Lessons

Lesson Info

Evolution of a Brand

Tether, you know, I said we want to do everything. We want to be that creative playground to bring everything to life. Sometimes we get this question. So we go in and present to clients, and we show our case studies, and we show our capabilities, and they go, "Oh, okay. "So you do branding and strategy and packaging "and photography and videos and advertising and all this, "but what are you really good at? "So I know how to peg you. "I know how to use you." And we say, "Well, kind of all of it. "We're good at all of it, "and we're good at all of it because we have the people. "We have creative directors over each of those disciplines, "and they have teams. "They have teams that are really good at doing those things. "And we all work together in an interdisciplinary way." So this is an example. That's why I call Tether a creative studio, 'cause we don't just do design. We don't just do interactive. Or we don't just do advertising. So we do all those things. At any one time, you'll turn ...

on the TV, and we'll have national TV spots running. We'll have print ads. We'll have radio. We'll have outdoor. So more of the advertising world. Go in the grocery store, we'll have products on the shelf. We'll have social media programs going on. We'll have websites that you go to that we've designed. We'll have, as Scotty mentioned with Red Bull, we have a multi-part series that we've shot for them. A TV series that we worked on for them. So really broad, but they're all doing the same thing. They're all telling that story in one way or the other. And this is fun because it's using your personal interests and your passions. At the break we we're talking about motorcycles. So I'm a passionate motorcyclist. I ride my motorcycle everyday to work. My dog rides on the back He has a little carrier, a little case that he goes in. But that's something that's a passion for me. And it has been since I was a little kid. How you can use those passions is when BMW Motorcycles came to us, and they were looking at a couple agencies to do their advertising. TV imprint. So when they came to us, it was like, "Oh! "I've been waiting for this moment my whole life." I knew what to do, I knew what to do. So I gathered fellow passionistas at Tether, and we put together some concepts that basically won us the work. They looked at other agencies that had much more experience in power sports, motor sports area, and much more in the advertising as well. We were able to show them our story. And actually, it's kind of a fun story. They are based in New Jersey. So I flew out there, me and Neil Webster. Remember Neil? He was back from Nike Entertainment, Legos, Starbucks, and now at work at Tether. So we flew out there, and they just had a snow storm. And so we showed up, and there was no power in their headquarters. What do we do? We went to the conference room, pitch black. It was night. Pitch black outside, snowing like crazy, and presented by the light of a laptop. And we won the account. It was very memorable. This is a TV spot that's running right now. We were dying to get a, this is for the 1200-GS, we wanted to get something memorable, that really had that story angle to it. So you'll see. (peaceful folk rock music) It's life's journey really. Finding what moves you. And of course not all of us can do what we want, whenever we want. Or can we? Make life a ride. (horns honking) (upbeat folk music) Some have to tell you about how fast they are. About narrow escapes. Or who you just won't believe they've ridden with. Others prefer to let the bike do all the talking. The new 9-T from BMW. (engine whirring) The challenge, of course, in that space: you have 30 or 60 seconds to tell a story. You have a little mini story. You saw the one on the 1200-GS. You saw the one on the raft. This couple going out and they're going off to somewhere remote that you can't get to by a bike, so they're gonna put it on a raft and take it there. On the next one, that whole thing about escape. That's very much of the industry, escape. But the way that we did it wasn't. Usually, it's a little bit about just showing someone riding and the camera just hovering over that bike and showing all that. We wanted to build story in. For the first two years, we did this Feed Your Restless campaign. And that came from insight about the riders. If you're a motorcyclist, there's nothing that you want to do but get on your bike. When you're not on your bike, you think about getting on your bike. When you're in your car, you're thinking about riding a bike. It's feeding that restless. You have that restless itch, and you want to feed it. What our challenge was is that they wanted to increase their market share. They have major market share in Europe, but in US, they're not one if the major players, compared to some of the other brands. We wanted to get the awareness out there of who BMW is. Go back to brand as a person. When you're buying a Harley-Davidson, everybody knows Harley-Davidson. You know the persona of Harley-Davidson. You can describe Harley-Davidson. There's an embodiment of Harley-Davidson. Let me look at the riders that ride Harley-Davidson. But BMW didn't have a persona. You couldn't describe the brand. You could the cars, perhaps, but not the motorcycles. When people are considering buying a Triumph, or a BMW, or a Harley, they didn't know what club they were joining they looked at BMW. So, what's a club? And that's any brand. What club am I joining when I buy that phone or I'm holding that beverage. And the same with motorcycles. Our challenge was to create that identity for them. That persona for them. We did that through Feed Your Restless. These are some print ads that we did. Here's one more, here's another spot that we did right here. (rock music) (alarm beeping) Restless starts early. Restless starts often. Restless got needs. Feed it. We did these three spots and we wanted to end every one of them with that Feed Your Restless. We wanted it to be that storytelling thing. It was on a napkin or it was left at a hotel room. Like this one. (engine whirring) Restless doesn't make reservations. Or excuses. Or anything else that might get in its way. Savvy? Sleep on that. If you can. I mean, motorcycles, c'mon. I