SERVICES

BRAND BUILDING

Learning what you stand for and collaborating with you to create the building blocks of a brand. Logo, tag line, writing, website, imagery, design scheme, etc. This service is for new enterprises.

 Brand Foundations

After doing our own research, we conduct an interview session with relevant principals. Generally, the work isn’t final until after several rounds of discussions. This tends to be an illuminating reinvigorating process for all involved. Gaining clarity around why your company exists and how it serves the world will make your work life happier and more fulfilling. 

Specific deliverables vary by client. For example, a new offering under an existing brand may be better served by articulating a Gift or Promise, rather than a Purpose. Defining a Brand Enemy is useful for some companies, but not others. Brand Foundations are important for large brands that partner with agencies, retailers and others.

Strategic Projects

Stuff like…

Re-articulating a core point of difference that your competitors have caught up with.

Help making sense of new products or services.

Integration of social responsibility.

An outside set of eyes on a new initiative.

Crisis management.

Naming / Nomenclature

This varies from brand and product naming to nomenclature systems (meaning an overall architecture that sets you up to continue naming new products and variants under the same brand). Naming should be proprietary and cohesive — an extension of the truths at the heart of your brand. We’ve completed naming projects for Epiphany Craft Malt, Raleigh Denim and Ross. Jerry has done loads of naming for the likes of Jeep, Chrysler, Donna Karan, The Sierra Club, Chanel, Guinness and Hendrick’s Gin.

Fight Bullshit Create Truth Workshops

We conduct workshops to get to the truth of a brand; to determine how your brand can contribute to a better world and how to avoid slipping into what we call “the bullshit rut”. We aim to infuse teams with a sense of conviction and shared purpose.

There is always pressure to conform. To change who you are to “meet the market.”

This leads to the rise of not-being-who-you-were-born-to be, i.e. the slow death of authenticity. Huge bummer.

Let’s say you have a brand.

More than anything, you want it to grow. In the pursuit of this, there’s a tendency, an impetus, whatever you want to call it — to cast aside the things that got you into your field in the first place. We help you hold those first meaningful things and use them to grow.

Let’s say you have a brand and don’t know what to say.

Our theory is that in your heart, you probably do know what to say. You just need help articulating it. We listen, pull out the threads of truth and weave them together to make them powerful and useful. you should be viscerally happy to stand behind our articulations.If you are not, we will discuss them and change them.We are not wedded to our work until you are.

Or let’s say you work on a brand that’s been around for a few generations.

In this case, we find the intersection between heritage and future-facing truths. We help you express your brand in a way that leverages the weight of your past, instead of discarding it like an old suit that went out of style. (In his freelance role as lead strategist for Quaker City Mercantile, Jerry has led the development of strategic platforms for Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, Heinz and other heritage brands).

THINK OF US LIKE RICK RUBIN.

“When we truly open ourselves to people, they tell us everything, and we can learn a tremendous amount. Whatever I know is from talking to people. Reading, talking to people. We get information from outside of ourselves. We’re not making it up. It’s not starting in us. So, we are doing a disservice when we’re listening to someone and we’re formulating what’s going to happen next or judging them.” - Rick Rubin

We don’t change brands. We help them be their best selves.