Maranda: Increasing Access To Healthcare For Pets And Their People

These days, the pet product and pet healthcare markets are some of the hottest consumer markets in the world, with more and more emerging companies and brands trying to get their own piece of the action. That’s why, when a new cutting-edge entrant came to us looking for a strategy to make a splash, we knew it had to be a big one.

Enter Maranda: a technology-driven, veterinarian-founded technology and logistics company with a unique eye for solving some of today’s pet parents’ biggest problems.

But to get that message in front of the right audience—including not only pet owners, but also investors, veterinarians, and small businesses in the pet industry—Maranda needed a digital presence worthy of their cutting-edge products and services.

Maranda partnered with Altos from the early stages, beginning with initial naming and branding of Maranda itself (as well as ClueJay), to building out the full digital identity and website. The result: a cohesive, inviting, and engaging brand that’s built to support their existing offering, with plenty of room to grow and adapt in the future.

Building A Brand You Can Wag A Tail At

Positioned as a powerful entry into the pet health and pet product industry, Maranda has built a brand to contend with some of the biggest names dominating the space today.

But when the founders first came to our office, it was just an idea… and one looking for the right words and visuals to bring it to life.

We worked closely with the team at (what would become) Maranda to not only breathe life into the concept but to bring it to life from start to finish. That meant creating not just one brand, but two—and fleshing it out with everything it needs to take off.

Verbal Branding Even A Dog Can Understand

Starting with their flagship product ClueJay, a veterinarian-approved pet stool testing product available for consumers to use from home, Maranda has since grown into a family of brands containing some of today’s most impressive consumer-facing veterinary technology.

In the beginning, however, it wasn’t exactly clear where the line between “Maranda” and “ClueJay” would be drawn—or how the language used for each would help distinguish parent from child.

Crafting An Identity To Fit Many Big Ideas

The larger branding process started with some intensive market research that helped clue us into some unavoidable truths about pet parents: they worry about their pets, they trust their vets, and getting to the vet can be stressful on both pets and their parents.

Using the results of the research, we built a basic brand vocabulary to guide our thinking. By pulling words like “convenient,” “modern,” “credible,” “honest,” etc., we were able to distill our word bank down to three main brand attributes:

Eventually, this exercise helped us better understand what the brand goal was for not just the ClueJay product, but also for the parent brand under which ClueJay needed to live. While “ClueJay” would be the product-based solution, the broader parent brand would contain all of the logistics, technology, and expertise that brought ClueJay to the world.

That’s where “Maranda” first found its name, based on so many of the engaging, name-oriented brands throughout the tech industry, including the infamous “Alexa” and “Siri.”

Building A True Brand Vocabulary

With a name and brand structure in place, we further fleshed out both brands’ vocabulary side by side—ClueJay being significantly more focused on pets and pet owners, while Maranda being more focused on the broader pet health and pet technology community.

Maranda found itself speaking to three major audiences: pet owners, veterinarians, and pet retail or pet service businesses. Each of these three audiences represents a significant revenue opportunity, but leaning too hard toward one could scare off the others. Maranda needed to straddle this line carefully.

We crafted the Maranda verbal brand to thread this needle seamlessly, leveraging the real expertise in the industry brought by the founding team and combining it with good, honest messaging. Pet owners can trust Maranda for their authoritative positioning and strong brand family, while veterinarians and businesses can trust Maranda’s authenticity and strong customer-facing strengths.

Together, these verbal brand positions bring Maranda exactly where it needs to be: not too technical for the average pet parent to decipher, but not so informal that it’s not taken seriously. The result: an authentic veterinary pet product built to make an immediate mark, with plenty of room to adapt and grow.

Visual Branding

With the brand now outfitted with the right words for the occasion, we needed to craft a complementary visual style to give the brand something to stand on.

This visual branding process was closely tied in with the same process for ClueJay, since we knew from the get-go that the visual brands of each would need to be both interrelated, and distinct enough to stand on their own.

Choosing Colors To Stand Out, & Come Together

While the ClueJay brand relied much more heavily on trusted, consumer-friendly colors like Light Sky Blue, Purple, and Pink, we took a more focused, tech-centered approach for Maranda. Guided by Dark Slate Blue and accented by Turquoise, Maranda leaves its own unique impression on the viewer—distinct from both ClueJay and from the other brands already in the pet health space, yet still comforting and confident enough to speak to all of our identified audiences.

Graphic Elements Are Worth A Few Thousand Words

And, while the ClueJay brand anchored its visual style to a system of distinctive graphical elements, Maranda stands by just one major theme: a turquoise letter M, evoking both the name of the company and the silhouette of a dog’s ears, perked up with attention.

Distinct enough to leave its own impression with unique colors and complementary graphics, Maranda’s visual brand is crafted to fit seamlessly alongside ClueJay, and to bridge the gap between ClueJay and Maranda’s other revolutionary pet health offerings like Maranda Veterinary Laboratories (their in-house lab).

Web

Even before any of the rest of the brand family hit the shelves or made it to consumers, Maranda needed to have its own digital space carved out and ready to deploy.

Designed as the central spot for the entire Maranda family of brands, we crafted an engaging website to tell the Maranda story, show off the whole brand family, and give all of our target audiences something to take away when they first explore the Maranda offering.

We built the all-new maranda.com to do just that, including all the best of the branding work we had achieved to date: full verbal descriptions of the brand foundation, including key brand language to speak to all major audiences. We also included a full look at the Maranda brand system, including graphical elements, brand colors, and full mention of and connection to ClueJay from start to finish.