Lily Faith
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Lily Faith is a fast-growing brand selling hand painted homewares and treasures inspired by the Devon countryside.
The founder, Lily Spencer, approached me at a pivotal time for her business. Already stocked in hundreds of stores worldwide and featured on The Repair Shop in the UK, Lily had build a cult following. But her brand was about to level up again with a growing team, increasing capacity and even more wholesale clients.
Lily felt it was time that the brand got a coherent, grown up brand language glow-up to help it leapfrog from being a “home grown crafty business” to a fully fledged brand.
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To really understand Lily Faith, the customers and the brand’s position, we took on a four stage discovery process:
First, I reviewed a stack of the brand’s current copy, looking for what we want to stop doing, start doing and continue doing. Are there any kernels of greatness here that we want to keep? Is there anything that’s really harming our brand?
Next, I analysed hundreds of customer reviews to identify what customers really love about Lily Faith. I also dug into the language customers use and the kinds of stories they tell to feed into our new tone of voice.
Then, I spoke to Lily herself. I learnt about her values, the brand’s origins and the stuff that motivates her to keep creating.
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As Lily Faith moved from independent maker to brand and studio with a founder called Lily, the first thing we did was switch into the third person plural “we” when talking about ourselves. Of course, I still wanted to make room for Lily’s voice, harking back to her days on market stalls. So every product description has space for Lily to share a few words.
Another lovely element of the brand’s original copy that we decided to keep was Lily’s monthly seasonal update to the homepage. We created some microcopy surrounding this to really signpost how special and rare it is to have a seasonal homepage updated by the founder herself.
Lily’s personality merged perfectly with the things her customers love about the brand to create a tone of voice that is grounded, optimistic and with a real sense of fun. Just as Lily and her team are creative in the studio, we wanted to make the space for the brand’s language to be creative and frivolous too. It’s all about keeping it quirky and full of character. Just like a customer delights in discovering a unique brand, we want them to delight in the details of our copy. (See the product page subheadings for an example!)
For Lily’s messaging, we focused in on the themes that came up time and again across her customer reviews and her founder interview. We zeroed in on the ones that would make her brand stand apart from her competitors. Lily and her team now have a toolbox of language they can use across the business to describe what they do and why they do it.
The final part of the project saw us bringing all of this to life in an About page, email series and Instagram bio. The perfect launchpad for Lily Faith to leapfrog into the future.
From the moment I started working with Sally, I knew that I was putting my business in very safe hands. Her thorough and reasoned questioning helped throw up answers and responses I didn’t think that I was capable of articulating to someone else. And these were then intricately woven into a well thought out and coherent set of guidelines and tool kits for me to bring my brand copy to life.
The copywriting that Sally has created for my website and wholesale platforms feels and sounds like something I could have written myself, except much much better! She makes it feel effortless and grounded and has absolutely nailed the brief.
Working with Lumen & Fox has been one of the best business decisions I have made this year, it has given me a shot of vitality when inspiration was running low. It’s making me feel excited for word use again, and when so much time is spent at a keyboard these days , thats a blessing. But the project has also given me the ability to shine the spotlight on other aspects of my business that could do with some titivating, and the skills to do so.
At one point in one of our early workshops or the founder interview, Sally said, “this is like business therapy.” And she’s so right, the whole process really helped me solidify what we are about, what we are trying to say, and how we are going to say it. Not just in our copy, but throughout.
