Authenticity by design; parting the sea of sameness

Brands started as something pretty primitive; a symbol burned onto a steer’s hide to mark a cattle rancher’s ownership. Brutal, but simple. 

A couple of hundred years later, the once literal field is now proverbial, with a cacophony of visual brand noise from marketers of all kinds competing for attention on a multitude of platforms. This makes the task of branding significantly more challenging. So, how do you cut through? 

Authenticity is a foundation that supports all kinds of future iterations because it isn’t static.

The answer is always by being authentic. Authenticity is a foundation that supports all kinds of future iterations because it isn’t static. Our mission is to create 'ownable' work, not by creating one story, but by creating a unique storytelling universe that is specific to a brand, one that can iterate and evolve along with them. 

Here are some of the best ideas that guide this us through this process...

Above: In 1984, IBM was the dominant personal computer maker. Apple’s Think Different is a philosophical challenge to the public to accept an alternative instead of becoming a mindless drone. Apple doesn’t even bother to show its own personal computer; the product here is the ability to 'Think Different'.

Question convention

The most common way a brand loses its foothold on authenticity is by trying to read the market and follow a general trend. Even if a design solution is technically correct, the more ubiquitous the solution the less specific it will be to your brand. By chasing a trend, you miss the opportunity to create something authentic to you, something ownable. Trends become trends because they are an authentic solution to someone else's problem, not yours. 

Truly original ideas often make people - even really savvy marketers - feel slightly uncomfortable because they haven’t been seen before.

Truly original ideas often make people - even really savvy marketers - feel slightly uncomfortable because they haven’t been seen before, so it’s harder to predict how they’re going to be received. But, with the right strategic foundation, it’s a risk worth taking. Great brands zag while others are zigging.

Specificity conquers sameness

One of the ironies of storytelling is that the more specific an idea is, the more universal it becomes. That’s the creative paradox. By refining an idea to become more and more specific, you make it feel more memorable and identifiable. Great strategy is like a creative yeast, it can help us identify not only the ubiquitous commonalities but also the outliers, the unique-to-the-brand attributes that bubble up and become the basis for everything that follows. Suddenly, you’re not iterating design solutions that could work for a dozen different brands, you’re working on something that specifically connects with your audience. That’s the best stuff.

Above: Often food commercials are focused on the perfect product shot – the hero pour, the perfect cheese pull. One of the things I love about this Oreo campaign is that it understands that the product is already iconic. We don’t need to show you a photographic representation of what Oreo looks like. Instead, we could focus on the spirit of the product, which is joyous, catchy, and simple, and still feel utterly unique to Oreo.

Brand communication isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavour

I’m consistently inspired not only by master architects’ finished structures but also by their process, the multitude of factors they take into account and fold into the finished form. You can’t build a structure without taking into consideration the details of the building site. For a narrow lot on the side of a Malibu cliff, maybe the best solution is a glass house with an infinity pool. On a large flat lot in Idaho, maybe it’s a ranch-style home, or on a snowy mountain range, an A-frame. 

If you let data drive all your brand decisions, then the ideas might become a little too predictable. 

Our design process is quite similar. We are always asking ourselves; what is the ground we are building on? For example, when designing a product for a highly disruptive or challenger brand, the messaging and visual language will likely be quite bold, with tonal characteristics that feel authentic to that brand. Then we translate these brand attributes across multiple platforms, each one with distinct considerations, like different building sites. This is how a brand’s authenticity comes through, because we haven’t just plugged and played. We’ve approached each platform as a unique design challenge.

Strategy is your friend, but it isn’t everything

When creating ideas for brands, the decisions we make are usually rooted in a strategy and some data, and I think the good brands take those inputs under consideration while not indexing too heavily on one or the other. If you work with data-driven research, you’ll know that the answers it provides are limited by the questions that were asked. And then, even if great questions are asked, there’s the tendency to lean too heavily on the responses that confirm our existing preferences. If you let data drive all your brand decisions, then the ideas might become a little too predictable. 

In other words, strategy is a framework, not a fence. You respect the grid, but you can also break it.

Above: For Snapchat, Brand New School developed a flexible toolkit that was a reflection of the brand’s iconic branding - the ghost - but updated to connect with Snapchat’s diverse community and evolving platform. As part of this toolkit, we developed a library of emotive stickers for use across various communications.

Authenticity is more than just emotional resonance

Conventional brand wisdom often focuses on situational experiences that are emotional, in the hopes of connecting with people on an empathetic level. The reasoning for this is that, if you can make a viewer feel something, that feeling will cultivate a bond with the brand. This approach certainly can work for some brands in some cases, but it’s not one-size-fits-all. 

If we focus on solving the problem, we can stop worrying about being authentic. The authenticity will just be there, like that beautiful view.

In the end, authenticity comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s is the natural byproduct of solving problems, because good design solves problems. Sometimes the authentic solution will be emotional, sometimes it will feel new and different visually, sometimes it’s a glass house cantilevered over the edge of a Malibu cliff. If we focus on solving the problem, we can stop worrying about being authentic. The authenticity will just be there, like that beautiful view.