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The Brand Power of Leveraging Current Affairs. We promise this wont turn into a Festival Trump-bashing- although that could be kinda fun, but we spotted another clever ad looking to leverage off the world wide interest in the car crash that is American politics and…

Clever Brand Campaign Creative Cuts-through. Swedish mattress and bedding brand SOVA released a timely ad to leverage the currency of the US election. The very clever ad features a montage made from items of their bedding range that create a portrait of President Trump. Combining…

Clever Campaign Leverage or Brand Positioning Balls-up? If as they say; “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, Apple should be feeling pretty chuffed about this new campaign by Samsung for their Galaxy Z Fold 2. In this short clip a street artist is seen…

What’s not to love? Poster Design meets Infographic Design meet Sneakerfreak Culture British Design House; Dorothy have created a Sneakerhead’s ode to Nike’s iconic Air Max and sneaker culture. The poster features a cut-away style illustration that captures the history of the modern sneaker. How…

Much More than Back to the Future Branding. Here at Truly Deeply we often talk about Branding being ‘Design with Purpose’ and Pizza Hut’s recent redesign of their take away pizza box packaging is a clever case in point. When we say ‘Design with Purpose’…

What are Brand Design trends and why is it important for businesses to leverage them? Tracking trends in brand design as we do has proven to be fascinating over the years. When a brands seek to connect with their audience and communicate their strategic positioning…

The Pinnacle of Place Brand Reports. Each year Saffron, a global branding agency with specialist experience in Place Brands publishes a report looking at the strongest city brands around the world. The Saffron City Brand Barometer 2020 explores which cities have built the strongest brands…

Time for a brand strategy re-calibration. If I read one more coronavirus article stating how we’re all going to need to adjust to the new normal I’ll punch myself in the face. But like it or loath it, for brands of every shape and size…

Love Conquers All – And Builds Brand Affinity. The relationships we have with brands are alot like the relationships we have with people. Our friends and loved ones reflect who we are, the values we hold dear and behaviors we want to associate with. Social…

An activist font designed for our times. Over our thirties years as an agency developing branding for clients across almost every sector we’ve seen, used and designed alot of fonts, but never have we seen anything quite like this. TietoEVRY, a leading Nordic digital services…

IKEA prove that even the branding experts occasionally stuff-up. They say to err is human, and the branding folks at IKEA Bahrain have given us a refreshing reminder of how true that really is. IKEA as a global brand has a reputation for being well…

Have Apple overstepped the mark and caused more harm than good to their brand? Apple has files a notice of opposition with the US Trademark office, against a start-up trying to trademark a logo based-on a pear. The developers of Prepear, an app that helps…

When Clients Design Their Own Logos… In my 30 years of running our branding agency, the one thing that hasn’t changed is business owners and marketers thinking brand design is so simple they can do it themselves. There’s a well worn truism; ‘A little learning…

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t – A challenging brand management dilemma. Following-on from our recent article out the re-branding of the Washington Redskins NFL team in the US, this recent announcement (among many) about Mutual of Omaha, a Fortune 500 insurance and…

Sporting team brands have an important role to play in evolving social equity. It’s not every day a National league team in the US re-brands. The brand value of the National franchises is so incredibly high, that re-naming and rebranding is almost unheard of. But…

A brandertainment masterclass from Apple. There have been few times if-any over the last few decades where life has been thrown on it’s head for much of the world as has been the case due to coronavirus. One of the most significant changes has been…

In branding, compassion is often seen as taboo. Compassion for customers and commercial optimization are typically considered to be diametrically opposed concepts, but Netflix has demonstrated how this doesn’t necessarily need to be the case. This month Netflix announced they would begin contacting inactive customers…

Designer of possibly one of the world’s most iconic brand marks, Milton Glaser died this week on his 91st birthday. In an industry that burns-out most of it’s brightest stars in years, Glaser’s creative career lasted decades as he inspired multiple generations of designers and…

Stunning New Yorker Cover demonstrates the powerful role design can play in social issues. Kadir Nelson’s recent cover image titled ‘Say Their Names’ depicts the murder of George Floyd embodying the history of violence inflicted upon black people in America. The image reminds us of…

The power of understanding branding trends. As with all aspects of brand and marketing, consumers and businesses over time build firm associations between how a category of brands look and what that means for the way they associate the positioning of those businesses. As categories…

A timely lesson for brands with a social conscience. Global sportswear brand, Nike recently took a public stance to condemn racism, seeking to tap into the social tinderbox inflaming North America and spreading around the world. Adapting their iconic tagline, Nike created a campaign around;…

When was the last time your brand thinking came from left field? The say; ‘Necessity is the mother of all invention’, and for many brands things have never been more ‘necessary’ than they are now. Budgets are tight, consumer behavior is shifting, the world is…

Inspiring Brands Innovating for the New Reality. WFH is a Japanese start-up who’s brand name is an acronym for ‘Work From Home’. Their first product which we spotted on Kickstarter is a range of Jammies designed specifically for working from home. Brainchild of design agency;…

Branding Inspiration from Big Red. As so many people around the world become stir-crazy from self isolation, Heinz has come-up with with an inspired brand gesture. The Heinz Ketchup Puzzle has 570 pieces, each the exact same colour of Heinz’s tomato sauce. Heinz is giving…

  Recently we’ve been developing the branding of Straight Bat – a new breed of P.E. Fund. Straight Bat is a new kind of Private Equity Fund that plays the long game. They invest in “good” businesses, to deliver exceptional income, wealth preservation and wealth…

