Insight Categories: Brand Strategy

At a time when civil discourse feels more divided than ever, an unprecedented number of brands are putting their stake in the ground for various social issues. Research shows that 84% of Americans believe businesses have a responsibility to bring social change on important issues (eMarketer), making it explicitly clear that today’s businesses must stay in lockstep with the current social climate or risk missing the mark with current and future customers.

“Woke” brands make sure that their values and mission serve as a compass for business and marketing decisions. #WokeBrands unapologetically declare what their brands stand for and allow their values to drive campaigns, not vice-versa. Aside from creating a more consistent, human and authentic brand message, this approach also often pays off in the form of fierce customer loyalty and brand ambassadorship.

Here’s a look at a few brands that have earned (or failed to earn) Woke status as of late:

Brand 1: Pepsi – NOT WOKE

Case in point–the now infamous Pepsi Kendall Jenner commercial fiasco. See Pepsi Zero: The Taste-Free Ad With No Fans. A sad attempt to bond with protesters and members of current political and social movements like #BlackLivesMatter, Occupy Wall Street, and the Fight For 15; Pepsi left much to be desired and created a PR nightmare instead.

It is not enough to simply mimic feelings or situations of social movements. If a brand is going to connect itself to a social movement, it needs to do so in an authentic way, taking a stand in support of a side. Pepsi created a campaign hoping to broadly embody certain values without actually taking a stand for anything. Not woke.

Brand 2: Oreo – WOKE

Oreo has been a strong advocate for the LGBT community and a vocal supporter of marriage equality on social media.
This “Pride” image was posted to Facebook as part of a series reflecting current events using images of Oreo cookies and milk to celebrate the brand’s 100th birthday. “As a company, Kraft Foods has a proud history of celebrating diversity and inclusiveness. We feel the Oreo ad is a fun reflection of our values,” Basil Maglaris, a spokeswoman for Oreo’s parent company Kraft Foods, stated.

Oreo and Kraft didn’t deem the advertisement “controversial”—instead, they emphasized that this ad was a “reflection of their values,” whether it pleased everybody or not. Woke.

Brand 3: Ben & Jerry’s – WOKE

Ben and Jerry’s has unapologetically supported the #BlackLivesMatter movement through a series of social media and blog posts as well as the Women’s March on Washington and the climate change movement that tips the social justice scales for the funky ice cream maker. They are overt in asking people to join them in the movements, mirroring the urgency and seriousness of the movements themselves.

Yes, they’ve experienced some backlash, but they didn’t back down because they knew the campaigns embodied their values and what they believed in as a company. They’ve also gained new customers for life and an overwhelming increase in brand awareness in the process of following their own moral compass. From marriage equality to climate change, and now with #BLM, there’s absolutely no confusion about where this progressive company stands. Woke.

Brand 4: Banana Republic – WOKE

Almost immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, Banana Republic launched its #BRLove4All campaign. Banana Republic invited everyone to celebrate the historic decision, each other, and love by posting photos with significant others–whether they be same or opposite sex. Those that used the hashtag #BRLove4All had the chance to be outfitted by Banana Republic for their nuptials or other special occasion. The retailer posted the contest entries to its Facebook page and showcased its diverse consumer community in a photo gallery. This campaign was a win due to its timeliness—launching as history was made—and its celebration of diverse consumers—rather than its product. Woke.

By humanizing their brands, taking a position that aligns with their stated core values, and starting organic conversations around current events and news, woke companies are able to meet their consumers where they are and make them feel okay about spending dollars with them.

Of course, there’s a fine line. But instead of ignoring current events, brands should employ relevant content marketing strategies to engage audiences in authentic ways. People want the companies they support to be ethical, sustainable, and on the right side of history. To do so, companies must define their brands’ values and mission and refresh them often as they begin to feel outdated, non-inclusive, or even offensive to certain populations.

Through keeping a pulse on social movements and allowing their own values, mission, and pillars to direct campaigns, brands create an opportunity to bond with core consumers as well as lend a hand in leading change.

How is website development like Formula 1 racing? For the answer, take a quick spin with me to the third round of the 2016 Australian Grand Prix qualifying races and see how the Mercedes F1 team maintained maximum performance by leveraging perpetual beta as a strategy.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg of Mercedes finished first and second, with times of 1:23:837 and 1:24:197, respectively. Sebastian Vettel, racing for Ferrari, was third at 1:24:675. Note that fractions of seconds are recorded down to three decimal places—that’s how close these races, which feature top speeds of 233mph, are contested.

So, how does Mercedes ensure consistent success?  One way is using massive amounts of data to performance tune their vehicles in real time. Telemetry data (including thermal imaging tire cameras, used to improve speed, efficiency and vehicle safety) is streamed from the race car during practice sessions via Wi-Fi in the 5 GHz spectrum.

This allows the Mercedes team to more efficiently test the configuration of the vehicle during the limited practice sessions before a major race.

And here’s how we return to web development. Mercedes is using a perpetual beta strategy for their F1 racecars—innovation, optimization, and performance tuning are never complete—helping them to shave time and, most important, gain a competitive advantage.

Unlike Mercedes, in the race for dominance on the web that almost every marketer competes in today, most websites are not in perpetual beta mode. Instead, sites are operated more like the typical family car than a Formula 1 racer: buy the model you can afford, use it to get you where you want to go with no thought of upgrades until the next model, and (hopefully) maintain it so the wheels don’t fall off. Most organizations budget for the design and development of a new website once every three to four years. For a company’s primary marketing vehicle, this makes little sense in a world where consumer wants, needs, and expectations change daily.

