Our newsletter editor Niveditha wanted me to write about why Clearly Blue was started. So here goes!
Clearly Blue was started because, despite many naysayers, scoffers, sceptics and underestimators, I believe that a sound business model exists in a team of dedicated writers, designers, marketers and analysts creating great content for products, services and people.
It’s the age of sexy products right now and apparently all of India’s services companies are pivoting to innovate in products. But, I believe that if you provide a world-class service that hits the content-related pain point of customers, they will appreciate it and pay for it.
Startups are better off writing their own content – they are still defining their identities and writing their stories. The behemoths have huge teams visualizing their stories and narrating them in beautiful ways. Our value-add is in the middle – the fast growing small-to-medium companies with a product team, a tech team and a marketer or two who want an experienced partner to bring it all together.
And that’s where our work shines. Ask Bristlecone. Ask the Institute of Product Leadership. Ask Ambertag Analytics. Ask the other happy customers who’ve come back for more.
The phrase Clearly Blue brings to mind the happiness of blue skies and a sunny day. Blue is the colour of clarity. And that’s what we aim to bring to our customers’ stories.
In my mind, blue is also the colour of freedom. Freedom from cubicle farms. Freedom to work anytime, anywhere. Freedom to pour your love and dedication for stories into the written word, the visual, the video, the design or the plan. This is what our team enjoys. A recent visitor to our office heard about our ‘office hours’ and flex policy and asked if we could hire him!
Oddly enough, blue is also the colour of woman power for us. By great serendipity, we’re an all-female team. Perhaps not so great because, we value collaboration over confrontation, a word of praise over undue competition, and empathy over rigidity. We pour all our dedication and diligence into our work – we have fanatics who put in all-nighters – and use the supportive framework of technology on the cloud (aka Google Apps and other tech) to aspire for perfection.
Together, we create content that starts conversations.