Project Overview

Davidson Branding is an award winning branding agency with one driving purpose – to help businesses grow. To grow love and loyalty, passion and belief, share price, share of voice and share of wallet.

We set out to create a new brand identity which embodied these values and the tagline “We Grow”. The new brand needed to be backed by a strategy which was campaignable, relevant and inspiring to clients' businesses, as well as a visual identity which brought the concept to life but could also work across each of our four business units: Corporate, FMCG, Retail and Digital.

Organisation

Davidson Branding

Team

Grant Davidson – Strategy and concept
Michael Callan – Design Director
Kevin Lam – Designer
Daniel Cheong – Designer
Alan Morrison - Designer
Matthew Forbes – Finished Artist
Sam Osborn, Michael Callan, Grant Davidson, Shosh Cutter, Fiona Gray, Alan Morrison – Writers

Project Brief

The brief was to create:
- a brand strategy with a brand idea that is campaignable, relevant and inspiring to clients' businesses
- a visual identity that brings the idea to life, in a creative way, creating cut-through that can also be translated to each business unit
- a website as a primary touchpoint.

Project Innovation/Need

The identity was informed by a simple but powerful insight: no one had ever come to Davidson asking to help their business or brand shrink! Their primary objective is to grow their business, culture, profit, market share…

The solution was to use a simple and eloquent metaphor for growth. We created four ’surreal’ portraits featuring a person interacting with an object which symbolised each of Davidson’s business units: a business tie for Corporate, a bag of groceries for FMCG, a fashion boutique bag for Retail and an iPad for Digital. The twist was that each of these objects was made out of real grass. The grass then became the basis for a flexible brand idea and was used to create graphs, backdrops and signage. The result is a brand identity which is fresh, simple, has cut-through and is campaignable.

Design Challenge

We’re a design company. Design our own brand identity - how hard can that be?

The challenge was in creating a single, simple, relevant identity that could be translated to each of Davidson’s four business units: Corporate, FMCG, Retail and Digital.

Effectiveness

We experienced a significant increase in website traffic, positive client responses and an increased win ratio after the introduction of the new brand identity.