Insight Categories: Brand Strategy

The steady drumbeat for the “strong call to action” persists; personally I find CTAs as useful as a vestigial tail.

I understand that people have been trained to look for phone numbers and URLs at the end of spots and print ads, likewise links on web pages, but shouldn’t all they’ve seen, read and heard be motivation enough? If you haven’t done the job well enough, will yelling really loudly cause folks to jump up and do your bidding?

Who thinks: “I’m lukewarm about what I’ve just seen, but now that you’ve told me to act NOW, I will”?

Reasonable, left-brain CTAs that basically complete what preceded them—learn more about how to perform brain surgery at home—are fine with me. You’re providing a path, not a final wallop of faux urgency.

But what I really hate is the urgency plus fear CTA, aimed solely at the fight-or-flight response buried deep in our sympathetic nervous system, devoid of any logic or rationale. Except for one so far over the top (and just so wrong) that I love it. It’s the end of a direct response TV spot for gold coins. It’s both threatening and promising, full of a weird poignancy as it travels backward and forward in time. A perverse masterpiece of the genre, I present it here: Avoid disappointment and future regret.

After all, isn’t that what we all want out of life?

Think about your current branding/marketing agency. If you were to describe them, what words come to mind? Helpful, consistent, responsive, supportive?

These words aren’t uncommon, and in fact should be a requirement. With so much competition in the marketplace, if you aren’t currently with an agency you can rely on, you have dozens of other agencies to turn to.

But when you think about your agency, does the word “challenging” come to mind, too? Challenging in the way that a manager may push you to try something new that you’ve never thought of before.

Your agency must challenge you in that same way.

Take these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Pleasing-focused agency

Your agency: “How has your most recent campaign been going? Anything that needs to be update or changed? We’re here to help with whatever you need!”

You: “Nothing really comes to mind at the moment that we need help with. We are loving the campaign!”

or

Scenario 2: Challenge-focused agency

Your agency: “I noticed in your Google Analytics that your bounce rate has drastically increased over the past few months since the campaign was launched, almost 5% higher than the average in your industry. Have you given any thought to a personalized landing page for each audience?”

You: “I didn’t even realize that the bounce rate was an issue. What is the average for our industry? And what could that personalized message potentially be?”

Which scenario would benefit your company more? (And are you currently going to your Google Analytics right now to check out your bounce rate?)

Ask yourself these three questions about your current branding/marketing agency. If you answer “no” to any of these questions, it may be time to rethink that relationship.

1. Does your agency strive to continue learning about your industry? Sending you relevant news articles for discussions or inspiration?
2. Do they seek to learn about your business as a whole, not just the scope of work they have been given? For example, are they proactively visiting your sales center? Speaking with employees to gather different perceptions? Reviewing Google Analytics data to raise any red flags you may be missing?
3. Do they approach you with unique insights, ideas, or questions that had yet to cross your mind? Are they starting a conversation you would never have had without them, presenting a new way to potentially save you time, money, or even a headache?

If you aren’t being challenged by your agency to think differently, then why would you want to keep them?

You’d be surprised how quickly your conversations will turn from routine check-ins to true collaborative working sessions when you work with an agency who challenges you.

Marketers, knowing Millennials will shape the economy for decades as they enter their prime spending years, are trying each day to better understand them—how they think, where they spend their money, which social media platform they use most, which gadget they just purchased. But what some marketers have yet to realize is that within this exceedingly diverse group lives another discrete audience: Hispanic Millennials.

As a Hispanic millennial, I find myself going through an identity crisis on a daily basis. I am 100% Costa Rican, born and raised. However, living in the United States for the past decade has changed who I am, making me bicultural. Twenty percent of millennials today are Hispanic and should not be ignored. By 2050, 30% of the U.S. population will be Hispanic. That’s huge. Most Hispanic millennials consider themselves bicultural, but what does that mean? It’s being fluent in English and Spanish. It’s celebrating Thanksgiving and el “Día de la Independencia”. It’s getting into passionate debates about who will win the election in November, in Spanglish of course. It’s eating rice and beans for breakfast, and buffalo wings while watching Sunday night football. It’s having massive group chats on Whatsapp with our enormous families back home, where the constant messaging will make you want to toss your phone out the window. Sí, es muy confusing.

Luckily, brands are slowly shifting their messaging in order to appeal to this growing group. Although Hispanic advertising has been around for a while on channels like Telemundo and Univision, it’s definitely targeted towards an older generation with which I personally do not identify. Hispanic Millennials are more than just “telenovelas.” We grew up in a digital age with Facebook, Instagram, Netflix and more, just like everyone else.

In the past few years, several great campaigns have resonated with Hispanic Millennials. During the 2014 World Cup, Hyundai launched its #BecauseFutbol campaign with a series of videos in English and Spanish portraying the shared passion for futbol. Sorry, I mean soccer.

Coca-Cola also launched a very powerful campaign honoring Spanish last names during Hispanic Heritage Month.

But, what’s next? How should brands make the most of this growing population? It’s not as easy as just translating everything to Español. There’s much more to becoming a bilingual brand; it’s finding a middle-ground. It will be exciting to see how brands face this challenge.

In a story that’s already appeared in the Wall Street Journal and countless industry publications, New LightSquared has rebranded itself as Ligado Networks. In an eight-month engagement that included strategic planning, naming, testing, visual identity development, and website design and development, Grafik led the Ligado team to a successful launch this week.


