HYDR8
Marketing & Branding
I'm Hydr8's Head of Vibe. Over a 6-year partnership I took the brand from a scrappy startup to an $8M+ hydration and beverage company. From redesigning their brand identity and building their website from scratch, to vibe coding an AI-powered lead generation system, this is the full story.
10x
Revenue Growth
to $8M+
10x
LinkedIn Followers
200 to 2,000
$60K+
Charity Raised
Chips for Charity 2023-2025
Building Three Brands From Scratch
Hydr8 had an old logo that was off-centered and dated. I redesigned it and created the Caffein8 and Elimin8 identities from the ground up.
Before
Off-centered, thin weight, muted grey
After
Centered, bold navy, premium feel
Hydr8 Logo Redesign
Replaced the original off-centered, outdated logo with a clean, modern identity that reflects the brand's premium positioning in hydration solutions.
Caffein8 Logo
Designed the Caffein8 sub-brand logo from scratch, establishing a distinct gold-and-brown identity for the coffee product line.
Elimin8™ Logo
Created the Elimin8 trademark brand identity from the ground up, building a green-forward visual system for the detox and elimination product line.
Machine Naming
Coordinated brand-aligned nicknames for 90% of Hydr8's machine catalog with leadership, offering on-brand suggestions and steering toward naming uniformity across all assets.
Everything on hydr8.us Has My Hand in It
I built the Hydr8 website from the ground up. Not just the design, but the strategic decisions behind every page: the sitemap architecture, URL structure, the copy on every page, the blog content strategy, and the ecommerce store.
The CTR "decline" from Nov (2.35%) to Dec (1.43%) is actually healthy. A 36% spike in impressions means we're ranking for more queries. Volume dilution, not performance regression.
Print, Digital, Everything In Between
From Canva-designed machine brochures to full product catalogs and investor decks, every piece of Hydr8 collateral has been crafted to sell.
Chips for Charity
Hydr8's 3rd Annual "Chips for Charity" poker night raised over $30,000 for On Your Mark, Inc. I helped launch and prepare all the event assets, from the promotional flyer to the physical materials.
Beyond poker night, I've coordinated tradeshow presence, created booth materials, and prepared the brand for in-person events where Hydr8 meets partners and customers face to face.
$60,000+ raised for On Your Mark, Inc.
Chips for Charity, 2023-2025
AI-Powered Lead Generation
I vibe coded an automated lead classification system using Claude Code that monitors Hydr8's inbound email and routes qualified leads directly to the sales team in Slack, in real time.
System Architecture
Gmail
@hydr8.us
Pub/Sub
Google Cloud
Cloud Function
Node.js
Claude API
Classification
Slack
#inbound-leads
The system classifies inbound emails as leads (new inquiries, quote requests, demo requests, form submissions, brochure downloads) using Claude, then posts formatted alerts to Slack with all the context the sales team needs to act fast.
Built with Firestore deduplication to prevent duplicate alerts, and smart filtering to skip internal emails. Deployed on Google Cloud Functions for zero-maintenance uptime.
A Free Tool That Sells Hydr8 For You
What's actually in your tap water? Most people have no idea, and the official answer is buried in a 30-page PDF on a utility website almost nobody reads.
I vibe coded a free tool at water.hydr8.us that answers it in seconds. Visitors type their ZIP. Out comes a clear, personalized report on their local water, contaminants, levels, how to read it. Curiosity in, qualified Hydr8 lead out.
Every report ends with a way to talk to Hydr8. In-area visitors get the report emailed to them automatically. A Hydr8 rep gets a Slack notification the moment a lead lands. Out-of-area visitors get pointed to a free guide so the visit isn't wasted.
Utilities covered
234+
Every neighborhood Hydr8 sells into across NJ, NY, CT, PA
Lead routes
2
In-area → email + Slack ping to a rep. Out-of-area → guide.
Time from visit
<60s
ZIP entered to personalized report on screen + emailed
For the curious: the tool is a static site on Vercel with per-zip serverless lookups. Data is EPA SDWIS pulled per-utility, plus hand-curated Consumer Confidence Reports for each system. Lead capture routes to Slack and Klaviyo (in-area) or Airtable (out-of-area). Every visit fires GTM events into GA4 so we can see which ZIPs and contaminants drive demand.
Lead Pipeline
ZIP Lookup
/api/lookup
EPA SDWIS
+ curated CCRs
Personalized Report
Per-utility
Lead Form
Intent + ZIP
Slack + Klaviyo
Auto-email
In-area submissions trigger a personalized water-report email via Klaviyo with a signed HMAC link to the visual report. A Slack thread reply hands the matched rep the same view link for call prep. Out-of-area submissions route to Airtable plus a CCR-guide redirect.
Anti-scraping wrap: the full water-data file 404s; only sliced per-zip responses are publicly available. GTM-wired GA4 events (water_zip_lookup, water_lead_submit) feed the intelligence dashboard for top-ZIP and top-contaminant breakdowns.
10x LinkedIn Following
Grew Hydr8's LinkedIn presence from 200 followers to over 2,000, a 10x increase, through consistent content strategy, thought leadership positioning, and community engagement.
Before
200
followers
After
2,000+
followers
Want Results Like This?
Whether you need brand strategy, a website that actually converts, or AI-powered marketing systems, let's talk about what's possible.