Brand news, views & insights: May 2024

Back to the future

Whenever I introduce FutureBrand, I always say it’s one of two things that we do.

We create new brands.

Or, we transform existing ones.

But, as it happens, there is a third thing that we do.

It might not be as visible as a brand creation or brand transformation project rolling through the breadth and depth of a business, but it’s no less valuable.

We help businesses manage their brands.

Long gone are the days of brand strategy, identity and experience being ‘set-and-forget’.

Something that happened once every five years or so. Simply a change of symbol – new logo, anyone? – but not necessarily a symbol of change.

On the contrary, when you strengthen the connection between your brand’s purpose and the everyday experience, your brand gives your business a measurable competitive advantage.

So it’s only natural that managing your brand is an everyday commitment.

And so it is that our clients return to us – 6 months, 12 months, even a year or two later – to have us reassess their brand’s performance. More often than not, it comes down to brand expertise, efficiency and effectiveness.

Do your people understand the brand and have the tools to use it?

Is using the brand an easy process for people to follow?

Does the brand align with the business and help your people make an impact?

These are purposefully everyday questions, no less important than the big strategic ones, and all the more valuable for helping to transform your brand from strategy to reality.

Strike!

For me, the headline says it all: welcome to a world where absolutely nothing is spared.

It’s been three years or so since we started working with Funlab across their portfolio of brands – think Holey Moley, Hijinx Hotel and more – and it’s great now to come back to the brand where it all began, Strike.

Since the start, there’s always been more to Strike. As we discovered for ourselves when we dived into the lanes and immersed ourselves into the world of their guests, from research and analysis to brand strategy, identity and experience.

After all, Strike is a place to escape the everyday and the brand is now full of more energy than ever: from the modernised, shape-shifting logo to the fun-filled tone of voice and an experience strategy that delivers the brand’s magic into the real world.

You can read more about Strike’s brand transformation here on our website – from the brand strategy to the behind-the-scenes design thinking that led us to brand identity system and all the ways in which the brand lives through the experience.

In the words of Funlab’s CMO, Oonagh Flanagan: “It's bright, it's vibrant, it's fun and it's inclusive – all of the things we know and love about this wonderful brand.”

Let the good times roll ;)

Trust in brand

“For as long as there have been corporations, there have been corporate crises…”

It was with these words that our Victoria and Sam, Head of Strategy and Brand Experience Director respectively, opened their latest op-ed via Mumbrella.

But what’s changed, against in a backdrop of global uncertainty, rising costs and job security concerns, is the growing emphasis on corporate conscience and governance.

Using data from the FutureBrand Index, Victoria and Sam identify the key dynamics when it comes to building trust into your brand, whether in terms of the brand’s strategy or the customer’s experience.

Importantly, theirs is a practical take on what can all too often feel like an esoteric ideal: begin with the basics, communication gives people confidence, and make it worth their while.

Back to school

Being FutureBrand means keeping in touch with future generations of brand thinkers and designers.

That’s exactly what our Design Director, Peter, did just the other week when he returned to the place where his branding career took seed, Swinburne University of Technology.

Invited by the Swinburne Design Collective to share his experiences from studying design to building a career in branding, Peter shared the five things he wished he knew before he became a brand designer.

Here are just a few nuggets of his wisdom:

Break free from the designer bubble! Real people, real lives = real design impact

Design Celebrities: A design studio's online presence or reputation among designers doesn't guarantee impactful work. Your ability to create something meaningful lies within you.

Build skills & exposure: Job hopping lets you learn from diverse projects and companies, rapidly expanding your design skillset and helping you find your niche.

Is the future closer than you think?

Every month when I write this newsletter, it feels as though a subtle theme emerges – it’s not intentional, but sometimes it feels inevitable.

This month feels very future-focused. It’s not necessarily surprising, after all I do work for a company named FutureBrand.

One of my favourite future-thinkers has always been from William Gibson, who said this: "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed."

It’s something I see demonstrated, time and again, through our work across diverse company types and industry sectors.

In the healthcare sector, for example, I’m reading and hearing more and more about healthcare providers increasingly looking over the fence into the world of retail, and so it’s instructional to explore what similarities, differences and opportunities might be revealed by the FutureBrand Index.

As you can see from the data, the average performance of healthcare brands and their consumer cousins is very clear in terms of how one compares and contrasts with the other. Which prompts one of two questions, depending on your perspective:

How might Healthcare brands learn or benefit from the greater sense of Personality or Story that help Consumer brands create an emotional connection?

How might Consumer brands increase their Indispensability through more meaningful Innovation?

In other words, you might only have to walk in to a retail store today to see the world of healthcare tomorrow…

That’s it for this month, hopefully you found it as interesting as you did insightful for building your brand and growing your business. Always happy to hear all and any feedback, so please do comment, subscribe and share.