An inspiring message of hope and solidarity from Dutch designer; Marcel Wanders Dutch designer Marcel Wanders has creates a beautiful piece if typography and design that combines an interpretation of the Italian flag and the phrase ‘Andrà tutto bene’, which translates to; ‘everything will be…

Redesigning brands to create affinity. In our 30 years of branding experience we’ve never seen the level of global community the current battle against caronavirus has created. This sense of community has sprung from a common cause and for brands they are battling to be…

A brand created by a snow family for families who love the snow. We recently worked with a couple of Melbourne entrepreneurs to turn their long-held dream of starting a online ski-gear business into reality. In the super crowded world of eCommerce, if you’re going…

Love this Churchill quote spotted on the lobby screen of a Melbourne hotel. We’ll need to be doing alot of this together over the months ahead.

Now is not the time for your brand to batten down the hatches. For any brand born since the Great Depression, the current global pandemic is creating an environment of challenges and chaos never seen before. The extent, speed and impact of these changes have…

NEW YORK (PRWEB) February 20, 2020 Recognition for our brand strategy expertise. One of our favorite topics to write on is brand effectiveness, and specifically the positive commercial impact of brand strategy and brand identity. A growing body of research continues to demonstrate that consistent,…

When it comes to brand identity briefs, they don’t get grander than this. Every four years when the Olympic Games roll around we are treated to perhaps the most plumb job in the world of branding. The games combine the perfect branding brief – a…

Online reviews aren’t always what they appear to be. If  I had a dollar for every conversation I’ve had with a business owner wringing their hands in despair of the impact of online reviews I’d be writing this from an island in the Bahamas. Even…

The Holy Grail of Branding. When designing a brand identity for any brand, but especially a consumer brand, we look to develop visual brand assets than can become instantly recognizable to their loyal fans. These assets allow a brand to be creative in what it…

The power of brandless branding. Loving these new ads for McDonald’s by Leo Burnett in London. The holy grail for branding is when you’re able to remove your logo and the visual language of the brand, the product or the product description alone communicates who…

The 2020 Barbie range steps-out with inclusiveness. Loving the way the Barbie brand has kept pace with society and arguably takes a leadership role in diversity and inclusiveness. The range of Barbie dolls includes35 skin tones, 9 body types, a Barbie in a wheel chair,…

It’s not an entirely new trick, but Apples latest piece of brandertainment has been shot entirely on the latest iPhone. And there’s plenty to like beyond showing-off the capabilities of the iPhone 11 Pro. The film, about three generations of Chinese women coming together at…

Banksy captures the true spirit of Christmas Reminds me of a time when street art was graffiti and graffiti had a purpose which was to make social comment. In these days of fleeting content it’s heartwarming to find thoughtful, considered art. Dave Ansett David is…

The changing face of consumer behavior raises a red flag for retail brands. When I think back even just a decade ago, the demands of retail customers were not so different from the decades before. Essentially most retailers could add a functional web site and…

At Truly Deeply we love sharing and celebrating not only our creative branding work but that of our extended brand family. In this case it’s doubly easy when the work includes Oscar the Grouch. Produced for the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, Square Space New…

Instagram brand; Overheard launches physical newspaper stands. In the latest demonstration of the blurring between new digital and traditional business and brand models, Overheard launched a physical parody paper (think The Onion) along with a pop-up newsstand at Union Square in San Francisco. Overheard was…

It’s beginning to look alot like Christmas (well a little at least…) This Christmas season John Lewis has teamed-up with Waitrose (a member of their brand family) to create their festive commercial to play on its social media chanels. The charming piece of brand communication…

Are you missing this important dimension of your brand strategy? Price has always been a key dimension of brand building. Ever since E. Jerome McCarthy identified the Four P’s of marketing (Price, Product, Place and Promotion) brands have understood the relationship between price and brand…

Best intentions don’t always get the branding job done. Following example after example of city and municipal rebrands around the world copping rate payer vitriol, The City of Pocatello decided to get on the front foot with a project and design rationale for their rebrand.…

The recently revealed brand image for the Paris 2025 Olympic and Paralympic games has created something of a stir on the web. As with every other category, the market gets used to a consistent approach to how the brands in that market will present themselves,…

Now that seems like a valuable brand proposition. All to often we find brands working in a market driven paradigm. That-is, their mindset of how they go to market is based upon the collective history of how the category has always operated. What was will…

The power of a beautiful design idea. Wander round Apple’s iconic 5th Avenue store in NY and you’ll come across this brilliant piece of retail brand design. Whilst the easy solution would have been a wall full of product (after all the beautifully simple Apple…

Custom font design a branding hero. Over the years we’ve published several collections of our favorite customer designed fonts. Our collections skirt the weird and wonderful, celebrating those who push the envelope of typography. And whilst I love the creativity of this brand design work,…

The Power of Brands Behaving Admirably. It’s not every day that the second biggest global brand in a category stops selling their number one product for a day and runs an ad campaign asking their customers to buy from their competitor instead – but that’s…

We love a good brand parody. OK, so I have to admit I’m a fan of brand piss-takes of any variety, but when they come to political branding parodies, my appreciation goes up-ten fold. When I first spotted the ‘Make America Great Again’ brand positioning…

The Holy Grail of Brand Effectiveness. One of the toughest parts of rebranding is the risk associated with selecting which brand mark concept to choose. There are few business decisions where so much comes down to a single choice quite as graphically as this. With…