WTF Is a Brand World?

If you’ve ever watched 'Is It Cake?!' on Netflix, you’ve seen the wonder-inducing, multi-dimensional, cake creations that defy reality. They are baked and built under extreme time pressure, with limited ingredients, and they have to get an immediate emotional reaction from the audience.

It’s easy to make the comparison for today’s branding and marketing challenges.

Today’s brands must constantly stay fresh and relevant on 328+ touchpoints if you ask Chat GPT… the complexity is constantly accelerating. It requires alignment and investment from multiple stakeholders. It must be done at record speed and on budget. The results must be irresistible.

So how do you deal with the madness? You need a recipe.

A Brand World recipe is the single, simple source of truth for your brand, and makes it easy to deploy with consistency across the entire brand experience.

Here are the key ingredients for creating your Brand World, and how we define the recipe for success.

Ingredient #One - A Big Creative Idea

A bridge between strategy and design

You can test your Big Creative Idea in the following ways:

• Is it true to the brand?

• Does answer a human need or tension?

• Does it live across the whole brand experience, and beyond?

• Does it lead with emotional storytelling?

Ingredient #Two - Core Principles

Guide in delivering the look & feel of the brand

• Keep it simple, no more than 3-4

• Prescriptive AND emotional, using design language

• Consider defining Time, Place, and Attitude as starting points

Ingredient #Three - Distinctive Assets

A Palette of Visual, Verbal, and Sonic Memory Cues

Distinctive Assets Include your Brand’s: Colour, Logo, Slogan, Tone of Voice, Styling, Motion, Product, Character/Celebrity, Packaging/Structure, Sonic, Typeface

Use them in the most potent combinations of these for the context in which they’ll live — no one is more valuable than another…

If you are delivering for a Podcast Ad Series: Sonic branding, Slogan, Tone of Voice and Product are critical.

If you are delivering an Influencer Kit: Product, Logo, Colour, Packaging, Styling, Celebrity/Casting can all be leveraged.

Driving Growth - How Does a Brand World Amplify Value?

Value Add #One

Brand Worlds are effective for launching a new brand, or unifying a well-loved brand that’s become fragmented over time

Value Add #Two

Brand Worlds have the power to simplify, streamline, and consistently deploy distinctive assets

Value Add #Three

Brand Worlds can unite everyone in the same vision, from brand teams and stakeholders to creating efficiency and focus with multiple agency partners

Brand launch or evolution - When and Why are the Right Times to Invest in a Brand World?

WHEN:

The simple answer? When you are planning a key strategic shift, from a repositioning to launching a new-to-world brand.

WHY #ONe:

Manage Complexity and Crush Chaos: In a recent Harvard Business Review survey only 30% of respondents rated their brands as having effective marketing strategies to cope with today’s complexity.

WHY #Two:

From Deliberation to Decisions: Global and National brands must align cross-functional stakeholders, teams, and agency partners to create meaningful impact. By focusing on the right recipe: Big Creative Idea Core Principles and Distinctive Brand Assets — decisions and alignment can happen swiftly across teams. “Is this on brand? YES or NO” becomes much clearer for all.

ROI - How Do You Measure the Success of a Brand World?

METRIC #One:

Does it instantly engage and emotionally connect? A deep understanding of your audience, their need-states, and establishing a visual and verbal dialogue to build a bond.

METRIC #Two:

Is it recognisable anywhere in the brand experience? People create their own user journeys, as much as we plan and architect them, so we must be instantly recognisable no matter the moment, or touchpoint.

METRIC #Three:

Is it built from distinctive brand assets? Establishing a core palette of ownable, distinctive assets - from graphic elements, to tone of voice, to imagery, to sonic - that are uniquely your brand. These can be flexibly mixed and matched for the most powerful use in application.