Customer
Rigby Home is a direct-to-consumer tableware brand: a curated collection of beautifully designed, functional pieces handcrafted in Portugal, created for people making a home that is authentically their own.
Challenge
Rigby was entering one of the most visually saturated corners of consumer marketing. Home and tableware brands live on Instagram, where a certain kind of overhead, over-styled, life-removed perfection had become the cliche. For a new brand preparing to launch, blending into that sea of sameness would have been fatal.
Rigby had a meaningful idea at its core, a belief in helping independent-minded people shape a home that is truly their own. But an idea is not yet a brand. To launch, the company needed that idea translated into a foundation the whole business could build on, a voice that felt like a real person rather than a marketing department, and a concrete plan for what to say and show across the channels where customers would first meet it. And it needed all of that on a timeline, ready for a summer launch. Rigby needed a partner who could take it from a heartfelt concept to a launch-ready brand with a personality customers would remember.
Solution
Lightning Jar approached Rigby as a brand strategy and verbal-identity engagement, moving from foundation to voice to a ready-to-use content plan.
A brand foundation. Lightning Jar helped define Rigby's brand framework: a brand idea centered on being "at home with yourself" and the freedom that comes with it, a clearly drawn target audience of independent people settling into lives and homes that are uniquely their own, a value proposition offering a fairly priced and beautiful way to create the home they dream of, and a product built around a curated, functional, beautifully made tableware collection.
A brand voice, defined in a workshop. Through a stakeholder workshop, Lightning Jar guided Rigby to its tone of voice, landing on a primary and secondary character: encouraging, but also courageous. Rather than leaving that as adjectives on a page, Lightning Jar brought the voice to life as a vivid, human character with likes, dislikes, and a point of view, someone honest and warm who tells it like it is, cares deeply about design and about you, and never takes herself too seriously. That character became a practical test the team could apply to any piece of copy: would she say this?
Copywriting guidelines. Lightning Jar translated the voice into clear, usable writing principles (be conversational and candid, be a little bold, be opinionated because you care, be encouraging and supportive, and stay humble and human), each illustrated with real example copy the team could learn from.
A messaging and content strategy. Finally, Lightning Jar built the plan for taking the brand to market: a messaging strategy grounded in real consumer drivers, organized into content pillars spanning product, customer-generated content, lifestyle, and brand storytelling. Within each, Lightning Jar developed concrete content ideas for Instagram, website, and blog, a website value proposition, a brand hashtag, and a clear visual direction that rejected the category's over-styled cliches in favor of real, imperfect, in-the-moment imagery of actual life at home.
Results
A complete brand foundation, from brand idea and audience to value proposition and product, ready for the whole company to build on.
A distinctive, memorable tone of voice, expressed as a real character the team could write in confidently, not just a list of adjectives.
Practical copywriting guidelines with examples, so anyone creating content could sound like Rigby.
A launch-ready messaging and content strategy, with content pillars, concrete post and page ideas, a brand hashtag, and a clear visual direction.
A brand built to stand apart in a picture-perfect category by being bold, honest, and real.