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Corporate Marketing

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Welcome to the Corporate Marketing Handbook

The Corporate Marketing team includes Content Marketing, Corporate Events, PR (Public Relations), All-Remote Marketing, and Design. Corporate Marketing is responsible for the stewardship of the GitLab brand and the company's messaging/positioning. The team is the owner of the Marketing website and oversees the website strategy. Corporate Marketing develops a global, integrated communication strategy, executes globally, and enables field marketing to adapt and apply global strategy regionally by localizing and verticalizing campaigns for in-region execution. Corporate marketing also ensures product marketing, outreach, and marketing & sales development are conducted in a way that amplifies our global brand.

Brand personality

GitLab's brand has a personality that is reflected in everything we do. It doesn't matter if we are hosting a fancy dinner with fortune 500 CIOs, at a hackathon, or telling our story on about.gitlab.com…across all our communication methods, and all our audiences, GitLab has a personality that shows up in how we communicate.

Our personality is built around four main characteristics.

  1. Human: We write like we talk. We avoid buzzwords and jargon, and instead communicate simply, clearly, and sincerely. We treat people with kindness.
  2. Competent: We are highly accomplished, and we communicate with conviction. We are efficient at everything we do.
  3. Quirky: We embrace diversity of opinion. We embrace new ideas based on their merit, even if they defy commonly held norms.
  4. Humble: We care about helping those around us achieve great things more than we care about our personal accomplishments.

These four characteristics work together to form a personality that is authentic to GitLab team-members, community, and relatable to our audience. If we were quirky without being human we could come across as eccentric. If we were competent without being humble we could come across as arrogant.

GitLab has a higher purpose. We want to inspire a sense of adventure in those around us so that they join us in contributing to making that mission a reality.

Tone of voice

The following guide outlines the set of standards used for all written company communications to ensure consistency in voice, style, and personality, across all of GitLab's public communications.

See the Blog Editorial Style Guide for more.

About

GitLab the community

GitLab is an open source project with a large community of contributors. Over 2,000 people worldwide have contributed to GitLab's source code.

GitLab the company

GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open source project. GitLab Inc. is an active participant in our community (see our stewardship of GitLab CE for more information), as well as offering GitLab, a product (see below).

GitLab the product

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform, delivered as a single application. See the product elevator pitch for additional messaging.

Tone of voice

The tone of voice we use when speaking as GitLab should always be informed by our Content Strategy. Most importantly, we see our audience as co-conspirators, working together to define and create the next generation of software development practices. The below table should help to clarify further:

We are: We aren't:
Equals in our community Superior
Knowledgeable Know-it-alls
Empathetic Patronizing
Straightforward Verbose
Irreverent Disrespectful
Playful Jokey
Helpful Dictatorial
Transparent Opaque

We explain things in the simplest way possible, using plain, accessible language.

We keep a sense of humor about things, but don't make light of serious issues or problems our users or customers face.

We use colloquialisms and slang, but sparingly (don't look like you're trying too hard!).

We use inclusive, gender-neutral language.

Updating the press page

Adding a new press release

  1. Create a new merge request and branch in www-gitlab-com.
  2. On your branch, navigate to source then press and click on the releases folder.
  3. Add a new file using the following format YYYY-MM-DD-title-of-press-release.html.md.
  4. Add the following to the beginning of your document:
---
layout: markdown_page
title: "Title of press release"
---
  1. Add the content of the press release to the file and save. Make sure to include any links. It is important to not have any extra spaces after sentences that end a paragraph or your pipeline will break. You must also not have extra empty lines at the end of your doc. So make sure to check that when copying and pasting a press release from a google doc.

Updating the /press/#press-releases page

When you have added a press release, be sure to update the index page too so that it is linked to from /press/#press-releases.

