Take Apple, for instance, one of the more successful brands in the past five or 10 years. Yes, the iPod is nearly ubiquitous because it’s a high-quality product. But the campaign that launched it, and continues to evolve, has captured the imagination and interest of millions. Brilliant brand campaigns often begin with a keen sense of what makes up the brand. That’s why smart agencies and firms get inside the brand before they begin any creative work.

We set out to find similarities between four brand campaigns from four different agencies. From beer to banking, the overarching themes are trust and collaboration. After all, without the trust of clients, there wouldn’t be any work on branding campaigns. And without their collaboration, how would we know if our message is on-target?

RED STRIPE
Jamaicans know Red Stripe beer. After all, it’s the only beer to originate in Jamaica. Last fall, Diageo—Red Stripe’s parent company—set out to refresh and reposition the brand to attract a younger audience. Diageo recruited Object 9—a design firm based in Baton Rouge, La.—to assist with their objective. Shortly after winning the account, Object 9 spent a week in Jamaica immersed in the culture.

Jon Cato, partner, and Andy Gutowski, partner and creative director, visited watering holes from one end of the island to the other. They wanted to see Red Stripe fans from every walk of life. “What we discovered is, Jamaicans are passionate people,” says Gutowski. “They have a ‘live hard and play hard’ type of philosophy. That’s where we came up with what ‘Live Red’ is all about. That’s something that only Red Stripe as a brand can claim—the name Red Stripe and that it’s the only beer that is the original Jamaican icon—it’s something they can really take ownership of and make that correlation with Jamaicans’ lust for life with the brand.”

Though Object 9’s objective was to attract a younger audience, the firm didn’t suggest a brand overhaul. “In many ways, we were working with a brand that we consider sacred,” says Cato. “Everything about it is so well-established. Our campaign was really an evolution of a message, rather than ‘let’s rework this entire brand.’ It didn’t need to be reworked.”

Object 9: Red Stripe
“Jamaicans get a lot of TV from America, so they see a lot of American advertising—including Red Stripe ads—targeted at Americans,” says Jon Cato, Object 9 partner. “But they weren’t seeing messaging coming from the States targeted just to them. So by creating this campaign targeted to Jamaicans for their brand, we actually moved the needle five percent on this brand.” He continues, “As far as process, it really starts with the idea. A lot of times, people jump straight to creative and start playing around with that, when you kind of need to back up and really focus in on the idea. Once you get that idea, think about how you can communicate that through a very broad range of media. Because it’s easy to paint yourself into a corner and think you have an idea, but that may only work for one application.”

SEVENTH GENERATION
A brand that did need to be reworked was Seventh Generation, a supplier of green cleaning products for nearly 26 years. In fact, Seventh Generation was the pioneer of green cleaning. Facing tougher competition, Seventh Generation founder Jeffrey Hollander recruited JDK Design to help differentiate the company in the marketplace. Or, as he has described it, “give them the keys to the car” for a while.

Ever since, you might say JDK has been using a new road map. Their approach has revitalized the brand and positioned the supply company as the pioneer of green cleaning in the marketplace. Guided by the Great Iroquois Law—the founding principle behind Seventh Generation’s name—JDK has updated everything from the logo to the website. They are working on new packaging that will debut in the fall.

“Seventh Generation needed more advanced communication in how the brand imparts its idea and how we make the brand accessible to people, so we worked on brand strategy and applied The Living Brand process as well,” says Michael Jager, one of three founding partners at JDK.

The Living Brand is at the heart of JDK Design’s branding process. The Living Brand is a process of discovery that reveals the overall differentiating idea behind the brand, taking into account the emotional, rational and cultural aspects of each brand.

“We liked the thought of Seventh Generation in the context of redefining what clean is,” Jager says. “It’s more like the relationship to home as an ecosystem. We’re definitely working toward an idea that takes them beyond cleaning products—to a relationship to your home on a whole different level. To my mind, there’s no reason they can’t be making bicycles, or children’s toys or even books. Anything is possible under this platform.”

JDK Design: Seventh Generation
“There is certainly equity built in the green leaf, but we’ve refined it and refined the typography for a more finessed detail in the graphic, legibility of the font and refinement of the leaf form. We introduced the orange asterisk beside the green leaf to call out the story of the Great Iroquois Law—where the name is taken from. It reads: ‘In our every deliberation we’ll consider the seven generations ahead,’” explains Michael Jager, JDK partner. “I think as far as marks of successful branding, you definitely want to have a story that people want to be part of. I think a sense of a cause is really important, too. You create a story, or you help people understand the aspects and dimensions of a story that people just want to be engaged in, so they help you carry it forward and they help you perpetuate the idea. A lot of times, people are just looking to be made cool as a brand, and it’s a real mistake to go there. You really have to have something that’s unique, too.”

