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Starcom Worldwide

Rebranding

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Services

Branding
Logos, Iconography & Illustration
Signage & Wayfinding
Brand Film
Brand Merchandise & Apparel
Brand Messaging

Team

Creative Direction: Christian Helms
Design Team: Alex Roka, Emily Prestridge, Becca Lang
Production Team: Crystal Glover, Kayla Dockery
Copywriting: Andy Ogburn
Brand Management: Ryan Kitchens

The Story

Starcom didn’t have an awareness issue.

The company had a what-do-you-stand-for issue.

When you’ve been an authority in the media universe since Leo Burnett first came on the scene, your expertise shouldn’t be easily lost in a jungle of media jargon or in the cyclone of changing marketing technology. You should come across as the leader you’ve always been.

If you’re a century-old consultative business, your company needs to look like it.

You need to show the world you have a point-of-view that no one else has. But how do you establish that when your industry, by definition, is always evolving?

You do it with an understanding of yourself that never wavers, but an understanding of the moment that’s constantly adjusting its aperture to reinvent your partners’ businesses.

Our work for Starcom took a wealth of positioning work and got down to business figuring out what would feel right in offices from Chicago to Shanghai. An identity that would reintroduce Starcom to a powerful target audience so small you can almost fit ‘em all in one boardroom.

The design mission was twofold: stake a claim to the brand’s hard-earned expertise and professionalism, and stand for something bigger than today’s technology — because it’s almost yesterday’s.

The solution? Give an iconic brand the dignified type suite and color palette it deserves, but do it with a dynamic logo and extensions that make this B2B name feel more like an approachable consumer brand.

We kept it all a touch celestial to tie back to Starcom’s roots, but we cleared the way for the brand voice to step up to its rightful podium: something closer to The Economist than Bored Ape Yacht Club.

And while the end result may look pretty clean and buttoned-up, rest assured: we got our hands dirty on this one. Our team illustrated a wide array of digital iconography, guided photoshoots, and capped it all off by writing and producing the animated launch video you see above.

Helms Workshop®