Ledger Case Study Brand Development & Copywriting

Ledger Case Study
Brand Development & Copywriting

Evolving to Lead WebFuture

Snapshot

Ledger had already pioneered a hardware wallet for crypto. As a provider, they were trusted as security leaders in the crypto space–which says a lot about their success.

What they didn’t have was the company voice to match: messaging that united all their teams and services under a single, powerful brand. Our team helped guide Ledger through a deep review and refresh of their brand identity, positioning, and communications.

It was time for Ledger to grow into a stronger and more cohesive brand and company—one positioned to lead the future of both crypto and web3

Key Challenge

With a great product-market fit, sustainable growth, and a strong business, Ledger knew they could grow exponentially bigger–but not without a unique, authentic, and emotionally resonant brand identity.

Internal teams had developed their own terms and references in the absence of any cohesive guidance. The lack of formal structure meant that communications both internally and externally were scattered and inconsistent.

Our work helped to shift the brand from their origins as a hardware provider into a multi-dimensional company—with the capacity to branch into new lines of business, and build their resilience to the changing investment landscape along the way.

Results, Movere

Now, Ledger is ready for massive growth.

Home Page for Ledger Quest

Previous banner promoting key offering

Our goal at CRC is to equip clients with the tools to build brand resonance and growth, after our engagement ends. To prepare Ledger for change and industry volatility, we provided a cohesive brand foundation—with two sub-brands—and comprehensive marketing for each audience. We worked on all aspects of the brand, from big elements like brand identity and positioning, to very fine details like UX microcopy, to ensure a strong and deeply authentic brand identity that can grow with Ledger.

Now, Ledger is ready for a brand relaunch with a flexible and unique identity that aligns their values with their goals and positions them for growth. By strengthening their story, they demonstrate that sometimes a business just needs to focus on its branding to unlock latent potential.

The same banner—revised—now incorporating our recommended language around ‘digital freedom’ and ‘taking control of your digital freedom’.

Complete Ledger Case Study

Ledger in Context

Ledger´s path to leading the future of the web

Brand Clarity

Research and investigative immersion
Competitive marketplace assessment
Deep dive into the brand identity, and exploring its future

Collaboration

A Rumble, and a lot of listening
RUMBLE: a fun, collaborative session with 20+ stakeholders globally
Follow-up interviews, data synthesis & distillation

Brand Positioning

Identify & understand our most valuable audiences
Learn goals, motivations, and ultimate desires
Crystallize the target audience into deeply detailed personas

Brand Playbook

Build out a new foundation for the Ledger brand
Essential elements to support cohesive, coherent brand identity
Translate and develop stakeholder input into a new vision

Brand Resonance

Render insights into targeted messaging
Compose copy for taglines, promotions, marketing, and more
Showcase creative development and actionable insights from our process

At its best, the web3 environment is a playground for opportunity—promising total control for individuals and creators, and freedom from intermediaries—in a fast-evolving market.

Web1 was all about reading; web2 enabled us to read and write…

But web3 expands those ideas into the ownership of what we read, write, and build online—and Ledger was already a pioneer here.

Ledger had established its brand identity as a trusted leader in the hardware space, emphasizing security for digital assets like crypto, NFTs, collectibles, and more. They had met their core goals of providing a means to increase individual freedom in web3—but they knew they had to focus on the foundational work of messaging and branding if they wanted to scale to a new level.

It’s no secret that the past few years have been volatile in the crypto and web3 industries.

The chaotic landscape—companies opening and closing, people reaping huge profits and then losing all their savings—meant that many new users were afraid to dive in. Despite a wave of niche communities and celebrities jumping into crypto projects, most of Ledger’s audience were hesitant to participate.

With a great product-market fit, sustainable growth, and a strong business, Ledger knew they could grow exponentially–but not without an authentic, accurate, and resonant brand identity.

Ledger had been growing rapidly, from a scrappy startup to a larger company with multiple departments. This meant that branding, messaging, and communications needed to be updated and consolidated, giving the company a single and consistent voice across all new products and teams.

To build and reinforce a brand that felt trustworthy, we needed to articulate Ledger’s unique mission, products, and values, accurately, in an authentic manner, without the jargon and complexity of other web3 players.

That meant bringing together all internal leaders to build consensus around the brand vision, mission, objectives, and key issues, like brand focal points and USPs. Collaborating across internal teams helped guide conversations not just around branding, but around the values of the company itself—several of which were updated through this process, bringing the teams closer together, and providing everyone on staff with a clear understanding of the brand and its roadmap for growth.

