Building Neo from the brand up - WRITER

Building Neo from the brand up

Delphine Lavy & Sam Cheung on scaling language, brand, and product at Neo Financial

NEO FINANCIAL AT A GLANCE

Neo headquarters

Calgary, Canada

Industry

Finance

Department

Marketing, Product & UX

Key features used

Listen to Neo Financial’s story or read the (edited) transcript below

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Sam Cheung is manager of product design & UX writing and Delphine Lavy is creative content lead at Neo Financial, Canada’s fastest-growing fintech unicorn.

The Neo Financial team uses WRITER to:

Let’s start with the Neo Financial brand. How has it evolved since you started at the company?

When I first started three years ago, Neo really was just starting as a company. We were still trying to figure out what our identity was. Over the first year and a half, it was a lot of trial and error, both on the design side and the content side. We knew that we wanted to be unique from what people traditionally saw in financial services, but at first it was just trying out different kinds of design patterns, different types of writing styles, and voices.

And I’d say that what’s changed now is that we have a clear brand path and vision, and our approach to brand development is a lot more mature. We’ve grown the team exponentially and brought on people who can execute on that brand.

And I think something to note is that it’s not just the product driving the brand. It’s both ways. So our brand purpose is driving some of the products and features that we’re building and we’re able to think more critically on both sides.

I’d add that because now we’re in a position where our brand has matured, our current marketing strategy is all based on the brand. We’re no longer just trying to keep up with the product and with product marketing.

Neo Financial’s homepage

When did you all start thinking you needed a tool like WRITER? What were some of those early conversations?

The conversations started when Delphine joined the team. When she first started at Neo, she spanned across a lot of different areas and facets of writing, and my focus was product. A lot of our rules and patterns for writing across Neo lived in both of our heads and maybe the heads of a couple of other folks. So we started having conversations about inconsistency.

From the beginning, Sam and I were really on the same page in terms of voice and such, but it was really hard to put that into words to explain to our new writers and designers. So we really needed a tool that’d provide that information to all.

“So many challenges facing writers across teams were addressed by the WRITER product.”

Sam Cheung Manager, Product Design & UX Writing, Neo Financial

What made you choose WRITER?

WRITER was superior from the beginning. My focus at Neo was on how writers integrated with design. The WRITER plugin for Figma allowed us to work cross-functionally, which was a huge selling point. Many challenges facing writers across teams were addressed by the WRITER product, which is one of the main reasons that I chose WRITER.

“AI will never replace the human touch, obviously. But oh my gosh, I couldn’t work without the WRITER app now.”

Delphine Lavy Creative Content Lead, Neo Financial

How’d you all socialize the value of WRITER, of having the same brand across the company?

We have experienced people on the team, and there was an investment in brand and understanding of brand from the get-go. Our studio folks and some other members of the creative team started working with our founders on a more concrete brand around the time that Delphine joined, and this exploration of identity and voice was happening throughout.

What WRITER features have been most impactful for your teams?

Apps have been a huge help. We use them to write our blog articles and long-form copy. We have saved so much time in terms of research; we can produce blog articles three times faster than before. Currently, we’re focusing on testing copy headlines and subject lines for social media ads and lifecycle communications, and WRITER is a huge help for that.

WRITER’s blog post builder helps define an outline before generating an entire draft.

Apps and rewrite are features that are widely used on Delphine’s side of the organization. Features like Terms help us create a unified voice when you have a unified vocabulary, which is crucial in the financial space given the nuances in language.

Neo has this continuity of using WRITER across your business.

Yes. It’s critical for teams to balance the use of AI and human input to ensure clarity and effectiveness in communication. We’ve embraced the need for AI tools while recognizing the importance of the human touch.

Two approaches towards generating language

“The question isn’t whether we should use AI or not. We should, we just need to learn how to use it properly. AI will never replace the human touch, obviously. But oh my gosh, I couldn’t work without the WRITER app now.”

Sam Cheung Manager, Product Design & UX Writing, Neo Financial

What were the a-ha moments for your users as they got started with WRITER?

For many of us, it was eye-opening to see how entering just a few words generates entire paragraphs or more. WRITER is generating the right words in the right form for the right context, which is simply amazing.

What you’re trying to do at Neo is get hundreds of people to communicate your value in a consistent way.

At first, we needed to write with just one voice. We’ve learned that our brand is a living and breathing thing that we have to maintain in WRITER, changing terms as necessary based on user feedback and market needs.

WRITER highlighting that “perks” should now be used instead of “bundles.”

What other processes has WRITER improved for you?

The quality of content being produced is a lot better because WRITER has enabled us to remove barriers and tedious tasks. The peer review process has become much easier with the WRITER Chrome extension for Google Docs. WRITER has allowed us to produce at a higher caliber and simplified our production and review processes.

You clearly use language really effectively to define your brand.

People often think they need to be specialists to manage their finances, but we’re focused on empowerment and approachability in our communication. We aim to communicate simply, avoiding complex jargon, and WRITER helps maintain that clarity.

A guide to understanding plain language.