Staying distinctive in a category where everyone claims the same thing

AI companies tend to offer the same things. Smarter, faster, the future of work. In meeting AI specifically, the claims blur into one. More accurate recording, better summaries, improved recall. But when the whole category makes the same promise in the same voice, sounding different isn't a nice-to-have, it’s the biggest problem the brand faces.

‍

Fathom's ambition was bigger than the category. Not another AI note taker, but an AI work partner. An enabling tool that went beyond transcripts and into something far more valuable. The work we do with them comes back to one goal, making that ambition crystal clear, building a brand and creative tools distinctive enough that Fathom is perceived as its own thing, standing alone in a landscape where everyone claims the same.

The foundation of the work was a brand and messaging system built around a single ownable idea. The power behind your best work. We defined the persona, a clear-headed, quietly brilliant sidekick, calm in the chaos and two steps ahead, and a positioning framework that moved Fathom past "note taker" toward "work partner," a tool people rely on to do far more than capture what was said.

‍

To be different didn’t stop at a complete re-articulation of the value the brand offered. We wanted to create a big visual departure too. Along came the astronaut. A character-led visual identity can be a risk in B2B software, where the default is the same tech led visuals and gradients. But for Fathom it became the thing that makes the brand impossible to mistake for anyone else. It spawned a visual identity full of vibrancy, playfulness and willingness to be brave, a ‘shoot for the moon’ way of thinking.

Our ongoing relationship ensures that creative context compounds over time. We hold the knowledge and nuance of the brand, the persona, and the visual system, so every new asset starts from shared understanding instead of a fresh brief. The latest piece of work is faster and sharper than the first, because we're not relearning the brand each time.

‍

Our partnership covers design strategy and execution across a widening set of assets and formats. On the website, we've expanded the site well beyond its original footprint. This includes audience and pricing pages, campaign landing pages, integrations, the partner program, resources, and a set of scalable marketing layouts so new pages launch quickly without the design drifting. Around the site sits a growing library of applications that keep Fathom consistent everywhere it appears. Partner badges, video ads, email templates, one-pagers, UI elements, and product-update assets. This is the everyday engine of a brand that has to show up constantly and always look like itself.

‍

Two key moments show what the partnership can do when the stakes are higher than a landing page. An immersive presence at the industry's biggest conference, and a national out-of-home launch. Both are cases of a brand using design to look like nothing else in its category.

In April 2026, Fathom went to market with its first out-of-home campaign, across multiple Bay Area and New York locations. This is where the partnership proved its value under pressure.

‍

Before writing any creative direction, we did the fieldwork. Our team we drove the full San Francisco OOH landscape, from Oakland across the Bay Bridge through downtown to the Salesforce Transit Center, and photographed more than 30 AI and tech placements in real time, with parallel desk research on the New York Penn Station corridor. What we found confirmed the strategy. Nearly every AI billboard ran the same thing, dark background, bold white text, a gradient or a screenshot, no characters. Across every placement we documented, the Fathom astronaut was the only character-based illustration in the entire landscape.

‍

Then we moved fast. The designer brief went out April 6, initial concepts April 7, final deliverables across every format by April 9, campaign live April 13 to 15. From concepting through hundreds of asset variations to shipped production files in days, not weeks. We built the astronaut into a two-act narrative, a pre-launch "something is coming" arc resolving into a settled, arrived post-launch tone, and tuned every execution to its placement, from seven-word highway boards read at 60 miles an hour to narrative sequences across transit panels.

‍

It’s what a creative partner who already knows the brand can do that a new partner can't. We turned firsthand research into a distinctive, fully produced campaign in a matter of days, because the brand context and craft was already in place.

A one-off brand project gives you the baseline and a set of guidelines to work from. Building a brand doesn’t end there. It’s only the start. What Fathom has with us is a creative partner who can move the moment an opportunity appears, because the foundation is built and the context is embedded. When the OOH window opened, there was no ramp-up and no re-briefing. There was research on Saturday and concepts on Tuesday.

‍

That's the compounding value of a partnership. Not just the quality of a single deliverable, but the speed and understanding that come from a partner who never has to start over.