  1. On the same branch, navigate to data then to the press.yml file.
  2. Scroll down to press_releases:, then scroll to the most recent dated press release.
  3. Underneath, add another entry for your new press release using the same format as the others, ensuring that your alignment is correct and that dashes and words begin in the same columns.
  4. The URL for your press release will follow the format of your filename for it: /press/releases/YYYY-MM-DD-title-of-press-release.html.

Updating the recent news section

  1. Every Friday the PR agency will send a digest of top articles.
  2. Product marketing will update the Recent News section with the most recent listed at the top. Display 10 articles at a time. To avoid formatting mistakes, copy and paste a previous entry on the page, and edit with the details of the new coverage. You may need to search online for a thumbnail to upload to images/press, if coverage from that publication is not already listed on the page. If you upload a new image, make sure to change the path listed next to image_tag.

Design

Requesting design help

  1. Create an issue in the corresponding project repository.
    1. For tasks pertaining to about.gitlab.com create an issue in the www-gitlab-com project.
    2. For all other marketing related tasks create an issue in the corporate marketing project.
  2. Add all relevant details, goal(s), purpose, resources, and links in the issue description. Also @ mention team members who will be involved.
  3. Set due date (if possible) — please leave at least 2 week lead time in order to generate custom design assets. If you need them sooner, ping @luke in the #marketing-design Slack channel and we will make our best effort to accommodate, but can't promise delivery.
  4. Add the Design and Website Redesign (if applicable) label(s) to your issue.

The Design label in issue tracker

The Design label helps us find and track issues relevant to the Design team. If you create an issue where Design is the primary focus, please use this label.

Project prioritization

Per the Design team's discretion, the prioritization of design projects will be based on the direct impact on Marketing.

To get a better sense of corporate marketing project prioritization, you can view the Design Issue Board.

Design projects within the www-gitlab-com project can be tracked using the Website label. The prioritization of projects for about.gitlab.com can be viewed on the Website Issue Board.

Any design requests that do not fall in line with the goals and objectives of Marketing will be given a lower priority and factored in as time allows.

Design touchpoints

The Design team has a rather wide reach and plays a big part in almost all marketing efforts. Design touchpoints range from the GitLab website to print collateral, swag, and business cards. This includes, but certainly not limited to:

Web & Digital

Field Design & Branding

Content Design

In the spirit of 'everyone can contribute' (as well as version control and SEO) we prefer webpages over PDFs. We will implement a print.css component to these webpages so that print PDFs can still be utilized for events and in-person meetings without the headache of version control

Brand Guidelines

To download the GitLab logo (in various formats and file types) check out our Press page.

The GitLab logo consists of two components, the icon (the tanuki) and the wordmark:

GitLab is most commonly represented by the logo, and in some cases, the icon alone. GitLab is rarely represented by the wordmark alone as we'd like to build brand recognition of the icon alone (e.g. the Nike swoosh), and doing so by pairing it with the GitLab wordmark.

Logo safe space

Safe space acts as a buffer between the logo or icon and other visual components, including text. this space is the minimum distance needed and is equal to the x-height of the GitLab wordmark:

Logo safe space

Logo safe space

The x-height also determines the proper spacing between icon and wordmark, as well as, the correct scale of the icon relative to the wordmark:

Logo safe space

The Tanuki

The tanuki is a very smart animal that works together in a group to achieve a common goal. We feel this symbolism embodies GitLab's mission that everyone can contribute, our values, and our open source stewardship.

GitLab trademark & logo guidelines

GitLab is a registered trademark of GitLab, Inc. You are welcome to use the GitLab trademark and logo, subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The most current version of the GitLab logo can be found on our Press page.

Under the Creative Commons license, you may use the GitLab trademark and logo so long as you give attribution to GitLab and provide a link to the license. If you make any changes to the logo, you must state so, along with the attribution, and distribute under the same license.

