Interac

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Interac is one of the most trusted and innovative financial brands in Canada. Until recently the Interac masterbrand comprised two powerful offerings: Interac® Debit and Interac e-Transfer®.

Naming a new, third pillar of the brand architecture – Interac’s first foray beyond payments – required a name that was on-strategy, ownable across North America, easily used in both English and French, and that harmonized with the existing masterbrand name style.

We applied a disciplined process of strategic name creation – including rigorous linguistic and legal pre-screening – to ensure our proposed selection of name candidates offered the best chance of successful adoption.

The result: Interac Verified™ – the new name for Interac’s user-centric digital identity offering for consumers and businesses.

WeGo™ mobile app

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

The North West Company asked us to work with them on the launch of their WeGo™ mobile app, designed to give We Visa customers on-the-go access to their We Financial Visa Prepaid account. We undertook the graphic branding of the app (and some UI consultation) and created a three-stage, multi-platform, multi-language campaign to promote the app launch as well as the new mobile wallet compatibility of their popular We Visa prepaid card.

To support the launch and branding of the WeGo™ app, we also created all the requisite artwork elements for the app itself, the Apple App Store, and Google Play.

As with previous We Visa campaigns, the media were very direct and shopper-focused: cash register screens, ATM screens, PIN pad dangler, Facebook ads, website carousel and sidebar ads, direct mail, handbill, and POS posters and TV monitors. The ad strategy was to be very bold, simple, direct, and visually focused, given the very brief exposure offered by the mostly out-of-home digital media and the fact the creative was to be published in various combinations of English, French, Inuktitut, and Inuinnaqtun.

Permian Industries

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Permian Industries is a family-run Canadian investment holding and management company with a four-decade track record of acquiring and growing businesses.

As they looked to expand their footprint to embrace new opportunities, we worked with them to create their first-ever website. The objective was to help tell the story of the enterprise in a simple, direct way that captures and conveys the personality of the brand and uses a more deliberately designed presence to position them clearly and compellingly against their competitive set.

Acorn Packaging

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Acorn Packaging delivers state-of-the-art integrated flexible packaging solutions to major North American consumer packaged goods companies and retailers.

Following a change in ownership, we worked with them to reposition their brand, helping to overcome entrenched out-of-date perceptions of the company and clearly differentiate Acorn from the competition.

An audit of Acorn’s competitors’ websites, combined with customer interviews and group work sessions, provided insight into the business that helped guide the brand and design strategies and execution. The new brand strategy was expressed through an entirely new logo and visual identity system and executed through all touchpoints.

Bridgeport Ventures

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Bridgeport Ventures Inc. was (since acquired) a junior mining company primarily exploring for gold and copper-gold deposits in the Americas.

The company had experienced management and technical teams and a long track record of successful exploration, discovery, and development. Their key difference was using advanced 3D modeling technology to find valuable deposits where others couldn’t. While that was working for them, their existing brand identity wasn’t. It didn’t capture and convey the unique value of their brand.

We collaborated with Bridgeport to create an all-new, credible and differentiated logo and visual identity system, a clear positioning definition, and consistently branded communications so they would stand out in a crowded, competitive environment.

TD payment card design system

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Payment cards (credit, debit, prepaid, and others) are key brand touchpoints for the issuer that provide an opportunity for brand reinforcement through thousands of daily impressions. Unfortunately, they’re seldom handled that way, and as a result, often aren’t planned and executed with brand considerations top-of-mind.

However, with the thoroughly considered and documented card design system we developed for TD – from card type and value category to image creation and detailed specifications – the bank has a ready blueprint and process for rapid development of new cards and for refreshing existing ones.

We’ve continued to work with TD – Canada’s largest credit card issuer – to implement the design system on all new card products, resulting in a portfolio that’s unique, differentiated, understandable, brand-consistent, and mobile-ready. The system has been successful in streamlining the development process and providing the flexibility to be adapted to new product lines.

TD mobile app icon design strategy

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

For many brands, it’s hard enough to make the leap to mobile, but what if you’ve already done it and now need a plan for expanding to a broader suite of specialized apps?

We worked with TD to create a system that would bring design consistency and coherency to their icons as they prepared for the growth of their mobile app family.

Not only did we express the corporate brand identify and clearly differentiate an open-ended number of offerings within multiple categories, we did so within a space where our “thumbnail” sketches were literally larger than life.

Select Food Products

Friday, September 18, 2020

The new owner of Select Food Products wanted to modify the labels for their range of sauces and condiments to reflect new packaging regulations. Rather than simply update the tired legacy labels that came along with the business, they engaged us to explore how they could be updated and improved.

We conducted an extensive design exploration informed by a competitive audit, discussions with the internal team, and their print suppliers. The outcome was a recommendation that Select adopt a completely new, more efficient and differentiated design system, one that would better reflect how the needs of foodservice customers differ from retail consumers, be easier for their customers to use in a fast-paced working environment, and speed time-to-market for new and updated products.

Our design strategy shifted away from an unproductive retail-style approach. The new system emphasizes the product name through strong, characterful typography to distinguish offerings within product lines. We reduced the focus on ambiguous, repetitive, colour illustrations and instead enlisted monochromatic photographic images to act as category “icons”. The revised colour palette is now more powerful and coordinated.

The successful result is an attractive, distinctive, and highly practical label design system that is more appropriate to the customers and simpler and faster to produce.

OLG

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, a Crown corporation responsible for Ontario’s lotteries; commercial, charity, and Aboriginal casinos; and slot machines at horse-racing tracks; began an ambitious modernization initiative in 2012, recognizing a future of changing demographics and business imperatives.

We helped OLG redefine their corporate brand positioning and messaging to communicate a major change that would affect how they are perceived by their stakeholders: players, the general public, the media, various levels of government, and employees.

Brand drivers were identified through interview sessions with senior leadership and public focus groups to aid in creating this new positioning. We crafted the content and expressive language of key messages to guide public communications initiatives, clarify the brand image, and communicate a positive message of comprehensive change.

OLG PlaySmart

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

OLG’s Responsible Gambling team approached us with an intriguing and open mandate: How can we do more good for our players? The usual, broadly accepted approach had essentially been to try to use logic to counter a belief in luck, but that hadn’t yielded the desired results and wasn’t likely to in the future.

We conducted a thorough analysis of OLG’s situation, industry data, the various inputs and resources available to players at every stage of their engagement, and interviewed key OLG and public health-related stakeholders (e.g., CAMH, Responsible Gambling Council). The result was the creation of a comprehensive, tiered player education strategy. Further it was to be named and branded as a distinct flanker sub-brand of OLG. This offered a number of strategic benefits. It would bring distinct focus to the new program, help allay possible concerns about mixed mandates for the seller/educator, and to make it “ready” if at some point the brand was to be applied in conjunction with the identities of gaming operators other than OLG.