“Brands That Are Too Protectionist with Their Visual Heritage, Are Missing a Trick”

When we were recently tasked by Carlsberg to provide a connective visual thread in its communication across 100 markets, it felt only right that we started with the brand’s visual heritage - its wordmarque.

When a brand has a historic element in its toolkit it’s often highly policed. We had the feeling we had lifted an historic artifact out of a glass vitrine at the V&A. Could we really meddle with this? 

The truth being there was a lot of recognition and authenticity baked into that mark that felt under explored and exploited when demoted to a conventional “premium” lower third sign-off position.

The mark is actually pretty wild. There’s an uncredited myth that the bottom flourish was inspired by an elephant's trunk no less. Carlsberg’s brewery in Copenhagen greets you with elephant statues at the gate, so it’s quite plausible. The cap ‘C’ is particularly weird and wonderful in construction (perhaps the elephant's ear…?). It was refined in 2018, but it has never taken centre stage in communications.

There are of course examples of other brands that have challenged conventional use of their heritage assets. The way classic boot brand Hunter – showed brilliant disregard of the original Hunter mark as they sliced it up and reassembled it on their packaging. Or Coca Cola’s gentle 3D effect to the time worn logo.

The trick is to realise when you have something so iconic that even when you extrude, morph, heavily crop or drag through a hedge backwards – it still garners recognition. So, it should be seen less as an act of design abuse, more harnessing its power. 

And so, this is what we did for Carlsberg. We created a brand world that scaled the logo to epic proportions and used it as a 'content container' – an invitation into Carlsberg’s world. The result? A recharged attitude and a look and feel that feels future-focused, equipped with strong motion principles to bring the experience to life and unlock opportunities in more innovative media channels. Carlsberg’s wordmarque is the storied, intricate, and beautiful centrepiece for the brand wherever you are in the world.

So, in short: if you’ve got it, we say, flaunt it.