Mailchimp started as an email marketing platform, but today offer services like landing pages, social ads, CRM, and more. But most of their customers were still coming to them for email only. The other challenge? Marketing terms can be confusing and super boring for non-industry people. We needed to tell the story of Mailchimp’s expanded offering in a way that captured and held the attention of their primary customer—small business owners in the creative class.

This essay was written and designed to fit with the media surrounding it. The New Yorker is a famed magazine known for its witty articles and comics. We wanted to cut through the traditional business-to-business communications with unexpected, self-referential work that that small business owners could relate to. We chose a subject that Mailchimp had experienced themselves: the moment when your business grows so much that you outgrew the name of your company.

This essay was written with The New Yorker’s audience in mind. We wanted to blend in with our surroundings in the magazine, both in tone and content. We wanted to appeal to all readers, whether they were small business owners or not, with something that was witty and entertaining for everyone. Typical business-to-business writing tends to focus on the numbers, on closing the sale. Instead, we wrote a human interest story that presented a unique business challenge with a wink to culture. We even featured a quintessential New Yorker-style cartoon and caption, a staple of the magazine.