I'm having such a great time with a current client project that I realized there are so much gold in sharing our process with you. Luckily my client, the lovely Chelsea Von Mach, is down to share her experience as we dive into the early stages of developing her brand story and bringing it to life.
Chelsea Von Mach is a Los Angeles-based fashion stylist for television, film, editorial, advertising campaigns and red carpet events. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Los Angeles to study Merchandise Product Development and fine-tune her innate creative talent at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
After graduating, Chelsea assisted numerous fashion stylists and costume designers including celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe & Mad Men Costume designer Janie Bryant. Styling projects include The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas advertisements, V-Magazine editorials, American Idol, The T.V. Show The Real and the CW Network campaigns. Chelsea’s personal eclectic street style has also been featured in some of the industries top style resources, such as The Sartorialist, Japanese Vogue, Refinery29 and The New York Times.
Chelsea and I were introduced by our mutual dear friend Bill Cliatt, another veteran survivor of the fashion industry, and we began working together last year when she signed up for my 1:1 coaching program. Her goal was to begin the process of extending her career beyond that of traditional fashion styling. At the beginning of this year, I reached out to Chelsea to see what kind of progress she had made in developing her personal brand and an exciting video series concept we discussed during our sessions. Being that her styling career keeps her incredibly busy, she felt less than accomplished in the areas we worked on and wanted to chat about how I could provide her a little more hands-on help to get things moving. She also knew that I'd keep her committed to her goals by providing a level of accountability and a solid sounding board for her creative ideas.
So we got to work.
First things first, we set up a 2-hour in-person work session to work through a slightly intense brand story questionnaire that I've been developing over the last couple of months. The questions are a deep dive into all aspects of how to discover and tell your story. Although not all of it will be used in the copy, understanding all of it helps my brain work and come up with different ways to position and help clients market themselves later on. In this case, we decided to focus our energy on the development of media kit that would include a concept for the video series.
Below is a glimpse into the questionnaire. It's never meant to be edited perfectly, it's more so written as a stream of consciousness because that's just the way it works best.
Here are some of Chelsea's kind words after our initial session:
"It was so great seeing you Thursday!! That work session WAS AMAZINGGGG! I'm going to work on filling out everything this week/weekend. Ahh I'm so excited! The work session was so helpful bc it really got me thinking and brainstorming ideas I hadn't really thought of yet."
Next week I'll be sharing how Art Director Mandi Gum began crafting the aesthetic direction for Chelsea's media kit. I LOVE this next part, it's like opening a present.
xx
-Arica
Have you been thinking about your own brand story?
Join our list via the button below and receive our begin with our free brand story audit exercise.
Story dev begins with awareness. You can download and fill in the PDF template with your responses to start seeing what might need a little love and attention.
