AMC's "The Pitch" premiered almost three weeks ago on April 30th. The Reality TV show features two advertising agencies competing against each other to "win" new business – Condensing a one week crash-course of work into hour long episodes that conjure up crystalized versions of an already cut-throat industry.

A Flawed Approach.
Pitching is crafting and presenting speculative work to a potential client, and is one of the Advertising industry's biggest flaws. While pitching is commonplace for agencies, it rarely happens anywhere else. We've all heard the mechanic or doctor analogies… You don't ask a handful of professionals "How would you fix this?" and then only pay one. "The Pitch" tells it's audience that giving away your strategy and ideas for free, for a chance to win new business, is acceptable.

Get Creative.
From a designer's perspective, the results of the work on the show are less than inspiring, i.e. – finding a rapper on YouTube isn't exactly a concept. But what is even more bothersome, is that "The Pitch" skews a client's perspective of what we're doing! Great work is not some dismal, knock-down, drag-out death-match. It takes time, process and a life outside of the office.

You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea.
After The Real World premiered in 1992, it gave everyone the ability to become a star, particularly inspiring youth*, see: YouTube. The problem is Reality TV has a strange way of warping perspectives and priorities. My biggest concern is that aspiring Advertising and Design majors are receiving the wrong message. This industry isn't about becoming the next celebrity, it's about equipping our clients with the tools to make them famous.

* No disrespect to iTrevor, I personally find his Apple Store dances hilarious.

So much of my inspiration for blog posts comes from our amazing clients, and this post is no different.  Last week I was in a meeting with a group of executives discussing the implementation of a new brand style guide.  As we discussed the need for rules and regulations to keep the brand consistent and coherent, one executive quietly spoke some of the wisest words I've heard in my whole career.  He said…

We need to teach them to yearn for the adventure of the sea. Not beat them into submission.

I didn't say anything at the time, but his words knocked me to the floor.  What a way of articulating the importance of not losing the heart of a brand.  What is our real reason for being in business outside of money?  What is that thing about our business that motivates employees to show up and customers to keep coming back?  If we have no sea for our employees and customers to yearn for, we must go back to the drawing board and find it.

CHOA, as it's referred to, was challenged to expand the reach of their brand while preserving precious and emotional brand equity. The goal was to modernize the brand, making it more cohesive, strategically-focused, and appealing to teens and their parents. The goal was to enhance Children's brand equity in order to support future recruiting and a growing national reputation.

Process & Solution

Through qualitative and quantitative research, it was concluded that the historical "Hope & Will" characters held strong brand equity & awareness throughout Georgia. To revolutionize the identity would not be wise. With this in mind, an evolutionary rebrand approach was elected in order to both maintain and grow the current brand equity.

The new Hope & Will are a simplified and modernized version of the lovable children. Subtle changes to the design include oval eyes, bigger smiles, clothing more suited to older children and a taller, a more streamlined appearance, and Hope’s hairstyle—she is now wearing a ponytail. They are constructed with symmetry, spacing, and line width all considered. The logotype was also updated to feel "kid-focused" yet still remain professional and credible. A "Naming Decision Tree" was also developed to guide the organization along for a more cohesive and intuitive naming architecture for future expansion and existing locations.

We also developed a comprehensive brand style guide (over 100 pages) to drive all stakeholders toward a coherent yet flexible brand identity system. Throughout the new brand platform, Hope & Will are signature features of a brand with more personality, more consistency, and more clarity while still retaining critical brand recognition.

Process- Brand Analogs & Mood Board

Process- Prototype Board

Process- Prototype Board

Process- Prototype Board

Process- Brand Color Palette Prototype

Process- Brand Style Guide Mapping

Process- Brand Style Guide Mapping

Process- Brand Style Guide Mapping

Brand Mark – Primary Lock-Up

"Hope & Will" Mark Evolution & Grid

Brand Style Guide Spread

Brand Style Guide Spread

Brand Style Guide Spreads

Brand Style Guide Applications

Brand Style Guide Swag Applications

Brand Style Guide Signage Applications

Ripple is an IT company that believes service is about communication. Offering complete, unlimited IT management at every level of service is the philosophy that guides Ripple to "Help People, not computers".

Challenge

Already carrying a good identity, Ripple needed to figure out if it was good enough to visually encompass all of their values. They needed to find a way to clarify their humans first approach with authenticity while still presenting strategic business value. They needed a new mark that would put a stake in the ground and align their visuals with the best bits of their DNA.

Ripple Collateral Before

A Few Sketches & Process Images

Solution

The new Ripple identity system is extendable to any medium and shows a very human (and very Ripple) trait of communicating. The brackets create a framing device – like a target – that can be used to highlight elements that are most important. The soft red is friendly and more ownable color in the I.T. space than the previous blue. Ripple truly is unique in the I.T. market and this new system highlights their humans first approach to solving real business problems in a memorable way.

Primary Brand mark

Tagline Lock-Up

Business cards

Proposed Apparel Designs

Proposed Poster Design

Website Design

Mike Landman, Ripple Founder & CEO, talking about working with us.

The essence of all design should be humanist. The end user in mind. Researching and understanding their wants, needs, and hopes. This is where design should start, but great design, and great designers, go beyond the end user and also consider the relational capacity with their collaborators (partners, vendors, clients, etc.) in a given design task. The relationship of trust is paramount for work of any decency. Design is also about spacial relationships- hierarchy, juxtaposition, composition, contrast, etc. which all fundamentally deal with the visual relationship between one object to another.

Branding is similar. Great brands establish deep meaningful relationships with their customers. Business is the same. It all comes down to relationships. They matter more than action items, more than sales goals, more than performance, and more than deadlines.

Design, Branding, or Business all have one need in common: great relationships. The more they thrive the more a business thrives. I so appreciate our team of talented people. No matter where each of our paths may lead I hope we will all have this season of rich collaborative fellowship to treasure.

I hope you take some time right now and consider & appreciate the relationships you have around you today.

The National Tooling and Machining Association, founded in 1943, is the premier center of knowledge for precision custom manufacturing in the United States. The storied organization stands to empower our nation’s manufacturers by providing resources and expertise in business development, education, government advocacy, and workplace development.

NTMA faced a perception challenge. While much of the economy has been in decline, manufacturing still produced gains and has hired more than most industries. The organization needed to tell its story accurately, increase awareness, and inspire in an economy full of doubt.

We developed an evolutionary mark that reflected experience and precision while elevating the brand. An identity system that was flexible enough for growth, yet provided consistency and organization for internal communication. Marketing and collateral highlighted the heart of the industry – its workers – and changed the conversation from dimness to hope. The future of manufacturing is bright indeed.

See the full case study.

Before

New Brand Mark

Brand Architecture Lock-Ups

Collateral Package

Publication Application

Website

Video Application produced in partnership with Green Tricycle

Growing up, Disney held a special place in the life of my family. Our family has celebrated holidays, family reunions, and birthdays at Walt Disney World. We love Disney.

My family is now grown; this past visit included just one little one, a second cousin that just celebrated her first birthday, and a bunch of adults seeking to maybe relive a little bit of childhood for a weekend. But the elements of the Disney brand I noticed on this trip were not just the glimpses of a childhood revisited; it was the premium customer experience that Disney is known for providing to its resort guests.

When I arrive, I'm helped within seconds of standing in a check-in line. My room has special touches to enhance my stay. I can visit the theme parks earlier than non-resort visitors. There are free goodies–movies, snacks, crafts, social events–all day long in the common spaces of the hotel. For my cousin, a pack n' play was provided in the room, a special provision for guests traveling with babies. Not a detail is left untouched.

Any organization, at any size, can provide a premium customer experience. When it comes down to it, what makes the Disney brand exceptional is not its size, bottom line, or breadth of influence. It is their attention to detail, well-trained and pleasant team members, and the small touches that make a big impact. Every guest experience is personalized so that visitors feel like they, specifically, experienced something unique or got something "extra". Their day was made. Those lasting impressions–magical memories imprinted in the minds of resort guests–are what draw people back year after year to experience "the magic".

Changing the name, visual identity, or core perceptions of a brand is a delicate art of digging deep for gold while maintaining existing treasures and all-the-while juggling opinions of passionate stakeholders. It is a matter of making key Leadership feel heard and understood until getting a true consensus on what the brand is and what it stands for. The beauty in the process is once you know who you are then you are free to be yourself in the marketplace, make more unified decisions, hire better people, and ultimately be more competitive- all while flying under one flag. A company rebrand isn't just about a new logo it is about a meaningful increase in your business.

For more on the Acru rebrand check out the full case study here.

Our biggest challenging in last year's On The House project with the Atlanta Mission was clarifying their purpose and position, which is no small order for a 70 year old organization. One part of that was co-creating their vision statement, "To see the city of Atlanta unified in ending homelessness". Recently, Jim Reese CEO of the mission (and the handsome gentlemen in the video above), was appointed to the Georgia Commission for Service and Volunteerism by Governor Nathan Deal, one more step closer to seeing that vision become a reality.

The clarity of internal vision and external positioning is a must-have for any business, and a powerful asset for building a strong brand.

We are proud to have the rebrand work for the Atlanta Mission featured in Print Magazine's 2011 Regional Design Annual, but more so proud of the organization and what they continue to do in our city.