Using this “family car” innovation model, most organizations invest only in requisite upfront research and analysis during their website redesign. Some simply allocate time to review clickstream analytics, while others may employ table stakes heuristic analysis, small user focus groups, and website performance analytics to answer basic questions such as:

• Where did users enter the website and where do they leave?

• What does a typical path through the website look like?

• What content do users really care about?

• How are users accessing the website (desktop vs. mobile, operating systems, screen resolutions, etc.)?

Organizations using a web analytics platform configured to track behavior flow can also:

• Understand how users behave as they navigate through the website

• Gain insight into the actions users take as they navigate to a particular step in the defined user journey

• Identify opportunities for innovation by eliminating failure points, unnecessary steps, or by returning to previous states

Organizations that rely on their website to generate leads and transactions understand the importance of investing extra time and energy to surface additional insights from existing performance data. Google Analytics offers valuable tools for marketers and user experience designers that yield far more than behavior flow, including goal flow and funnel visualization.

The most sophisticated organizations will also leverage heat maps and user videos to reveal valuable visitor behavior difficult or impossible to interpret with clickstream analysis alone.

Heat map tests provide insights, such as:

• Are visitors clicking on dead ends?

• Are irrelevant elements distracting visitors?

• Is there missing information from your page?

• Does your page work well on different screen sizes?

• Is all of your content easily searchable?

• What are your site visitors really looking for?

• Does your page have what it takes to keep your visitors?

• Is your page helping or hurting performance?

Leveraging visitor recordings takes the guesswork out of the equation and is far more reliable than a focus group—it’s empirical evidence as to what is working and what isn’t.

Armed with this research, the sophisticated marketer or user experience designer can effectively analyze these data points to drive true innovation. But there’s a catch. Regardless of how innovative the website design and development is, entering maintenance mode at launch means the investment begins to lose value within, at most, a few months.

Instead, take a cue from Mercedes F1 and start operating your website with a perpetual beta strategy, never considering innovation, optimization, and performance tuning complete. How? By building evolution into your process:

• Choose a CMS platform that will enable you to efficiently manage consistent innovation

• Take an atomic approach to design and development

• Put the right analytics tools into place to capture meaningful/actionable user experience data; analyze it frequently

• Make consistent cost efficient micro-pivots to the user experience, visual design, and copy.

You’ll find this far more effective than long, drawn-out, and expensive revolutionary changes.

In much the same way the Mercedes F1 high-performance pit crews use telemetry data to performance tune their race cars before a Grand Prix, you’ll continually capture value from your website.

Tuesday, February 21st saw a new day dawning for our client, Strayer University. An awareness campaign, “Let’s Get it America” created by Erwin-Penland, broke in heavy broadcast rotation. You may have heard the radio and television already. Grafik’s job was to convey the tone and feeling of the campaign—America, you have the passion, determination, grit and desire to create and fill new jobs, and we’ll be there beside you when you do—all through the journey from awareness to enrollment as a student. Banner ads, landing pages, e-mails, a home page for the campaign at letsgetitamerica.com, and more, all went live last month. Below are some samples; and don’t forget to click on the link above.

We’re thrilled to help this innovative, 125-year-old University (and its fun and savvy marketing team) fulfill its mission of educating working adults.

George Nicholas, Creative Director

Business owners and C-suite executives often come to Grafik looking to connect siloed business divisions, or to develop a more holistic expression of their company through a brand refresh. And while you might think they’re all focused on identifying strategies to operate more efficiently and competitively, that’s not always the case. Occasionally, we come across a leadership team whose top priority is integrating its workforce—a team who is as eager to unify its employees as it is to unify the business.

Merritt falls into this category. As we learned over the course of our engagement, it’s a family-owned organization where people always come first. And the fact that some employees couldn’t see how they fit in with the rest of the company drove Merritt leadership directly to Grafik for a brand refresh.

In early conversations, both the President and CEO noted that everyone—internally and externally— understood the connection between Merritt Properties and Merritt Construction Services. That part made perfect sense. And yet, very few could explain the relationship between these two companies and MerrittClubs, a business that includes nine top-rated fitness facilities.

Merritt Clubs’ 800+ fitness associates were seldom touted as part of the company’s workforce, and attempts to leverage the collective value of all three businesses had been fairly limited. We conducted interviews and roundtables with employees of all three businesses. And none of the participants from these well-established and highly successful companies could see the big picture.

Our recommended brand strategy took all this into account, underscoring the shared beliefs and values we identified in our discussions, and clearly identifying a common business philosophy. Additionally, we established a brand architecture that prominently features Merritt Companies, the parent brand we created as part of our strategic sessions.

We unveiled all this to a packed hall on a quiet Wednesday evening last month. It was an important event for the organization, because Merritt seldom gathers all employees together in one spot. We walked attendees through our process, our findings, and then, to showcase just how much they all have in common, we delivered a brand essence video—now front and center on the new Merritt Companies website. Finally, at the end of the evening, we raised the curtain on a new identity system that visually ties together all Merritt brands.

For all of us, it was really rewarding to see just how quickly employees embraced the new brand. In the years I’ve been guiding companies through the branding process, I’ve had the opportunity to witness some truly amazing moments. But without a doubt, the Merritt brand launch will stick out in my mind as the night Grafik brought a family together.

The brand refresh launch event was just the start of a massive 2017 initiative to help audiences gain a fresh perspective on this powerful enterprise. With this foundation in place, Merritt is kicking off its 50th anniversary year, and positioning all three businesses—Properties, Construction Services, and Clubs—to take on new opportunities.

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.”