Your use of the GitLab trademark and logo:

Examples of improper use of the GitLab trademark and logo:

Using other logos

Logos used on the about.gitlab.com site should always be in full color and be used to the specifications provided by the owner of that logo, which can usually be found on the owners website. The trust marks component found throughout the site is the only exception and should use a neutral tone:

The tanuki logo should also not have facial features (eyes, ears, nose…); it is meant to be kept neutral, but it can be accessorized.

Colors

While the brand is ever-evolving, the GitLab brand currently consists of six primary colors that are used in a wide array of marketing materials.

Hex/RGB

GitLab Hex/RGB Colors

Typography

The GitLab brand uses the Source Sans Pro font family. Headers (h1, h2, etc.) always have a weight of 600 (unless used in special situations like large, custom quotes) and the body text always has a weight of 400. Headers should not be given custom classes, they should be used as tags and tags alone (h1, h2, etc.) and their sizes or weights should not be changed, unless rare circumstances occur. Here are typography tags.

H1: Header Level 1

H2: Header Level 2

H3: Header Level 3

H4: Header Level 4

p: Body text

Buttons

Buttons are an important facet to any design system. Buttons define a call to action that lead people somewhere else, related to adjacent content. Here are buttons and their classes that should be used throughout the marketing website:

Note: Text within buttons should be concise, containing no more than 4 words, and should not contain bold text. This is to keep things simple, straightforward, and limits confusion as to where the button takes you.

Primary buttons

Primary buttons are solid and should be the default buttons used. Depending on the color scheme of the content, purple or orange solid buttons can be used depending on the background color of the content. These primary buttons should be used on white or lighter gray backgrounds or any background that has a high contrast with the button color. They should also be a %a tag so it can be linked elsewhere and for accessibility. Buttons should also be given the class margin-top20 if the button lacks space between itself and the content above.

Primary Button 1 
.btn.cta-btn.orange

OR

Primary Button 2 
.btn.cta-btn.purple

Secondary Buttons

There will be times when two buttons are needed. This will be in places such as our jobs page, where we have a button to view opportunities and one to view our culture video. In this example, both buttons are solid, but one is considered the primary button (orange), and the other is the secondary button (white). The CSS class for the solid white button is
.btn.cta-btn.btn-white.

This is the proper use of two buttons, both being solid, but different colors based on hierarchy. If the background is white or a lighter color that doesn't contrast well with a white-backgound button, a ghost button should be used as a secondary button, and should match in color to the primary button beside it as shown below:

Primary Button Secondary Button
Primary Button Secondary Button

DO NOT: Do not use these ghost buttons styles as standalone buttons. They have been proven to be less effective than solid buttons in a number of studies. They should only be used as a secondary button, next to a solid primary button that already exists. Here are the classes for the secondary buttons:

Secondary Button 1 
.btn.cta-btn.ghost-orange
Secondary Button 2 
.btn.cta-btn.ghost-purple

Iconography

Icons are a valuable visual component to the GitLab brand; contributing to the overall visual language and user experience of a webpage, advertisement, or slide deck. The GitLab iconography currently consists of "label icons" and "content icons", each are explained in further detail below:

Label icons

Label icons are intended to support usability and interaction. These are found in interactive elements of the website such as navigation and toggles.

Label icons example

Content icons

Content icons are intended to provide visual context and support to content on a webpage; these icons also have a direct correlation to our illustration style with the use of bold outlines and fill colors.

A few examples include our event landing pages and Resources page.

Brand oversight

Occasionally the old GitLab logo is still in use on partner websites, diagrams or images, and within our own documentation. If you come across our old logo in use, please bring it to our attention by creating an issue in the Marketing issue tracker. Please include a link and screenshot (if possible) in the description of the issue and we will follow-up to get it updated. Thanks for contributing to our brand integrity!

GitLab Product UX Guide

The goal of this guide is to provide written standards, principles and in-depth information to design beautiful and effective GitLab features. This is a living document and will be updated and expanded as we iterate.

GitLab Design System

We've broken out the GitLab interface into a set of atomic pieces to form our design system, Pajamas. Pajamas includes information such as our principles, components, usage guidelines, research methodologies, and more.

