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The once iconic photography brand is back with new products and its 1971 brand icon. After more than decade, Kodak are hoping to revive some brand nostalgia and engage a new generation. As a counter trend to the digital evolution, just about anything analogue in…

Farmers Fund milk brand clouds the issues As predicted Coles have started muddying the waters around fair Milk prices by introducing an undifferentiated milk brand called Farmers Fund to the market. The brand which ‘gives back’ 40c of each 2 litre carton to a Fund…

Target gives up on brand differentiation and becomes another Kmart The remarkable turnaround of Kmart in the past few years has left its competitors scrambling to compete. The strategy has achieved its goal of killing Big W. However, in the fight, Westfarmers has also severally…

Today in our faced paced, transformative society, enabled though accelerated distribution of content digitally, information is at our fingertips. Social injustice that has previously been accepted as the status quo, we’re no longer standing for it. Who are we? I’m speaking for myself, 31 year old…

Why lululemon is the new breed of brand A few years back I recall seeing a former Nike VP of women’s wear speak. She was asked what was the biggest change she’d seen in that category during her time at Nike. Her answer was the…

“There’s no point in pushing forward if you’re always going the same way as everyone else”. This is a great line from a recent Audi ad which demonstrates the power of always putting yourself where your competitors aren’t and offering something different to your market. Audi…

Apple’s ‘Made in China’ Brand Messaging Maybe I’m a little late to the party, but on the weekend I notices for the first time the small print on the back of my iPhone 6 which says: ‘Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China’. I…

As brand designers we’re always hungry. Hungry for new inspiration, new palettes, new strategy and as a corner store of everything we do new typefaces. Fonts are so important when it comes to creating new brand identities or logos. Finding the right type to express the…

When packaging means much more than packaging Going through the drawers in my study last week I came across not one, but three iPhone boxes. I realised that without consciously intending to I’d saved the boxes from each of my iPhones dating back years, but…

Introducing Sooma, a mattress without springs!! But don’t let that fool you, the team at Sooma have been working behind the scenes to design a mattress that is incredibly comfortable and brings something different to the crowded mattress market. No boring grey edge mattress here, complicated…

The trend of minimalist branding We’ve had some recent discussion with clients and in turn in the studio about the relevance of minimalism in brand identity or logo design. Some point to a trend of recent rebrands like Pentegram’s work for Mastrcard, wondering if there’s…

Bumping into our Delicious Branding Even after twenty five years of creating brands of our clients, it’s still a buzz to bump into our branding hard at work differentiating and promoting our clients and their businesses. On a cold, grey and wet Melbourne Spring day,…

The branded campaign FU 2016 for season 4 of House of Cards has just taken out Adweek’s Grand Prize for media plan of the year in the USA. While the rest of the world struggles with the possibility of Donald Trump being the next president,…

Fresh New Retail Design from Japan Tokyo has rightly earned the reputation for a city that thinks outside the square. Japanese design culture is often fresh, innovative and disruptive, and this retail space designed by Nobuo Araki/The Archetype is a bold example. Following-on from The…

  Don’t Underestimate the Value of Brand Loyalty Research in the US on brand loyalty has identified that more than 50% of consumers would pay a 20-25% premium for their favourite brand before price sensitivity would see them switch to another, competing brand. In some…

Check out Melbourne’s glam rooftop Airstream trailer park. While many hotel brands are struggling to differentiate, Notel taps into the glamping and rooftop urban oasis trends to redefine the category. Notel consists of six shiny Airstream trailers perched high on a rooftop terrace. All the…

Leveraging a brand image building opportunity When we worked with skin care clinic Duquessa to create a new ‘skin sanctuary’ brand we could tell they were destined for stardom. And recently they had a little extra time in the spotlight, making a guest appearance on…

Mercedes has followed a number of fashion brands and celebrities who have tried to leverage their status to create a brand fragrance. Their new range of fragrances are now available at Chemist Warehouse but is this good for the Mercedes brand? For many premium fashion…

Asshole or hero? Donate Life takes boldly different approach to organ donation. We often talk about the importance of brands being brave and different to truly standout and that’s just what Donate Life America has done with its latest campaign. The World’s biggest asshole dials…

Tough to argue with this kinda science!!! Dave Ansett David is the founder of Truly Deeply, a brand agency with 25 years experience working with brands to position them for growth. His deep expertise is in the creation of high engagement brands that attract the…

Optus is the second largest telecommunications provider in Australia offering mobile, fixed, and broadband services to consumer and business customers. It has repositioned itself in the market with a flexible rebrand. You may remember their recent rebrand back in 2013 that received many mixed reviews and…

Things may have died down since the consumer backlash against big milk in Australia following Whaleed Aly’s piece on the project in May but I think we’re starting to see some of the effects in our Milk isle still today. While there was a immediate…

Beautiful Brand Engagement – Fendi’s 90 Year Celebration kicked off last week at the iconic Trevi Fountain in Rome. In 2012 Fendi spent US$2.2m to fund the restoration of Trevi Fountain. The local fashion brand paid for the crumbling fountain’s crucial maintenance in exchange for…

For all brands authenticity is one of the real hot buttons in their efforts to connect with consumers and build highly engaged relationships. Brands are telling their story at every opportunity, spruiking provenance, craftsmanship and history – regardless of whether they’re a start-up or a…

Melbourne brand strategy and design agency has developed new packaging, brand messaging and design for the Heatbeads range of products. “The team at Truly Deeply took the time to really understand the Heatbeads customers and market to create packaging that both respected our brand’s long…

  The Science of Brand Influence Here at Truly Deeply we bang-on a lot about brand experiences and why they are so important for brand engagement. The science behind this phenomena is what we call the Dopamine effect. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (a chemical in…

Time for Lion Group to step up. It’s milk brands, including PURA and Dairy Farmers are suffering from no real brand differentiation and now they are fighting a legal as well as marketing battle. For decades, full cream milk has been just been milk. The…

A creative new range of creative T-Shirts have been developed to combat mental health.

