with the Branding department, we directly incorporated this extensive work into the style guide. With this information, anyone needing to compose a communication piece can avoid having to reasearch about it on their own.
2- We defined how Naranja speaks š£
Identifying a brand's voice is crucial to align all its communications. We conducted extensive research that included reading numerous commercial emails, landing pages, FAQs, social media response guidesābasically, all existing content we could get our hands on. We documented common grammar and writing errors to create writing guidelines that were consistent with the brand. Additionally, we identified inconsistencies across various digital channels: mixing "usted" and "vos," using uppercase letters without a specific criterion, neglecting punctuation rules, and not following a consistent format for writing numbers, among other examples. So, we drafted grammar guides to address writing inconsistencies and defined some text formatting guidelines, such as: