Marketing and logic make strange bedfellows.  

 

Logic would dictate that the best person to define/redefine a beauty brand would be someone with years of beauty experience. 

 

And the best person to define a boxing brand would be someone with years of boxing experience. 

 

Same for cars, beer, technology, sports, finance, and insurance.

 

But that kind of logic is a straight line path to the familiar, the cliche, the tried-and-true, the most-obvious/least-interesting common denominator.  

 

The kind of logic Niels Bohr had in mind when he told an aging Albert Einstein, “You’re not thinking. You’re just being logical!”

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Even in an era of hyper-specialization, the art/science/practice

of branding is where generalists excel.

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Discipline specialists, category specialists, media and data specialists are excellent at making sure their piece of the puzzle is the best it can be. 

 

But generalists who have worked across categories … generalists who have worked within the inner circles of hundreds of brands … develop a unique feel/understanding/instinct for how those individual pieces connect. 

 

For what they add up to.  

 

For what the big picture looks like.

 

Whereas most marketing professionals go through a comprehensive brand-defining process two or three times in their career, Andrea and I have gone through this process countless times, for brands in different categories, with different audiences, and different scales of ambition. 

 

From Nike to Ikea, from Elizabeth Arden to Morgan Stanley, from Budweiser to Tylenol, from Microsoft to Rubicon Bakery, the more categories you work in the more you begin to see the universal truths that make great brands great … to understand what it takes to create real-world resonance … to think beyond the category-of-business a brand competes within, and create brands that transcend their category.

 

To be clear, we’re not defining branding/rebranding as a collection of logos, color palettes, typefaces, or tone-of-voice. We think of branding as identifying the core premise that drives/motivates everything the brand does — from logo design, to product design, to retail experience, to online engagement.

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Branding is about finding the intersection point between what makes your brand different from everyone else in the category, and what makes it culturally relevant to the world at large. Too many companies mistake category or product difference as their brand definition. Differentiation doesn't have any meaning/heat/impact if it doesn't have cultural meaning/heat/impact. This is something brands like Nike, Ikea, Red Bull, Patagonia, Dove, Lego, Apple, Hallmark, and The Economist have intuitively understood and established for decades.

 

Once you’ve identified and defined that intersection point, you know how to create a brand that matters.

 

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We see branding as a process of self-definition. 

 

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Defining what your brand can be.

 

Defining where you will and will not compromise.

 

Defining why you do what you do. When and where you’ll show up. How you will set yourself apart.

 

Yes, we can make ads.  Design logos. And generate content with the best of the best. 

 

But those are just puzzle pieces.

 

What makes us unique, our greatest value, is applying years of experience and insight to your brand, to help you figure out what the puzzle pieces add up to.  

 

It’s what earned us the trust of a diverse, global set of brands over the last decade — from Wix.com, to Kohler, Kraft, Mondelez, Elizabeth Arden, L’Oreal, Duda, Success Academy, and Beneficial Bank (just to name a few).