We turn purpose and passion into positive progress
We believe marketing is design is everything. This means that every aspect of a brand is designed intentionally, and every experience is a marketing opportunity to engage and to share.
Focus
Portfolio
ACLU, Asurity, The George Washington University, DC Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, DC Office of Planning, Washington DC Economic Partnership, Nashville Downtown Economic Partnership
ACLU National Tour
In 2020, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) turned 100 years old. In recognition of its centennial, the historic organization wanted to drive a nationwide conversation around civil liberties and allow its members and supporters to engage with the issues in new and innovative ways.
Brllnt worked with the ACLU to create the ACLU100 Experience, an immersive mobile exhibition on civil rights with 14 tour city stops across 10,000 miles in four months.
Brllnt designed and managed production of all signage, promotional materials, and giveaway items for the tour. As a result of organic and paid initiatives managed and executed by Brllnt, the campaign generated 154 million out-of-home media impressions and attracted over 36,400 attendees to the events, the highest in ACLU history.
#ObviouslyDC
Following Amazon’s announcement that it was expanding to a second headquarters, including 50,000 new jobs, The Executive Office of Washington, DC's Mayor Muriel Bowser and The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development needed a campaign that could be executed quickly and would resonate with both the people of DC and key decisionmakers at Amazon.
In response, Brllnt designed and printed the proposal response and developed the #ObviouslyDC campaign to provide a platform through which to collect and share the authentic realities that make the District an obvious choice for innovative companies. The campaign was 100% organic and garnered 6 million online engagements, 507K hashtag impressions, 20K+ video views, and 3K+ views of the RFP response.
After the campaign, Brllnt worked with the Office of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and DMPED to transition #ObviouslyDC into a resource and information hub for all current and prospective DC businesses.
#BeTheOne at GWU
The GW New Venture Competition is the largest of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic region, giving teams of students real-world experience launching businesses.
GWU Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship partnered with Brllnt to create an engaging campaign that diversified submissions and increased attendance by 60% to their New Venture Competition over two years.
We repositioned the perception of “entrepreneurship” to encourage entries from the university’s 13 other colleges. Through email, social media, ambassador toolkits, and on-campus touch points, the Be The One campaign inspired students from a variety of majors to bring their great ideas to life.
Reviews
the project
UX Design & Marketing Strategy for Financial Software Firm
"We throw a lot of different things at them, and they’re always willing to work with us and adapt."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the COO for a financial services software provider. We make solutions for consumer lending and mortgage compliance.
What challenges were you trying to address with Brllnt?
We hired Brllnt to help us launch our company. The work included web development, marketing, branding, and UX design.
What was the scope of their involvement?
Our work together started with developing our brand voice and key messaging for the company. Their team built our website and created a brand guide for our developers to follow. They helped us design the user interface for one of our newer software products. They also provided design updates for our older apps to bring them in line with our brand.
They’re continuing to work with us on social media strategy, marketing collateral, and other needs as we launch new products and services.
What is the team composition?
We’ve worked with at least 8 people. We have a few primary points of contact, but additional specialists come in to work on different tasks.
How did you come to work with Brllnt?
I met one of their principals at a networking event in DC. At that point, we’d tried a few other marketing companies that hadn’t worked out. We decided to give Brllnt a try. We started with a smaller project and grew our relationship from there.
How much have you invested in them?
We’ve invested somewhere between 1 to 1.5 million dollars.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in mid-2017, and our relationship is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Their work is very high quality. I particularly like their designs. They’re creative and have come up with interesting ways to modernize our brand. They’ve rolled with the punches, and we’re doing better now than we’ve ever done.
How did Brllnt perform from a project management standpoint?
In general, they’re good project managers. It was a little hard to manage approvals, but we settled on a roadmap and calendar of their activities that we use to manage and review their content. We’ve got a good balance now. We’re using Google Sheets and Google Docs to share work. They use their own design tools to share their ideas with us as well.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They helped us prototype a new app from scratch and they worked independently, which was impressive. They’re also passionate about improving the user interface and experience. They’ve shown that they’re not afraid to be bold in coming up with creative themes.
We throw a lot of different things at them, and they’re always willing to work with us and adapt.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Brllnt is a young firm, so they’ve been a little slow to get into the headspace of our industry sector. At first, we weren’t sure how much content we should provide them, but we’ve reached a happy medium now.
They could also continue to do a bit more QA, especially when junior staff is working on projects. In addition, sometimes they seem to brush aside some of our comments which is common with those in the creative industry. I’ve brought up these concerns to them though and have seen some improvements. None of this has been cause for me to want to find a new vendor.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Be thorough in scoping and encourage iterative development of ideas and designs. Be interactive and collaborative.