By its nature, a boutique brand built on super relevant experiences is intrinsically linked to one location. Brand and independence are often at odds, but W Hotels seems to have cracked the code of how to scale luxury experiences and having a clearly defined brand…

When is a car more than a brand? Never! Specially when we don’t want to talk about the car, but we still have to sell them? Volkswagen latest campaign #morethanacar focused directly on the value of brand heritage to stir the emotions in the car…

All brands have meaning in the minds of their market Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the minds of the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning…

  Instagram made waves last week in the design and social media world by launching their much anticipated brand identity refresh, and UI overhaul to their loyal band of insta-obsessed-followers. The reason for the tech update is to create a better UI experience for users, paring back brand…

  See what you get food packaging, once it’s not the amount sugar. The Australian Government has just launched a new food labelling initiative that highlights the food’s country of origin with a campaign declaring ‘See what you’re getting’. The new labelling must be rolled…

Global hotel brand AccorHotels taps into key consumer trend to build brand affinity In the highly competitive world of hotel brand loyalty the battle is raging for the hearts of consumers. Air bnb – the worlds largest hospitality brand that doesn’t own a single room,…

The Brand Strategy of Stand Out Personality In the world of retail and hospitality, so many businesses get caught-up in the operational whirlwind of attracting, serving and delivering product to their customers that they find it challenging to take a breath, step back and assert…

All brands have associations – both positive and negative Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the minds of the market place. Well considered brands establish a differentiated value proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to…

HP has just unveiled a new logo for its premium range of ultra-thin laptops, the Spectre, but it isn’t actually new. The brandmark was originally unveiled in 2011 but HP backed-off implementing it. Designed by Moving Brands, the stylised, simplified marque is a sophisticated evolution…

Finally a green car brand without compromise. The huge challenge for all ‘Green Brands‘ is to meet or exceed consumer expectations on price, quality and design/functionality allowing those brands to then leverage their environmental credentials as a powerful differentiator. Almost without exception green brands offer-up…

Loved brands are profitable brands Is the whole ‘Loved Brands’ thing a fluffy piece of feelgood PR from the branding community or a commercially savvy strategy? That so much cynicism surrounds the brand industry must be a reflection of the inability of the industry to…

As Instagram announces its changes to their timeline, are brands already planning for the future? Instagram have recently announced they will be gradually rolling out a new algorithm based timeline replacing the existing chronological format, with a broad roll out expected in the coming months.…

Yesterday Qantas Airlines have launched an addition to their diversified business portfolio, Qantas Assure, health insurance for Qantas Frequent Flyer Members. Their big budget ATL campaign features cool-as-f*ck Hollywood actor, Christopher Walken, so you can only imagine how much they’ve spent! This big move is significant for both the…

American Apparel returns to its roots in an attempt to revive the brand American Apparel, the Los Angeles based clothing manufacturer and retailer known for basic apparel and risqué marketing campaigns, has decided to bring sexy back, and propel it back to being at the…

99 designs‘ business model puts emphasis on quantity over quality with their multiple designers and claims of “incredible results”, as designers compete to give you a “great custom design solution”.  Yes, I said COMPETE. With 4 offices in Australia, USA, Germany and Brazil, 99 designs…

Is sexism in advertising diminishing? Getty Images released a statistic this week citing that search terms for “empowered women” has increased by over 700% in the last year, which is showing the seismic shift towards brands portraying women in a more positive, non discriminatory, non sexist…

Meeting crazy demands from clients, software problems and frantically working to ridiculous deadlines are just some of the stuff designers have to put up with on a regular basis. Most of the time, the struggles go unnoticed outside the studio, so wouldn’t it be nice…

Would you launch a new newspaper brand today? Newsprint is dead, or so we keep hearing. So what do you do if your business is Newsprint? This is the kind of challenge lots of brands have. What do you do when your whole category is heading…

The embargo has been lifted, so what’s next for brands wanting to enter Cuba?  When the US embargo was first placed on Cuba in 1960 (a whopping 55 years ago), it was referred to as “the blockade”. The embargo restricted trade and exports to Cuba, except…

Big food’s short term thinking on sugar Every day there seems to be more and more information surfacing about the activities of major food brands in response to the obesity epidemic the western world is facing. There’s little doubt they’re using their financial muscle and…

You’ve got a great business idea, now it’s time to take the plunge into the world of brand to bring it to life. Not that we have favourites, but we do love a good start up business branding project. There is usually bucket loads of…

‘Enrich not exploit’ becomes new brand belief for The Body Shop After 40 years, The Body Shop is seeking to reaffirm its position as a leader in ethical business with a new commitment to its audiences. The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick has always wanted…

One Brand’s Loss in another Brand’s Gain The US Olympic Committee’s recent announcement that their athletes may choose to sit-out this year’s Games in Brazil if they have health concerns over the Zika virus may prove to be an ominous sign. Facing a whole host…