Behind the Brand Process: Howler Bros

Outline

• Introduction
• Wild Inspiration
• Big Challenges & Inspiring Insights
• Building a Plan for a Brave New Brand
• Making the Sausage: Visual Strategy, Brand Voice & Brand Identity
• Success & Brand Management
• Wrap Up
  

Introduction

After over fifteen years, I’m still unabashedly in love with Howler Bros. Howler is a company built from a dizzying array of influences and ideas, united by a unique vision to offer something remarkably different in outdoor apparel. Its vibrant, expressive design references a laundry list of things they love—like surfing, classic skate culture, western wear, and dozens more cultural influences. I share many of those loves. But in the wrong hands, branding with such disparate touchstones could be hard to recognize, confusing to shoppers, and lacking clear direction. Our work was cut out for us to build a strong brand identity.

The branding we created with Howler Bros turns that challenge into an advantage. As a brand, you can’t categorize them, but you can absolutely recognize them. Just ask their legions of customers and the collectors who snap up every product they release, including Matthew McConaughey, who has been known to see an item in marketing and just show up at the offices to get one—even if it’s not yet for sale.

Howler Bros deftly modernizes traditional outdoor apparel with a twist to create original, elevated clothing that embodies the soul and passion of coastal life. They also embrace idiosyncrasy, putting pearl-snap buttons on relaxed polos and Gaucho shirts. Why? Because pearl snaps are f*cking awesome, with a western / ’70s / vintage sort of design vibe. If it worked so well for childhood hero Burt Reynolds, why not sport ’em today, too? And maybe grow a bitchin’ mustache to match.

The Howler team’s vision of a design-driven clothing company focused on quality, signature details, and smart functionality struck a chord—and the brand’s popularity exploded. Today, they boast a vast audience, but they started small. I still get a jolt when I see a Howler hat across an airport miles away from our shared home base here in Austin, Texas. And I still remember my first meeting with founder Chase Heard, then an architect, over a beer or two in East Austin.

How does a tiny startup make such a strong splash in a market as competitive as outdoor apparel? Let’s time travel and take a deep dive into the process of building Howler Bros’ branding.

Wild Inspiration

Howler Bros founders Chase Heard and Andy Stepanian spent their adolescent summers riding waves and patrolling the waters and wildlife of the East Coast. We share that geographic origin, but instead of waves, I was riding a Town and Country™ skate deck outfitted with neon pink Slime Balls™ wheels along the roughly paved roads of a North Carolina mill town. That skateboard weighed a ton; I chose it solely based on the color palette and graphics. Scuffed pink rails protected a prized portfolio of Thrasher™, Santa Cruz™, and Jimmy’z stickers™. Skate culture was one of my gateways to falling in love with branding, marketing, and design.

Chase and Andy’s vision for the company—and the name Howler Brothers—was inspired by a wild surf trip to Costa Rica. Those guys have great stories. Across strong waves and stronger sunset cocktails, the echoing cry of the Howler Monkey served as their soundtrack for exploration, adventure, and misadventure. Chase and Andy imagined that epic simian yawp not just as a warm reminder of a treasured destination, but also as a future call to action for legions of outdoor enthusiasts across the country, and beyond. Outdoor apparel would be the vehicle for delivering that message.

Chase and Andy envisioned a brand built from “a whole bunch of things we love.” The goal was to mash up their myriad of culture-bending colors, throw-back fabrics, nostalgic graphics, and more to create unique but timeless apparel and gear. Hence, the pearl snap buttons, wildly varying illustrations, and liberal use of contrast stitching and whimsical embroidery. The bigger “why” for doing it? To inspire an audience to get out into nature and the world around them—whether through global travel or a stroll around the park.

Building on their initial inspiration and vision, the Howler Bros partners planned to design everything they made in Austin, Texas—a booming town that inspires daily with its vibrant and diverse creative culture. My young agency was riding the same wave, surfing the city’s swell from the sleepy state capital toward one of America’s most celebrated cities.

Big Challenges & Inspiring Insights

Armchair entrepreneurs may see Howler Bros’ success and think that their opportunity in the marketplace was obvious. They might even say that launching the company seems like an easy decision, looking back on all they’ve achieved. Looking in the rearview mirror, it’s easy to dismiss the massive leap of faith it takes to launch a venture that is so distinctive and remarkably singular.

This retrospective confidence is something I see a lot. The truth is that launching something genuinely new and different takes vision, fortitude, and confidence. In our branding work, often, the same client partner that heralds the brilliant simplicity and wit of RXBAR’s packaging at project kickoff will get cold feet when we present a strong brand identity option that is also singularly unique. Part of our job is to guide our partners through the process of reckoning with, understanding and accepting a brand identity or packaging that is different from anything they’ve seen before. It takes guts to stand out and be different. Many thousands of years of evolution have taught us that blending into the crowd means safety. In branding, the opposite is true.

Howler had the courage to stand out from the herd and the youthful naivety to believe that, combined with hard work, it could mean success. I speak from experience; it’s how I started this agency. However, the founders faced a substantial set of challenges in forging their vision into reality.

