The Laptop Initiative – brand positioning project
“Anton recently delivered an outstanding Strategy & Positioning Workshop for our team. He came incredibly well prepared, brought infectious enthusiasm and created a truly collaborative environment where every voice felt valued. His ability to think outside the square helped us unlock new ideas and see our mission with fresh clarity. Anton is warm, insightful, and genuinely invested in helping organisations grow. Highly recommended.”
— Heather Opdam, Strategic Partnerships, The Laptop Initiative
The Laptop Initiative is a small, mostly volunteer-run Australian charity founded in 2024 by Cheryl Sing. The model is simple and good: corporate businesses have working laptops sitting unused in storage cupboards; refugees, asylum seekers, disadvantaged youth and women rebuilding their lives after leaving violence don’t have the one device that could get them into work, study or connection. TLI closes that gap, hand to hand, at no cost to the people who need it.
The challenge
The model was already good. The story wasn’t landing with the same weight. TLI needed a brand positioning that gave the work an emotional core – something beyond “we recycle laptops for charity” – and a platform that could carry consistently across a corporate donor audience, grassroots charity partners, and the people ultimately receiving a laptop. Cheryl and her team engaged me to run a strategy and positioning workshop and shape that foundational platform: purpose, audience, values, and a creative territory the brand could build on.
The new positioning
The breakthrough was in the reframe. A donated laptop isn’t a write-off item leaving a storeroom – it’s an opportunity someone else has been waiting for. The businesses giving it away aren’t disposing of old tech; they’re the ones who saw the opportunity first, when everyone else walked past it. That gave us the purpose: to give the gift of opportunity. And the creative territory that followed: we see what others don’t. From there, the brand positioning took shape – pillars of Recognise opportunity, Far easier, Totally transparent; values built around seeing people, wasting nothing, and keeping the line from storage cupboard to recipient as direct as possible; and a vision line that captured the emotional payoff for everyone involved: feeling good again is priceless.
The outcome
That strategic foundation became the brief for TLI’s full brand and website refresh, carried through by their design partner into voice, messaging and visual direction. It’s now live on thelaptopinitiative.com.au – the hero line reads “You see the opportunity. We’re how you give it,” the homepage opens with “we see what others walk past,” and every stage of the giving cycle, from Corporate Hero to Wall of Fame, is now framed around recognition rather than disposal.
The result
A charity’s entire narrative shifted from a transactional “donate your old tech” ask to something people want to be part of – being recognised for what they saw first. Same laptops, same charity, same founder. A brand positioning finally built to match the heart of the work. And if you’d like to discuss your organisation’s positioning further, we’d love to hear from you. Send us a message here.