Brand resources

Asset libraries

Icons

Icon patterns

Social media

Templates

Presentation decks

Speakers

For GitLab Team-members Attending Events/ Speaking
Finding and Suggesting Speakers and Submitting to CFPs
Best practices for public speaking

Below are some tips on being a better presenter. For an in-depth book that covers the entire speaking process, from submitting an abstract through preparing a structured talk to practicing and delivering read Demystifying Public Speaking.

  1. Use a problem/solution format to tell a story. Many talks, especially tech talks, talk about what they built first and then what the result was. Flip this around and start with the why. Why did you need to take the action that you did? Talking about what problems you were encountering creates a narrative tension and people will listen intently to the talk because they want to hear the solution.
  2. Drive towards an action. Ask yourself, "What will people do once they hear this talk?" The answer can't be, "be more aware of this topic." By deciding what action you expect the audience to take you can build your talk to drive towards this action. Talks that motivate the audience to action are more engaging and memorable than talks that simply describe. Some good example answers are
    1. Contribute to an open source project.
    2. Implement the technology or process you've come up with
    3. Follow the best practices you've outlined
  3. Practice how you play. Practicing your talk is key to being a great presenter. As much as possible, practice exactly how you plan to give the talk. Sand up and pretend you are on stage rather than sitting down. If you'll demo, build the demo first and practice the demo. Even practicing while wearing the outfit you plan to wear can help.
  4. Give concrete examples. Real life details bring a talk to life. Examples help people to understand and internalize the concepts you present. For each of your points try to have a "for instance." As an example, "We recommend using this script to delete old logs and free up diskspace. For instance, one time our emails lit up as users were complaining about slow performance. Some were reporting tasks hanging for over an hour when they should have completed in less than a minute. It turned out we were out of diskspace because we had verbose logging enabled. Once we ran the script we saw performance return to normal levels."
  5. Be mindful of your body language when presenting as it will impact the way the audience perceives your presentation. Move around the stage purposefully (don't pace or fidget). Make natural gestures with your hands, and maintain good posture to convey confidence and openness which will help you to better connect with your audience.

Customer Speakers

In an effort to grow our engagement and connectivity with our community, we're pleased to offer a SPIFF incentive for our Sales (Sal's, TAM's, SA's, Professional Services), and Support Teams teams to get customers involved in speaking at any GitLab Commit Event.

SPIFF criteria- only applicable for Commit our user conference series

The SPIFF will payout for each customer speaker submission that has the following criteria met
Eligibility
Payout

For ideas to help customers get their submissions accepted, see How to Get Your Presentation Accepted (video) or schedule a chat with a Technical Evangelism team member.

Corporate Events

Mission Statement

What does the corporate Events team handle?

Corporate Events Strategy / Goals

GitLab Commit User Conferences

Please review our events decision tree to ensure Corporate Marketing is the appropriate owner for an event. If it is not clear who should own an event based on the decision tree, please email events@gitlab.com.

Event Execution

For event execution instructions, please see the Marketing Events page for detail instruction and the criteria used to determine what type of events are supported.

Best Practices on site at a GitLab event

Swag

Swag for Events - see details on Events page

All swag requests, creation and vendor selection is handled by the Corporate Marketing team.

Community & External Swag Requests

If you would like to get some GitLab swag for your team or event, email your request to sponsorships@gitlab.com (managed by the community advocacy team).
In your request include:

The swag we have available can be found on our online store. Note: It is recommended submit your request for swag at least 4 weeks in advance from the event date or we may not be able to accommodate your request.

Internal GitLab Swag Ordering:

Returning Swag to Warehouse

Swag for customer/ prospects

At the moment a limited group of SDRs and Commercial Sales reps have Sendoso accounts and the ability to send physical swag, handwritten notes, and coffee giftcards.

Swag Providers We Use

New and Replenishment Swag Orders

Corporate handles the creating and ordering of all new swag. All swag designs should be run past design (Luke) for approval before going to production.

