The fluffies brand awards: Our take on FY19's best brand work

One thing you learn running a business is that you stop thinking in calendar years and start thinking in financial ones. Over the last financial year there have been many experiments in how to best position brands, flex brand assets and maintain brand relevance by plugging what makes you unique into the culture and consumption of the day. It’s a dance between what is known and what is yet to be. The Fluffies is a bit tongue and cheek, but it’s our attempt to explain the brand work over the last year we admire. None of it is ours. Some work has won lots of awards and some has yet to be entered, we suspect, and some is a bit off the radar. Hence the name the Fluffies because there is subjectivity and bias in the below. We have created 3 categories: 1/ Best positioning work, 2/ Best use of brand assets and 3/ Best in show maintaining brand relevance.

1. Best positioning work: our criteria was based on our core belief, that a positioning is a positioning and very hard to change. You can add to them, but it is dangerous to mess with anything that works. Brands switching to a “purpose” rather than expressing their underlying beliefs tend to ensure that the brand holds less meaning. Strong positioning is something that you have set as unique to you and has saliency in the minds of the audience. You can add to the mental picture but you can’t completely shift it. Great positioning is work that accepts what is and finds a way to make an existing stance even stronger.

The Fluffy goes to: Nike ID to Nike by You. They shifted from an out-dated notion to a truer expression of their customisation work. This expression embodies the ideas that individuals should be able to express themselves creatively through the athletic wear Nike provides; and that everyone is an athlete. The work by Gretel describes the project as repositioning customisation but for us it is more about clarifying what was already there. It affirms that Nike is there to help you create an individual look, while making you feel a part of a culture larger than yourself. It makes bespoke gear accessible and responds to consumers’ expectation to be a co-creator with brands. Athletes are you, I am you, you are you, and the work allows Nike to own this fully.

Honourable mentions:

Apple Card. Apple is adding to its existing positioning of simplicity and creativity with protecting your privacy.

YouTube. YouTube has been able to move from being a narrowcast video channel into a place brand where people all over the world can interact freely with another.

2. Best use of brand assets: The true power of a brand identity refresh is that it allows brands, as they tire, to find a new lease on life. Our criteria was that the approach needed to reaffirm how a brand is positioned, while re-invigorating how the consumer relates to the brand on an emotional level. Great brand work completed recently by consultancies ranging from JKR, Taxi Studio and our fluffy winner Turner Duckworth, demonstrate the power of tweaking and reinstating existing brand codes to meet the changing culture of the day.

The Fluffy goes to: McDonald’s. Faced with a consumption shift away from calories, carbohydrates and cows the McDonald’s Menu has ballooned. Along with the increase in items also came an increasingly complex identity system filled with multiple sub brands, competing colours and a lack of ownable assets. Turner Duckworth took on the task of simplifying the brand assets back to McDonald’s core positioning. Anyone who has seen The Founder will know McDonald’s is based on a simple promise, joy in fast service of foods we love to eat. Turner Duckworth took this and stepped back to what is most unique and recognisable about the brand, The Golden Arches, and freed the brand and its colours to express the simple pleasure of McDonald’s more cleanly and in a way that goes well beyond the items on the menu board.

Honourable mentions:

Dunkin. New England’s most loved on-the-go coffee brand engages a younger audience while maintaining its loyal following.

Mailchimp. Mailchimp effectively shifts its brand to capture more and more SAAS revenue.

3. Best way to maintain relevance in the face of a business challenge: The challenge for most brands is mostly commercial. As they decline in relevance they face the double whammy of reduced market share and reduced marketing spend. These unloved brands often require a jolt of creativity to re-establish the cultural relevance they once commanded. Our criteria is that the brand positioning was maintained but new opportunities were found to enhance the commercial viability of the business.

The Fluffy goes to: International House of Pancakes, from IHOP to IHOB. For those who don’t know me I have a special place in my heart for International House of Pancakes or as it is widely known, IHOP. It’s not healthy food but it’s a unique place based on friendliness, good food and great prices. The challenge the business faces is that while pancakes are one of the wonders of cuisine they are more a morning thing than a whole day thing. With its family dining business in decline the work by Drogba 5 took this challenge head on. Rather than reposition the brand and lose its equity it took what was there and found an elegant way to add to it. They changed the name from IHOP to IHOB. The international House of Burgers allowed the brand to play with its existing codes to draw attention to the fact it now offered burgers while also reinforcing the perceptions that consumers already had and loved about IHOP. The crucial part of this work however is that none of it challenged the existing brand position. It simply found an adjacent category that allowed them to add a more traditional lunch and dinner menu to areas where the brand had already succeeded.

Honourable mentions:

Tourism Australia. Faced with declining USA visitation the fake movie ad used existing brand saliency of Australia to drive new consideration and visitation.

Sun Life Financial. Took its existing positioning as a life insurance company and added the delivery of healthier lives for all to rejuvenate the brand.

Be better to each other.