just wanted to show, before I move into this final segment, let me just grab a quick example here. This is a Northwest brand that's pretty fun. This is Keen. Keen footwear. A lot of people heard of Keen. That's an example of a brand that started off with one product. Very similar to Gatorade. They kind of created a category. That sandal, that Newport sandal. It's a protective sandal that you could wear while you're hiking and all that, breathable. They had moved into other footwear. You know, hiking, boots and all those things. They had a lot of brand fans, but they didn't really know why they were loyal. That was part of our opportunity was to look at why they were loyal to them, and then see if they had the runway to move into other things. Clothing is one thing they wanted to launch. Move beyond footwear, socks, up into clothing. We came up with this positioning for them that turned into a tagline for them. And it was Follow Your Feet. They started off with footwear. So footwear, follow your feet sounds very footwear-centric, right? But if you follow your feet, what we followed that up with was: you'll find your heart. Follow your feet, you'll find your heart. Your feet will take you to places you want to go whether you're wearing, as you're wearing their clothes and equipment, backpacks and all those things. What we did is we created a brand book for them, and we created a brand video. I mentioned the brand video. This is example of one that was shown. They showed it online, but initially they showed it internally to get people excited, like at sales meetings. And then they showed it to the retailers like REI and others to get them excited about that emotional push. For some of us, they'll always be something new around every corner. Something worth seeking out. Where no one else would think to look. It's what keeps us up late around the fire. What wakes us before everyone else. What keeps us asking, "Why not?" To us, that's a path worth taking. A path worth making. Because when you follow your feet, you'll find your heart. We put that into a brand book for them that brought in all the things that they're passionate about. Their giving programs and their products. Why they make certain products and their mission and their promise. All those things were put into that brand book. We moved that into the communication. This was print ads that were shown in Outside Magazine, et cetera. It has that same attitude, that same sense of adventure, and following your feet and finding your heart. This is outdoor and radio. There's a radio here: Seattle, it's time to put your feet in a pair of American-built Keen Durand hiking boots. And then onto a few places the rest of the world's probably never heard of. And probably never will. Like Pretzel Tree Trail. (crunching) Mmmm. Poo Poo Point. (sniffing) Ew. And why not hit Squawk Mountain while we're at it. (bird squawking) Keen Durand hiking boots deliver durable comfort from the first step to the millionth. C'mon, ol Marmot Pass is a callin'. (squeaking) Just follow your feet. Keen Durand hiking boots. Head to your local Keen retailer today. What we're leading up to is the launch of the clothing. They made clothing pants and jacket and things. They wanted us to create something. They weren't sure how the customers would, if they'd love the clothing, the pants especially. Or if this was gonna be a risky thing. They wanted us to create something that would give them a little leeway there. What we came up with was the world's largest wear test. If you think of a wear test, you're given something to try to see if you like it. And then you give comments, what could be changed and adjusted. With the pants we did this world's largest wear test where we seeded it with some if these ideas of global helping hand giver, long distance traveler, garage clean-up guy. We talked about the lifestyle, how it meets the need for those, the clothing. The anatomically correct and protection and durability. And all those things. (cheerful ukulele music) Today we're here to talk about pants. As most of you know, Keen started with a simple design challenge. Can sandals protect your toes? The answer is the Newport Sandal. All about fit, comfort, and durability. And as we started to go up, we started thinking about well what about socks? Left and right specific. You have left and right gloves. Makes sense right? And then as we went from sandals to socks, we started thinking about well what about pants? Can we make pants comfortable? Can we make pants that you can play in? We saw an opportunity. Look at pants today. One big straight line. Your body's not straight. We want to make pants that are comfortable and you can move in. When we make shoes, we make it with a last. For your toes, your arch, and your heel. So we have a last for our shoes. To create a last for our pants. We went out to factories, that thought we were absolutely nuts. Can't be done. Not gonna happen. People don't do that. And that's the moment when we knew we were onto something. We wanted to create pants that you could play in. Pants that fit like Keens. Coming out of that video, it was a lot of fun to create that experience around the pants. You can see that we were building on their legacy of shoes. And moving up the leg to the pants. We did a series of three videos to introduce the pants. We put them online. What we did for the wear test part of it is that when the pants went for sell we gave away a coupon for a free pair of shoes up to $200 value pair of shoes. That's a pretty good giveaway. What we did is we had people lined up around the block to buy the pants 'cause they got the shoes. Curious about the pants, but also wanted the shoes. We had them sign a faux contract, and it said: you have to post at least three times to social media about how you use these pants. We had a lot of fun. As you see, a lot of fun posts about people using the pants. On Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. It got the word out about the pants. The launch was very successful. They sold out. In fact, they approached us afterwords, "Can you do a video about why we ran out of pants?" That's a good example of an evolution of a brand and also successful use of all the tools that we have. We did all the retail presence there.