It was an opportunity to highlight the evolution of a big player in the telecommunications ecosystem. Moving forward, Ligado Networks intends to deliver next-generation connectivity—a strategic shift for a network service operator that had focused solely on providing satellite connectivity throughout the U.S. and Canada.


CEO, Doug Smith spoke to employees in a packed house on Wednesday morning, many of them already wearing their new corporate t-shirts. “As our lives become more mobile in an increasingly connected world,” he said, “the Ligado Networks brand underscores our mission to provide the mobile connections that support a growing variety of emerging applications.”


Ligado was one of a half dozen names we tested. Ultimately, it was the one everyone embraced. It translates from Portuguese and Spanish as being connected and ready to go. It clearly points to the company’s vision, and lays a foundation for brand storytelling. Similarly, the mantra, Making Stronger Connections, speaks as much to the relationships the company fosters as it does to the technology it advances.


The Grafik team created a high-impact brand identity that is already distinguishing Ligado Networks, and creating a design vocabulary for a lot of material still to come. It has been a great experience working with everyone on the client side, and we look forward to helping establish the Ligado Networks brand as a powerful leader in telecom.

I hadn’t noticed the new icon on my phone, but the email that popped up in the wee small hours of the day certainly caught my attention: Introducing A New Colorful Uber. Having just reviewed Uber’s elegantly simple brand guidelines with some of our creative directors who are working through a massive rebranding project, I eagerly read on.

“The Uber you know isn’t changing, our brand is just catching up to who we are.” Made sense to me. At Grafik, we routinely preach about the need for authenticity, and the value of evolving your visual identity to reflect the spirit of your brand. But we also tell clients that their brands belong to the loyal badge-wearing customers who identify with everything the brand represents. This is where everything went south for me: As one who’s loved this brand for a long while, I feel like Uber stole something that belonged to me. And a glance at the response on social media tells me I’m not alone.

Uber should not expect us to fall head over heels for the flashy new identity. We weren’t quite prepared for such a radical shift. Ultimately, we’ll all get over the shock to our systems, and none of this will keep users from Ubering to the airport next week. But for a while at least, we’ll wonder what they were thinking.

In his interview with WIRED, Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, says this was a very personal effort. He says he was very involved in the process, and that the entire rebranding initiative was managed internally. In other words, no one from any brand consultancy or design firm was on hand to offer guidance or structure. Note to Travis: one of us could have shaved about a year off your project. It shouldn’t take 18-month lead-time to arrive at brand pillars. And if you had asked anyone on the outside, they might have added that an objective viewpoint is essential for efforts like this.

So what about the work? Well, some is good. I admit that freely. But some of the design is heavy-handed, and the brand video looks and sounds a bit too much like Apple — nothing fresh or original there at all.

It’s important for every brand to hit the reset button. But the strategy and care with which that button is pushed is extremely critical. Uber has poured a lot of time and money into building a tribe. And their investment has paid off. If estimates are right, there are nearly 9 million Uber users today. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s nearly 9 million people who are now left trying to figure out what happened to their brand.

Property marketing for apartments has changed dramatically in recent years with developers eager to create unique brand identities and branded experiences. We recently had the opportunity to launch a one-of-a-kind identity for a new residence from MRP Realty and Bozzuto. From naming the property to infusing it with an ownable style, we brought The Parker to life.

The name was inspired by jazz music–elegant and sophisticated, but also intimate and relaxed. And as we dove into conceptual development, we realized that creating a literal persona for the building, Parker, would bring the brand to life in a way that would appeal to our younger, urban-oriented target demo.

“I envisioned Parker as a well-connected friend that embodies the characteristics of the building and who could introduce potential residents to the best of the DC metro area,” says Senior Designer Carrie Madigan. “This persona gave us a way to highlight the features of The Parker without using typical marketing speak. Rather than saying that the property was luxurious with great metro access, we would demonstrate Parker’s high standards and post photos of Parker’s night out at a hot new restaurant.”

We developed creative tactics to implement over 18 months to reach an audience that is challenging to reach through traditional media vehicles. During construction, potential residents got to know Parker through a guide to the area’s good life written in his voice. Through this gradual reveal, engagement levels increase organically leading to the grand opening and beyond—new residents even have the option to decorate a feature wall in their new apartment with one of the brand’s bold patterns. Personifying The Parker allows for a flexible and dynamic brand experience after the initial leasing timeframe as well. Resident-targeted social media, events, and handwritten notes on personalized stationery continue to reach residents and prospects.

“The beauty of personifying the residence is that ‘Parker’ is neither male nor female—neither a Millennial, nor Gen Xer. Parker is whatever the audience imagines Parker to be,” says John Vitorovich, Grafik Creative Director and Principal. “They get to interact and engage with Parker on their own terms. Parker has the ability to stay relevant because Parker changes with the times. Parker is credible, hip, and consistent when it comes to taste and style.”

The work was featured in the August 3rd issue of Communication Arts, but more important is the reaction of our partners at MRP—they love the work, and are thrilled with the response they’re getting.“Grafik’s vision integrated seamlessly with our design and construction,” says MRP Residential Principal John Begert.“Every piece of marketing produced by Grafik projects the essence of The Parker.”