Suggesting new items or designs

Social Marketing and Social Media

Please consult the Social Marketing Handbook.

All-Remote Marketing

Mission Statement

The mission of GitLab’s All-Remote Marketing team is to champion the company’s all-remote culture and initiatives. This involves close collaboration with corporate marketing (PR, corporate events), people group (employment branding) and Diversity & Inclusion.

Our audience

The audience we aim to reach with our all-remote initiatives is both internal and external to GitLab. It closely aligns with our employment branding audience, and expands to cover key segments in the investor and business communities.

Objectives and goals

As detailed in GitLab’s public CMO OKRs, GitLab’s All-Remote Marketing team seeks to elevate the profile of GitLab in the media and investor circles, positioning it as a pioneer of remote work. It will spread the story of GitLab’s global remote employees, remote work processes, transparent culture and the movement to remote work that GitLab has created. It also seeks to position GitLab as an innovator in the eyes of investors, a vital part of GitLab’s public ambition to become a public company.

Channels for culture curation

Web

The team's primary home for publishing informational guides and content is the all-remote section of GitLab's handbook. This will be the preeminent home to all-remote content, positioned for consumption by media, investors, prospective customers and candidates.

We are actively working on a GitLab template for GitLab team members to submit stories, photos, videos, etc. for inclusion in the aforementioned web destination. We will spotlight stories unique to GitLab's all-remote culture. Examples include:

In the interim, GitLab team members wishing to share their remote stories can reach out to @dmurph.

Events

All-remote events should elevate GitLab as a thought leader in the remote work space, create new partnerships, generate leads and generate media interest/coverage. We will consider physical events, virtual events and events that combine an in-person presence with a livestream option.

Social media

We incorporate all-remote content on GitLab’s social media accounts, and are investigating a visual approach to new mediums that are aligned with culture and lifestyle stories.

We are working with employment branding to surface relevant all-remote stories from GitLab team members to recruiting channels and review sites, such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Comparably.

There are also a number of videos on GitLab's YouTube channel that relate to working here:

PR (Public Relations)

Mission Statement

The mission of GitLab’s PR (public relations) team is to amplify GitLab's product and people in the media.

Our audience

The audience we aim to reach is external press/media. This includes business, lifestyle, workplace, finance, and beyond, using mediums such as print, digital, video, events, podcasts, etc.

Objectives and goals

As detailed in GitLab’s public CMO OKRs, GitLab’s public relations team seeks to elevate the profile of GitLab in the media and investor circles, positioning it as a pioneer of remote work, increasing share of voice against competitors, and pulling through key messages in feature articles.

Contacting GitLab's PR team

For external parties, please visit our Get In Touch page.

For GitLab team members, please use the #external-comms Slack channel.

PR review and media guidelines

Speaking to media or on a podcast as a GitLab team member is a significant responsibility. If you are unsure whether or not you should accept a speaking opportunity or provide comment representing GitLab to a member of the media, please see below for guidance.

Speaking opportunities

If you are asked to speak on behalf of GitLab, consider reaching out to the PR and Technical Evangelist teams to ensure that the opportunity aligns with GitLab objectives. Inquiries should be initiated in the #external-comms Slack channel.

Media mentions and interviews

If you are asked to be quoted or to provide commentary on any matter as a spokesperson of GitLab, please provide detail of the opportunity to the PR team in the #external-comms Slack channel.

In the event that a media member, editor, or publisher offers a draft or preview of an article where you are quoted, please allow the PR team to review by posting in the #external-comms Slack channel. The PR team will ensure that the appropriate GitLab team member(s) review and approve in a timely manner.

Social media

Please consult the Social Marketing Handbook. If you are contacted on a social media platform and asked to share/retweet or provide commentary as a spokesperson of GitLab, feel welcome to provide detail of the opportunity to the social team in the #social-media Slack channel.

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