Grape is a Swiss-based HealthTech company rethinking how organizations approach employee insurance and workplace health. Operating at the intersection of insurance, technology, and wellbeing, Grape combines digital infrastructure with a preventative, human-centered view of health at work.

As the company matured, leadership recognized a growing gap between what Grape was building and how the brand was understood — both internally and externally. The product vision was ambitious, the platform increasingly sophisticated, and the mission compelling, but the brand narrative had not yet caught up.

Rather than executing a purely cosmetic refresh, Grape wanted to revisit the foundations of its brand: why it exists, what it stands for, who it serves, and how it should communicate — across product, marketing, sales, and culture.

The Challenge

The challenge was not awareness — it was clarity.

Grape needed to:

• Clearly articulate its vision in a crowded HealthTech and InsurTech landscape

• Move away from legacy insurance language and mental models

• Align founders, leadership, and teams around a shared narrative

• Create a brand foundation that could scale with the business

• Support future marketing, product storytelling, and partnerships

This work required strategic depth, internal collaboration, and strong facilitation — not just copywriting or messaging.

Our Role

Parallel² partnered with Grape as a fractional marketing leader, working closely with the founders and leadership team over several weeks.

Rather than operating as an external agency delivering a one-off output, Parallel² embedded into the organization to:

• Lead brand strategy and narrative definition
  Design and facilitate collaborative workshops

• Synthesize inputs from founders, leadership, and culture teams

• Translate complex ideas into clear, usable frameworks

• Act as a strategic sparring partner throughout the process

The goal was to leave Grape with a brand system they could own, apply, and evolve independently.

Approach

Workshop-Led Brand Definition

The engagement was anchored around a series of structured workshops designed to surface insight, alignment, and direction. These sessions brought together founders, leadership, and internal stakeholders to explore:

• Grape’s founding motivations and origin story

• The future vision for workplace health

• Cultural values already present in the organization

• How Grape wanted to feel — not just function — as a brand

Rather than extracting answers, the workshops created space for reflection, debate, and convergence. Parallel² facilitated these sessions and translated outcomes into actionable brand foundations.

Vision, Mission, and Values

Existing vision and mission statements were revisited and refined to better reflect Grape’s long-term ambition and preventative approach to health. Values were shaped from workshop outputs and clarified into a small, usable set that could guide decision-making and behavior.

The result was a clearer articulation of:

• What Grape believes

• How it approaches health and technology

What it expects from itself as it grows

Brand Positioning & Narrative

Parallel² led the creation of a new brand positioning that differentiated Grape from traditional insurance providers. This included:

• Defining the category shift Grape represents

• Clarifying the customer need Grape addresses

• Identifying competitor weaknesses and legacy assumptions

• Framing Grape as proactive, humane, and data-informed

From this foundation, we developed a cohesive brand story that could be applied consistently across product, marketing, sales, and employer communications.

Tone of Voice & Messaging

A clear tone of voice framework was established to ensure consistency and confidence across all touchpoints. The tone balanced professionalism with warmth, clarity with empathy, and authority with approachability.

Messaging guidelines and example claims were created to help teams communicate without defaulting to insurance jargon or complexity.

ICPs and Buyer Personas

Working closely with Sales and leadership, Parallel² helped define Ideal Customer Profiles and buyer personas. These frameworks clarified:

• Who Grape is best suited for today

• Who influences purchasing decisions

• What triggers engagement and conversion

This ensured the brand strategy directly supported go-to-market efforts.

Key Insights

The work surfaced several important insights. Grape’s differentiation does not come from technology alone, but from reframing health as a long-term investment rather than a reactive cost. Clarity emerged as a strategic advantage — simplifying language, intent, and messaging helped distinguish Grape in a complex category.

The collaborative process also reinforced that internal alignment is a prerequisite for external consistency. The brand needed to work first for the people building the company before it could work for customers.

Finally, acting as a fractional marketing leader — rather than an external vendor — enabled faster decision-making, deeper trust, and more durable outcomes.

Outcome

The engagement resulted in a clear, cohesive brand foundation that Grape could use as a strategic north star across teams and initiatives. The work strengthened internal alignment, clarified positioning, and provided a shared language for future growth.

Key results included:

• A fully articulated brand vision, mission, and values

• A clear brand positioning and narrative framework

• Defined tone of voice and messaging guidelines

• Aligned ICPs and buyer personas supporting sales and marketing

• A reusable brand foundation for future campaigns, product storytelling, and partnerships

• Greater founder clarity and confidence in how to position the company moving forward, shaped through collaborative workshops

The deliverables were designed to scale with the business and be applied consistently without ongoing dependency on external support.

Reflection

This engagement reinforced the value of treating brand as a strategic system, not a surface-level exercise. By combining facilitation, strategic thinking, and hands-on leadership, Parallel² helped Grape move from implicit understanding to explicit alignment.

The result was a deeply aligned leadership team with a shared understanding of how to position Grape, articulate its value, and move forward with confidence — supported by a clear, practical brand foundation that now guides decisions across the business.