Asahi Direct B2B portal
The brief
Asahi Premium Beverages (APB) is a leading beverage company in Australia and New Zealand. Their portfolio includes one of Japan’s best-known beer brands, Asahi. Plus, ready-to-drink alcohol-based beverages, whiskey and spirits.
APB serve a B2B clientele across the continent. Whether the client runs an on-premise bar or venue or off-premise establishment (shops and bottle stores), all of their stories have one thing in common: they need to place orders.
To make this process slicker, APB launched Asahi Direct — their B2B customer portal that makes ordering and account management, easier. I was brought on board to:
- Write product copy
- Write automated emails
- Define the portal’s tone of voice
- Research and write APB’s brand story and service offerings
- Enforce copy rules for consistency – including microcopy like error messaging.
There were many challenges to consider and navigate. During my research, I made sure I understood all of this by looking at existing assets, brand messaging and company history. I also examined the relationship between APB and their B2B customers. To instil trust and confidence in the new platform, the language and communications needed to be familiar and fairly reflect the existing relationships between customer and company.
By far, the biggest challenge was capturing the essence of each individual brand under the APB umbrella, while ensuring consistency across the site.
What we did
The solution was to uncover and amplify APB’s unifying characteristics: confidence and ambition. Qualities which repeatedly emerged whether I was looking into the company’s history or product portfolio.
By keeping these characteristics in mind, I helped define a suitable tone which the client approved of. The TOV was applied to everything from five-word error messages through to more emotive-driven copy like ‘Our Story’.
As the project continued, a house style guide developed. Not only was this helpful for me working on such a large project, but it will ensure continued consistency for any further portal copy.
The result
Slick, consistent, human-sounding copy at every stage of the customer’s journey.
Kind word’s from APB
“From day one of working on the Asahi Customer Sales Portal Project, Rose became an integral and invaluable member of the team. She took the time to understand our business, our customers and what we were trying to achieve. Rose brought
Incredibly, Rose was able to navigate our corporate landscape, rapidly develop relationships, garner support, develop engagement, stay ahead of project deadlines and single-handedly manage version control and the creation of our style guide.
Without
I would recommend Rose to any project. She has been a delight to work, has a way with words and has even taught me a thing or two about my own writing style.”
