SoFi: Brand Building

When I joined SoFi, the company was evolving. My partner and I were tasked with taking SoFi from its startup roots to a premium financial brand. We took a microscope to every facet of the brand—including design, voice, tone, and values.

Logo

On our second day, we pitched a new logo. Our argument was that a financial services company should have a diagonal trending up instead of down. It was an easy sell.

The SoFi Brandscape

The SoFi brand was a collection of campaign relics, without many guiding principles. We created The SoFi Brandscape—a brand world with structures and guidelines that married the old with the new. My partner and I led the creation of a brand asset refresh, working with our production partner (Laundry) to create 40+ new static and animated brand assets that would become the new face of TV, web, digital, and social.

TV

When the architecture was built, we needed to inject some humanity into the brand. SoFi is built on the strength of its membership and the love people have for the company. We made SoFi members the heroes and spokespeople of the brand by creating 90+ (seriously) TV spots featuring SoFi members telling their stories. Here are a few:

The COVID Pivot

After we launched the 2020 TV campaign, COVID-19 happened… Our next challenge was to take what we had built and test its flexibility. Less than a month later, we launched the “Selfless Ambition” campaign, which used the Brandscape as a platform to tell SoFi member stories from the healthcare community.

Radio

Small stakes (running only in L.A. and Dallas) but while working on the lending business, I wrote my personal favorite radio spot of my career.

Leadership: Lending, SoFi Stadium, and B2B

In 2021, I took a leadership role, managing SoFi’s lending (student loan refinancing, personal loans, and mortgages) and B2B business, plus all creative for SoFi Stadium. I managed 6 writers and oversaw all creative amidst a student loan crisis, debt crisis, mortgage boom, and an NFL season. Here’s a taste of the work I led.

My pet name for SoFi Stadium was “The Cathedral of Screens” and we managed creative for almost all of them, each week.

Credits:
DJ Murphy, ACD, Design
Jonathan Woytek, ECD
Annalise Ambrosi, producer
Jeremy Diessner, creative director, SoFi Stadium
Jackie Linayao, creative director, SoFi Stadium
Marty Bonacorso, copywriter, SoFi Stadium
Kristina Altepeter, copywriter, lending
Oliver MacDonald, art director, lending