When you’re branding a new product, understanding your audience’s emotional drivers, both positive and negative, is vital for a successful launch.

I’ve never worked with anyone who understood this more than the Octopus EV team. Whilst planning how to adapt their established B2B electric vehicle scheme to the direct-to-consumer market, they were obsessed with pinpointing why potential buyers were drawn to EVs and how to tap into that with the name of their scheme, social ads and web copy.

I supported the project from early ideation stages through to MVP creation, in three key stages:

Social ads — testing, testing, testing

Are people drawn to electric vehicles by convenience, cost, going green, the excitement of new tech or something else entirely?

To identify major drivers for buyer behaviour, I drafted a series of social ads for a Facebook campaign, each focusing on a different emotional need. We then used analytics data from these ads (initial click-through down to email signups) to identify probable areas of

We found that the desire to get ahead of the curve with the latest tech resonated most with potential Octopus consumers — with cost and going green as secondary drivers.

Getting the branding bang on

The scheme needed a name that tapped into the audience’s ‘early adopter’ tendencies whilst maintaining longevity. I suggested ‘Intelligent EV’ for a memorable moniker that both tapped into buyers’ desire to feel smart and described Octopus’ electric vehicle tech accurately.

The next steps involved identifying key brand messaging to bring through in the copy. This needed to be exciting, dynamic and in line with Octopus’ friendly, informal tone of voice. After a few iterations and feedback from stakeholders, the team and I distilled some ‘go to’ messaging that could be used across channels. A couple of examples:

• It’s an exciting time to get an EV because ‘Electric vehicles are getting smarter by the minute’

• Both the cars themselves and new technology will make driving an EV ‘easier, cheaper, greener and more fun’

• Intelligent EV ensures ‘you get the most up-to-date technology out there’ when you buy an EV

Bringing it all together in the web copy

I applied the key takeaways from the research and branding stages of the project whilst writing an MVP landing page. Here, I kept the messaging clear and the copy enthusiastic, minimalist and to the point. You can take a look at the finished product here.

Intelligent EV was officially launched in July 2024. I’m excited to support the scheme’s growth as I continue to work with Octopus on a number of projects!