MERRY MAIDS
Merry Maids, the house-cleaning franchise, also launched a revamped branding campaign. When it came time to pump new life into the brand, Merry Maids called on a local firm, Memphis-based Archer Malmo. Archer Malmo is a 55-year-old marketing and branding firm that has worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies over the years.

According to associate creative director Gary Backaus, the key insight into the brand was learning how customers felt about their “Merry Maids day.” “One thing we found is that one of the real benefits of this service is that you come home on the day that Merry Maids is there and your whole house is clean,” Backaus says. “Out of this research and that insight [we developed] the tag line: ‘Relax, it’s done.’ This [connects emotionally] to the benefit of the category, whereas other competitors describe the company—this was about the benefit to the consumer.”

While the logo itself didn’t change, a graphic standard with overall guidelines was developed that consisted of a new color palette and layout format. “We came up with a series of colors that we could use interchangeably that were really designed, basically, to appeal to a female audience and have a fresh, contemporary look,” says Backaus. “We named the colors things that fit with the category. We had a purple color named lavender, a blue color named ocean and sort of this reddish-orange color we named papaya. Most of the headlines had two parts [providing] a one-two punch. We set them in different sizes so there was an eye-catching part that was bigger, and then there would be a little zinger part to it.”

Archer Malmo: Merry Maids
Although the only change to the Merry Maids logo was color, Archer Malmo did bring a consistent graphic standard to branding pieces. “The font used for the headlines, copy and print advertising was Bernhard Gothic,” says associate creative director Gary Backaus. “We picked a complementary serif called Weiss and used it in situations where we had longer copy, such as newsletters.” Since Merry Maids is largely a franchise organization, Archer Malmo created a Brand-In-a-Box that was sent to all of the franchise locations. In addition to a letter from the president, the approximately 5 x 7-in. Brand-In-a-Box included a booklet explaining the brand strategy and a miniposter showing the various executions— from print ads to outdoor boards.

ICON BANK
Founded earlier this year by a group of former banking executives in Houston, Texas, Icon Bank is focused on serving small businesses as their only clientele. After having a freelance designer create their logo, Icon Bank heard from Deuce Creative, a Houston-based marketing and design firm. Since Icon wanted to position the brand in stark contrast to the plethora of same-looking banks in Texas, Deuce brought a forward-looking identity and branding concept to the table. The logo is tilted at an angle to indicate movement, and the color scheme—black and yellow—is decidedly unpatriotic on purpose.

“The interesting thing was, we approached Icon with several different taglines, one of which was ‘A New Era’ and the other was ‘Open To Business,’ and they liked both and felt like both really explained who they were,” says Aimee Smith, Deuce marketing director. “They feel like their whole approach to reaching businesses is kind of this new era of banking. A new era kind of has this feeling of old world and new world. We felt the black-and-white photography was wellsuited for the wording and what we were trying to say.”

“The original logo started with black and gold, but we changed the gold to be a little more of a yellow- gold because the company was actually going with a metallic gold,” says Kristin Moses, creative director. “We came up with the line ‘What Kind of Icon Are You?’ before we started designing anything. The whole look of this identity—and especially the website and brochure—was based on that concept. We’re trying to portray that [the bank] is for ‘everyday people.’”

Moses says Icon recently launched a full-scale website at http://www.iconbanktx.com, and she is confident the founders are pleased with the branding efforts. “From our first meeting on, they have been very open-minded,” Moses says. “I don’t think what they originally had reflected what they were trying to do, because it did look like every start-up bank in Texas.”

Deuce Creative: Icon Bank
Kristin Moses, creative director at Deuce, says she approached Icon with a proposal she hoped would ultimately lead to additional work on a larger branding campaign, beginning with a fresh take on their logo. “The chosen font looked like horseshoes. We told Icon that we could initially clean up the font and give them some options on the star. We had a sheet in our proposal with something completely different, and once they saw those, they didn’t even want to look at the original ones anymore,” Moses says. “We felt like the black and gold was a really good palette choice, because in Texas nearly every bank is red, white and blue. They are able to stand out from other banks because of the color palette and the treatment of the star.”

TO DIFFERENTIATE IS DIVINE
Clearly, differentiation is the hallmark of these successful branding efforts, and the key components, more often than not, are research and collaboration. Collaboration begins with the client, but it is equally necessary as a creative team. For instance, as many as seven people at Archer Malmo worked on the Merry Maids campaign. So, regardless of the size of your firm, you need to have a firm grasp on the brand for your branding efforts to ring true.

About the author
Rodney J. Moore, a freelance journalist turned communications and PR strategist whose specialty is crafting and making media pitches for companies and individuals, is the founder of Moore Creative Communications. He is the author of Design Secrets: Layout, and he is working on his second nonfiction book.