Customer case: Costa Commerce

Some of the most exciting stories started with three little words: Let’s do it!

This is one of them. 🤌

When Costa Commerce first approached us, they only had a name, a company ID, and four founders who wanted to change the digital commerce world for the better.

They needed help with building a brand identity — from the ground up. It was a one-of-its-kind collaboration, and our chemistry was palpable right from the start. We heard what they set out to do, and we thought: Let’s do it!

In the following months, we worked relentlessly with Costa Commerce to:

🏝 Develop a comprehensive strategy that would bring their brand to life
🏝 Define the brand’s value proposition, key messaging, and positioning
🏝 Create a new logo and identity across all touchpoints to ensure a unified look and feel for the brand
🏝 Develop their tone of voice and brand guidelines to ensure consistency
🏝 Design & build the website to reflect the company’s values and goals
🏝 Implement HubSpot in their backend

Who is Costa Commerce?

After all the years of hype around digital commerce, it still does not live up to its full potential. While it may be easy to come up with ideas and tinker with new tech, it is much more difficult to implement solutions that address real business problems and drive actual value and growth. This was the problem Costa’s team wanted to solve — and the reason why Costa Commerce was born.

The big promise is now to grow customers’ digital commerce like it was Costa’s own.

With their tagline ‘Digital commerce as it was meant to be’, Costa Commerce aims to help their customers drive digital growth with 0% guesswork through:

🏝 Gaining a deep customer understanding;
🏝 Making smart strategic choices; and
🏝 Running data-backed iterations

And that ☝️ is what Costa Commerce sets out to change in the digital commerce world.

The starting point ⚡️

Things that they needed support with:

When they first approached us, they were looking for:

🏝 A website

🏝 A logo and visual identity
But they later realized that was not all. In order to truly capture the brand essence of Costa Commerce, they ALSO needed:

🎯 A clear tone of voice

🎯 A precise positioning and messaging

🎯 A consistent way of communicating across all touchpoints

🎯 A sales and marketing tech stack that would work as a growth enabler later on
In short, they needed a brand identity — one that stood out from the crowd.

Why they chose Advance B2B:

They appreciated the expertise of our team in formalizing ideas and making them concrete as well as our love for executing out-of-the-box ideas.
Moreover, they wanted to work with a partner who could understand the complexities of their business and help them scale quickly.
They saw our commitment to being agile and delivering results as a key factor in their decision to choose to work with our team.

Bringing the brand to life

With time racing against them and limited resources, Costa Commerce needed to get things moving as soon as possible. Not having a brand identity is like having an imaginary friend — it’s there, but you just can’t see it.

Our goal was to help them crystalize who and what Costa Commerce is, so they can hit the market as soon as possible. We sat down with the team and got to work immediately with their brand creation through workshops and iteration after iteration.

The entire process of bringing the Costa Commerce brand to life was smooth sailing thanks to Costa Commerce’s proactiveness throughout each discussion and iteration round. Everyone at Costa Commerce was incredibly motivated and committed to making things happen, which helped us nurture and formalize those ideas sooner.

The results:

We helped Costa Commerce create a brand identity that was upbeat and energetic and then moved on to designing their website. We worked collaboratively to create a website that delivered all key functionalities needed for their business to start gaining traction.

I am especially happy with the way our Advance B2B team was able to extract the ideas and thinking from our heads, formalize them, and turn them into an actual brand personality & tone of voice that both now live in all the assets we have: from pitch decks to website copies.

The whole process was led in a way that ensured we were focusing on the right things and getting the right things done. What I liked the most was that it felt like we were actually co-creating the brand rather than just ordering something "ready-made", which made the end results feel very own right from the beginning.

Esamatti Vuolle

CEO & Co-founder

Shifting the perspective on branding

The Costa Commerce team, especially Esamatti, was no stranger to branding.

“You see a logo and website now. But there is a lot of work that went into creating that in the background,” he said.

Shifting the perspective on branding means looking beyond the logo and website to the bigger picture. It means:

Understanding a brand’s values, purpose, and mission to create a sense of connection with its customers
Take the customer experience into account and understand how it shapes their perception of the brand
Paying attention to stories that are told about the brand and how they contribute to shaping its brand identity
Creating a holistic view of the brand and its impact on its customers
Looking at how a brand contributes and leaves its mark on society

All of these elements combined ☝️ create a powerful brand identity that resonates with customers and sets the company apart in the market.

When asked how has working with the Advance B2B team changed his perspective on branding, Esamatti replied:

“In the past, I have been given existing brand equity to work with. And now, we were really starting from scratch. We had to think about what we wanted to be known for, how to create a legacy, and what kind of footprint we want to leave behind. It’s something I’ve not done in my previous engagements. So it was something new that changed my perspective of branding.”

Working as a team

No matter how good things are, there is always room for improvement. Our collaboration was no exception to that rule. Working in iterations (and having honest conversations) gave us the opportunity to meet in the middle of the process that works for both Costa Commerce and Advance B2B.

We identified our strengths and weaknesses and tackled difficult tasks with open minds and a willingness to learn. Together, our success in creating Costa Commerce’s brand identity most certainly reflects that.

As Esamatti puts it:

“Dialogues were open, and we have been able to discuss all things—good and bad—to get whatever that is needed to be done, done. I think that has been more like a partnership than a client-customer relationship.”

[Customer Case]
Costa Commerce

The starting point ⚡️

Bringing the brand to life

Shifting the perspective on branding

Working as a team

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The starting point ⚡️

Bringing the brand to life

Shifting the perspective on branding

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