A Saturated Market

Fashion and apparel have always been a fiercely competitive category, with brands fighting tooth and nail for customers’ recognition and trust, worthwhile margins, and longevity. The past twenty years have brought an exponential number of competitors into stores, oversaturating the landscape and diluting marketing impact for all but the most savvy (and ad-spendy) fashion brands.

Competition with Outdoor Performance Apparel

The barrier to entry in performance-based apparel is extremely high. Innovation, design, and product development in the category come with a hefty price tag: Top players like Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and Marmot spend six to eight figures each year on R&D. It’s practically impossible for a small startup to compete with the big guys in a marketplace defined primarily by product performance.

Changing Consumer Behavior

Grabbing customers’ attention in a saturated category is extremely challenging. What can you do to guide customer attention and cut through the cacophony in a din of a thousand voices? Even if you do, consumer behavior is difficult to measure and predict—and Howler was going on intuition vs. research. Staying “sticky” is even more difficult in the apparel industry because of how quickly fashion trends come and go. Just ask my closet, which holds a selection of shirts my wife wryly labels either “unfortunate” or “unf*ckable.”

The Muddy Brand Challenge

How do you build a strong brand identity that is cohesive from so many cultural touchpoints? The Howler founders envisioned a company that unites their passions—like surfing, classic skate culture, fly fishing, western wear, waves, (pause for a breath) world cultures, food, and music. And the list goes on. That many design references can be too much for consumers to untangle.

Building a Plan for a Brave New Brand

Clearly, launching a successful outdoor apparel brand was not without challenges. But on the flip side of that same coin, were there opportunities? We put our heads together to build a plan to identify and leverage those opportunities into a strong challenger brand that could punch way above its weight.

We can’t show all of the playbook, but here are some of the advantages that inform brand strategy.

The Sea of Same

At the time of Howler Bros’ inception, brands in the outdoor apparel space competed on product performance. The highest-strength microfibers. The lightest weight waterproof nylon. The quickest drying, wind-resistant, bear-proof tech underpants. While top brands lead the race with performance innovation, style, and branding ran a far distant second. Outdoor apparel was as bland as a camp-pouch of dehydrated beef stroganoff. Competitors offered the same general looks and color palettes with no creativity or flair. Marketing was styled to match. An upstart brand with an expressive personality stood a chance of grabbing attention and standing out.

Direct to Consumer

The traditional retail clothing model is notoriously challenging. Low margins, slow AR, loss—the list of challenges goes on and on. From the start, Chase and Andy planned to focus on direct-to-consumer sales. This approach would eliminate many of the challenges of traditional retail and allow Howler to have a more intimate relationship with their shoppers. Branding begins and maintains that conversation.

Limited Release

Howler never planned to feature evergreen products. The decision was driven as much by the excitement of designing more apparel as it was by business planning and marketing. Chase seemed to sketch apparel ideas constantly. Small, frequent runs of seasonal apparel would help Howler hedge their bets and “fail small” if a shirt or jacket didn’t sell well. Limited-release collections could build a sense of urgency and scarcity, driving up demand for the latest unstructured snapback hat or Bruja Board Short design.

Forget Functional

Howler knew they had no chance of competing on functional benefits alone, but there was clear potential in appealing to consumers’ desire for a brand with emotional and social benefits. Creative, playful, and even whimsical designs and colors could give outdoor enthusiasts permission to express some personality through their choice of gear. Avid fishermen, backwater guides, creek stompers, and swell seekers want some swagger, too. On the social tip, frequent new limited-release collections would let shoppers show others they were in the know. Social benefits are powerful, and Howler harnessed digital branding and marketing to build those connections with their target audience.

Creating a New Market

Strong differentiation in the market, a then-new online sales model, seasonal limited-release collections, and a spirited, design-driven aesthetic had the potential to add up to something the outdoor industry had not before seen. Howler Bros could fill a niche, build a cult brand, and possibly create an emerging new market.

Making the Sausage: Visual Strategy, Brand Voice & Brand Identity

In our work at the agency, brand strategy gives design creativity purpose and direction. Design is content with intent, and creating a brand is manifesting a vision of an organization’s future. That’s some heavy stuff, and it’s a responsibility we take seriously—even when we have fun doing it.

Our job as brand designers is to combine seemingly disparate ideas, data points, visual cues, and cultural insights to create something completely new and utterly unique. We must also ensure that it gallops with grace and power like a stallion, rather than loping lazily like an aged camel. Howler Bros gave me far more variety in their points of inspiration than the average client partner. It was like drinking from a firehose, and I loved it.

It doesn’t take a branding expert to tell you that media spanning Bones Brigade tees, tiki bar artifacts, and obscure classic country album covers don’t share many visual similarities. I have an affinity for each ingredient, but they don’t Vitamix™ well into a tasty brand smoothie. But, if you look beyond image and aesthetics into character and culture, there are shared aspects that unite Howler’s colorful grab bag of design influences. They’re niche. They have cult audiences. They are quirky but unapologetically themselves. And above all, they’re memorable. Even iconic, in the right instances.

