Creating a Brand Strategy from the Ground Up
Powerful identities evince emotional truth. A brand identity is only memorable if it communicates the brand’s values and its tastes—tastes really being a sociomaterial way of communicating values—to consumers in a unique manner.
A hotel’s branding choices, evident in its corporate identity, facade, and lobby, for example, communicate brand values that suggest to you whether or not the staff is world class, and thus whether your stay will be merely satisfactory or potentially an experience so rewarding that it heightens your standards going forward.
objective
When developing brand identity, positioning, and strategy, my job is to surface a brand’s inherent and unique qualities in a way that attracts, connects, and compels. Imbuing an AI-enabled software-as-a-service enterprise platform designed to identify, measure and eliminate bias embedded in HR technology with a memorable name paired with a striking, authentic visual identity was the crucial first step in positioning our product where we aspired for it to be.
Figure 1: The logo was produced by graphic designer Andrea Granja under my art direction. Bolding the wordmark’s first two vowels (AI) in Cyan Process (#4EABD0) alludes to the artificial intelligence powering the software, and the logotype “puts a human face” on the HRtech processes the brand enhances by removing hiring bias, thereby making a company’s candidate selection more equitable.
Montserrat Light—the font used in the logo—is named after its creator’s neighborhood in Buenos Aires. It is “a typeface that rescues the beauty of urban typography from the first half of the twentieth century,” according to graphic designer Julieta Ulanovsky, who said it was influenced by fonts used to announce early twentieth century novelties of the day, like the city’s first movie theater and first supermarket.
Inspired by “all that spirit of the future: speed, industry, advancement, a certain faith in progress (as we perhaps see today in technology) and its graphic and typographic representations,” I felt it especially suitable for AI-enhanced HRtech—which is novel in the present day—and promises ongoing progress in the form of increased diversity, equity, and inclusion for marginalized groups.
I proposed that the brand, being a major proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion, use photos of people from all walks of life in its marketing collaterals, often in medium-closeup so that their eyes—hinting at the full and unique lives that each has led—draw the viewers, while their faces set a mood.
Given this, I proposed (and the team agreed) that black as a background color would cause such images to stand out in dramatic contrast, as if emerging from darkness. I deliberately intensified this feel by choosing faces that were looking directly into the camera, thus compelling viewers to assign greater attention by activating our natural inclination to study those who we notice are studying us.
I chose Cyan Process as a main color because 1) it is reminiscent of the sky, which is limitless, like our aspirations for social justice, 2) it is perceived as a happy, welcoming color associated with tranquility and serenity, and 3) the Cyan Process color is believed to help clarify thinking. Now I’ll present some visuals from marketing collaterals I designed for a sales presentation.
Figure 3b: Screen from Antibias.tech sales collaterals I designed. Used with permission.
Figure 3b: Screen from Antibias.tech sales collaterals I designed. Used with permission.
Brand Strategy
Case Study
Creating a
Brand Strategy
from the Ground Up
Product Marketing
Case Study
User Retention ↑14%
Refund Requests ↓50%
Customer Service Contact ↓66%
Demand Generation
Case Study
Impressions: 4.1M
Views: 498k
Return on Ad Spend: 166%
Brand Strategy
Case Study
Creating a
Brand Strategy from the Ground Up
LEARN MORE
.svg){kind=icon}
Product Marketing
Case Study
User Retention ↑14%
Refund Requests ↓50%
Customer Service Contact ↓66%
LEARN MORE
Demand Generation
Case Study
Impressions: 4.1M
Views: 498k
Return on Ad Spend: 166%
LEARN MORE