Let's build something new

Helping Ledger create new product lines

Brand Exploration & Discovery

Apply our proven process to build comprehensive brands for new lines of business. Comes via profound first-hand understanding of new products and services

Creative Naming Exercise

Names influence everything about a brand—We generate dozens of ideas, involve stakeholders early and often, and create consensus for sub-brand names

Copy & Messaging Creation

Our team provides full-service branding, so each sub-brand receives its own Brand Playbook, copy and UX/microcopy, and campaign-level messaging designed for impactful launches

With our team’s creative approach, and a deeply researched understanding of the market, we helped Ledger build its primary brand in both crypto and what we called WebFuture-positioning the company to bring secure, trusted ownership into the future of digital property.

When they’d built a master brand they loved, we rolled up our sleeves to help develop new products and lines of business—so that Ledger could grow from a dedicated startup to a mature tech company, built to last.

At CRC, we know that if you’re in Ledger’s position—great product-market fit, and ripe for growth—you don’t need to change the product. You need to solidify the brand, and that’s exactly what we set out to do.

With our team’s creative approach, and a deeply researched understanding of the market, we helped Ledger build its primary brand in both crypto and what we called WebFuture—positioning the company to bring secure, trusted ownership into the future of digital property.

Driving Expansion & Growth

Foundation in place, it's time to grow

Ledger isn’t satisfied with just being the most secure, trusted name in hardware wallets. Their team constantly innovates to learn how to overcome the many challenges of working in this fast-moving industry, building the airplane as they fly. One of those challenges? The user experience in—and ease of entry to—the web3 space.

To make Web3 easier to understand, smoother to participate in, and more rewarding to invest in it, Ledger aimed to launch multiple cutting-edge products and services—each with uniquely authentic brands of their own to support the company’s growth.

It takes time, and a great team to do the work of building a new brand… a strong, emotionally resonant brand that is resilient and future-ready.

The Process

Building Ledger Quest

The first project we tackled was Ledger Quest—a previously unnamed learning experience designed to help users understand crypto and web3.

The web3 space can be intimidating and complex—creating more barriers to mainstream adoption…

Ledger wanted to leverage its reputation as security experts to build a learning tool that helps overcome that, bringing it to the world through its existing collaborations with cultural icons and passionate fan bases.

Enter Ledger Quest: gamifying the education process, helping people learn the basics of crypto and web3, while also earning exclusive assets (NFTs)—digital badges of honor. Each quest provides multiple ways to learn and, once complete, players receive a free NFT, with no fees attached.

Essentially, Ledger Quest was an entirely new brand, one that CRC helped the team build from the ground up. From the initial naming exercise all the way to the detailed work of creating UX copy and microcopy, we led a comprehensive branding process for Ledger Quest. We even helped create a friendly mascot to accompany Questers along their way, and inject some levity into the experience, in line with its personality.

After expanding the sub-brand for Quest, Ledger aimed to expand their brand identity into services related to the usage of their hardware wallet.

These services aim to minimize barriers to entry into web3 and protect assets using a hardware wallet, making them a crucial part of Ledger’s growth and success.

Building Ledger Trust Services

There are numerous challenges people face when they own, or want to own, a hardware wallet to protect their digital property – for example, remembering and/or securing a complex secret seed phrase, and protecting the device from theft, loss, and damage. Ledger’s new Trust Services—developed with the help of our team in a comprehensive strategic branding exercise—will change that.

This suite of services encompasses secure seed phrase recovery services, extended hardware warranties, and more—all to make sure that everyone can participate in web3 with complete peace of mind.

By eliminating these barriers to entry and offering consumers a trusted, respected way to engage with both crypto and web3, Ledger Trust Services supports the main brand’s positioning as a trusted leader in the industry, and supports their expansion into new lines of service.

Building Ledger Trust Services

This suite of services encompasses secure seed phrase recovery services, extended hardware warranties, and more—all to make sure that everyone can participate in web3 with complete peace of mind.

Evolving to Lead WebFuture

Results, Movere

Our goal at CRC is to leave clients not just with a new brand, but with every tool they need to build their brand resonance—and thereby, growth—as soon as we’ve wrapped up our engagement.

To set Ledger up for the growth, change, and industry volatility they knew were coming, we provided a cohesive brand foundation with two fully developed sub-brands. We knew this playbook was thorough and sturdy enough to bring Ledger’s internal teams into creative consensus.

We worked on aspects both micro and macro, from providing comprehensive marketing for every audience we identified, to writing campaigns, UX copy, and microcopy for new product lines. For us, there’s no piece too small to help build a strong brand that can weather challenging economic times.

Now, Ledger is ready for exponential growth. They have a unique and authentic brand identity that is flexible enough to grow with them; they’ve examined and refined the brand and the company at a foundational level, making sure their values match their goals and their truest essence; and they’re positioned for maximal growth, no matter what happens in the future of the web.

All because they took the time to get their branding right, and understood that they didn’t need to change their business—they just needed to strengthen their story.