Creating an image and identity that elegantly blended Howler’s laundry list of visual obsessions would be impossible. The best chefs (and fans of The Bear) know that crafting remarkable cuisine is about removing ingredients until the dish is striking in its simplicity. Brand identity design shares this maxim— keep it simple. No brand identity can combine all of a company’s influences or summarize everything about a brand, nor should it try. But crafting a simple brand identity that first feels niche and is memorable, that could become iconic, is absolutely doable. That objective became the centerpiece of our visual strategy.

If this were a movie, this is when upbeat music would kick in, and the director would cue a montage of sketches, presentations, and wadded-up balls of paper, culminating in a light-bulb moment that sparks the Howler Bros logo. I like to imagine Explosions in the Sky playing over these images as the magic of film editing compresses weeks of work into minutes of media montage. I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but I designed a lot of monkeys and a ton of logotypes—many of which found their way from the cutting room floor onto the early t-shirt and hat graphics. Some still resurface today.

With persistence we found a dynamic, memorable brand identity that works in harmony with the expansive range of visual references close to Howler Bros’ hearts. Testing it with varied brand elements—patterning, brand colors, photo assets, and graphic design styles planned for future apparel—was proof that we’d gotten it right.

Howler Bros’ brand voice began as a simple napkin sketch, far less defined and developed than the way we build verbal brand identities today. Fortunately, because it channeled the founders’ passion for exploration and curation through my exceedingly enthusiastic and quirky copywriting, it was a natural match for the adventurous brand. In the least, the casual tone helped differentiate Howler Bros from the big players with little brand personality.

Like the cutting room floor littered with defeated logos, I’ll also fast forward through the production phase of developing Howler’s brand identity. Production includes all of the work building meticulous mechanical art files for printing garments and hang tags, perfectly dialing in Pantone colors and package samples, reviewing and editing color proofs, and ultimately making sure everything we design on screen comes out even more beautiful and functional than imagined in real life. It’s a crucial part of the branding process.

One thing I won’t skip bragging about is our production duo, Crystal and Kayla, two members of our team who devote all of their time to crushing production for our client partners. Their expertise and insight is golden.

Success & Brand Management

Successful branding and marketing are equal parts promise and delivery. Brand identity, packaging, websites, and marketing services can all be leveraged to communicate big promises about a brand and its products. Those promises can include functional benefits—the purpose of the product and the problem it solves. The brand’s emotional and social benefits are even more sticky—how it makes the buyer feel and what it communicates about them to the world.

Ultimately, none of those promises mean anything without a delivery of products and services that match the value of the brand promise. If promise and delivery are not aligned, the brand is broken. Marketing seems transactional and even opportunistic. Public trust and affinity quickly vanish, and sales follow suit.

With our collaboration, Howler Bros launched into the marketplace, making big promises. The strikingly electric logotype, bold brand identity, unconventional color combinations and patterns, and personality-filled copy and taglines all sent a message—we are not your average outdoor apparel. But how would that message be received? The answer was in the company’s delivery of that promise.

In short, Howler Bros delivered the goods. The apparel was well constructed and high quality, with thoughtful details, like pockets lined with microfiber material for cleaning surf-soaked sunglasses. Orders were delivered promptly and included a free gift. Their sales funnel was smart, the purchase process was a breeze for shoppers, and customer service was top-notch. Smart brand management kept consumers happy and even excited throughout the shopping process, building affinity for the brand. Marketing kept fans in the loop as new seasonal releases rolled out online.

It wasn’t long before shiny Howler stickers started showing up on Yeti coolers far and wide. Collaborations with like-minded brands like Chaco, Topo Designs, and others introduced them to new and broader target audiences. They nurtured fan engagement, growing their voice’s informal, personal nature. Brand recognition began to spread, fueled by grassroots marketing and social sharing—even reaching early celebrity fans, including Will Ferrell and Jimmy Kimmel.

Our collaboration has continued as Howler Bros has blossomed from a niche cult following into a formidable, established brand leader. Our creative partnership has produced special-release seasonal campaigns that run the gamut. We’ve designed wild-patterned cut-and-sew shirts, fuzzy chenille-patched hats, and chunky, chain-stitched embroidered jackets. There are richly illustrative terry cloth towels, contrast-stitched bandanas, textured patches, custom-branded tags, and labels galore. We’ve even designed a Howler x Helms beer, as well as a shaker and outdoor cocktail kit.

Wrap Up

In the years since we first sat down together, Howler Bros has become a defining force in changing the landscape of outdoor apparel. By consistently delivering a spirited and elevated product and experience to customers, they foster consistent loyalty among a robust, longtime audience of fans. They bring new shoppers into the fold by constantly promising new and different design-driven apparel. While competitors are following their current lookbook and style guide, Howler is designing apparel for years from now— with the same values and vision that got them where they are today.

All of these efforts, along with plenty of sweat, combined to create a new category in outdoor apparel—and define a design style that is sometimes emulated but seldom equaled. We take tremendous pride in walking beside Howler Bros on the journey. Cheers to old friends and new horizons.

Want to learn more about building successful brands? Check out our related articles in the journal, or shoot us a note with ideas you’d like to see us explore in the future.