Blake Howard
This episode of A Change of Brand is brought to you by Brand Pad, a new standard of brand guidelines. Brand Pad is an online platform made by designers for designers. Keep listening for a special code just for you, our listeners.
Daniel Renda
People love evolutions when there's something familiar and you can deliver on it in an expected way that people could relate to because they have something that they could link back to. It's the case that you've seen with all great art over the years. If you make your jump from. You know the Renaissance to Picasso. It's like, forget it. I think it's like in "Back to the Future” when it goes from Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix and he goes into, like, slamming the guitar and people are like “what did you just do”? So, I think if you can link to something familiar, but doing it in an unexpected way, that's magic.
Blake Howard
Hey everyone, welcome to A Change of Brand, a show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory, drama, or disaster, I'm your host Blake Howard. I am so excited to kick off season four with an awesome change story in a category we haven't really covered before The grocery store market is an estimated $818 billion industry, and it's seen as fair share of changes, the first of which started in Memphis, TN. Around 1914 grocer Clarence Saunders was working on an idea that would change the way the world would think about shopping for food. At that time, when you walked into your local general store, you simply handed your list of requests. Butter, sugar, Castor oil, stove Polish, bear grease. You know the usual items. You handed that over to the grocer and they disappeared behind the counter only to return a few minutes later with a bag filled with your items. Clarence felt like this made no sense at all, and he had a vision to allow the customer, of all people, to walk the aisles and pick out whatever their heart desired. Clarence was on to something, and it led to the first ever supermarket called Piggly Wiggly, which still has around 500 locations in the US. Many customers today still say their quote “big on the pig”, which was one of their famous campaigns. More than a century later, the grocery industry faced another massive change. The gig economy and the introduction of app-based services allowed consumers to pay someone else to shop for them. And ironically, reverting back to the original pre-1914 grocer model. However, this time the shoppers conveniently deliver the items right to your doorstep. Today, there are a slew of pick and deliver options out there. Instacart, however, has found ways to innovate and has sustained their leadership in the category. After about 10 years in the market, their brand was feeling a bit stale. They were wilted, and in 2022 they started to dangle a new look and feel for customers to get excited about. But the path to get there wasn't easy. Would they bite off more than they could chew? Well, today we get to find out. For more back story on the 2022 refresh for Instacart and what led up to this change of brand, let's go to brand strategist Tracy Clark for our brief-in.
Tracy Clark.
Apoorva Mehta found himself bored as a supply chain engineer at Amazon. Despite loving to build software, he didn't feel challenged. So, in 2010, he quit his job and sought out that challenge elsewhere. In the span of two years, he had launched 20 startups ranging from social networks to lawyers to ad networks for gaming firms. All of which ultimately failed. Apoorva realized it wasn't just the challenge he craved he needed to genuinely care about whatever problem he was trying to solve. Instead of looking outside his area of expertise, he looked inward. Apoorva loved to cook but living in San Francisco without a car meant he was limited to his local grocery store, which was often severely lacking. Anyway, this led to his light bulb moment. The year was 2012. People were shopping online, meeting people online, watching movies online why couldn't grocery shopping be online, too? Apoorva quickly got to work designing an on-demand grocery delivery platform. Alongside co-founders Max Mullen and Brandon Leonardo, Apoorva launched Instacart in San Francisco with just a handful of employees and a simple mission to make grocery shopping easier. Customers could place an order through the app and have their groceries delivered to their door within just a few hours. No more waiting in long lines at the grocery store, fighting for a parking spot, walking a mile with heavy bags, or trying to squeeze a shopping trip into an already packed schedule. Instacart success benefited from the rise of smartphones, which in 2012 were actually still sort of gaining popularity. People became more comfortable making transactions online, so the idea of ordering services online didn't seem far-fetched. With ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft leading the way, the gig economy was about to boom. But then, and those of you following the timeline will guess this. Yep, the pandemic hit during lockdown. Lots of people relied on online shopping, including those who never considered it as a way to get their groceries before. This quickly became the norm and in some cases a lifeline for those who had no other option. But while Instacart started in the lead, there was plenty of competition entering the market. In this time, Instacart expanded beyond groceries, delivering beauty products, electronics, pet supplies and more. No longer wanting to be seen simply as the people picking out your fruits and veggies and Instacart grew into other markets aiming to become the leader in on demand delivery. But in the midst of this success, Apoorva stepped down as CEO to serve as executive chairman. Going public, welcoming a new CEO and CMO striving to be the leading grocery technology company. All the ingredients were there to create a crave worthy change of brand. But were they dangling the carrot a little too far in front of them? Stay tuned to hear how it all unfolds.
Blake Howard
Originally drawn by one of the founders, Max Mullen, the first logo for Instacart featured a carrot as its symbol and a cursive Instagramy script for the wordmark. They ditched that typeface around 2016 for an updated geometric one, but they kept the carrot the same. The 2022 refresh that we're looking at today took the ubiquitous carrot symbol and made it something more. It's now a buried carrot with a clever little green leaf arrow garnish on top. The biggest change, however, was throughout the entire visual system. Wolf Ollins the global brand agency who led the work along with the Instacart Creative studio loaded up a full bag of brand changes, a custom typeface, refreshed colors, updated product design, illustration styles, photography styles and messaging were all included in the final update and overall, it's pretty fantastic. Be sure to see it for yourself at www.achangeofbrand.com.
Kevin Byrd
Hi, I'm Kevin Byrd, I'm the executive creative director here at Instacart. I lead the creative studio, which is our internal team responsible for every marketing touchpoint, and the shepherds of Instacart's refreshed identity.
Blake Howard
Kevin came to Instacart around June 2021, and the idea of a brand change was on the radar. But he didn't come in with a preconceived recipe of what it should be. It was more about just starting the journey.
Kevin Byrd
For me it's more about putting together the right people in the room and then the excitement of sort of like surprise and delight moments along that journey where there was a problem that we wanted to solve. You know, we wanted the new brand identity to be modernized and feel familiar at the same time. To better service the four sides of the marketplace, I mean, Instacart is kind of unique in that regard. As a business, we're continuing to serve and delight customers, but we also need to enable our retail partners. We need to amplify consumer product group brands and also celebrate our shopper community. And so that's a big ask for one brand. It's not just consumer facing, we're not just making an identity update for soda pop for instance. Right. You know, Instacart has been around for a decade and a decade ago, we were just a grocery delivery company. And back then, I think we chose the carrot because it was fun. It's approachable, it's friendly, represented food that we fill our grocery carts with. Fast forward to today and to see how the business had evolved, we've transformed to become a grocery first, but not grocery only service. For me, the brand identity needed to kind of catch up to that new vision for the company, you know, from fresh produce to home improvement, to beauty to pharmacy, electronics, we now serve all these different use cases and aisles and retail categories that we had never before. And to me, that marks a moment where the brand identity likewise needs to evolve to reflect that change.
Blake Howard
Perhaps more than a rebrand, Kevin was really thinking about how to build up a world class creative studio in house for Instacart, which is different than some large enterprises. Most of them have brand managers that outsource much of the creative to agencies.
Kevin Byrd
The other model, which is the one that we kind of followed, was creating an in-house team that included motion designers to art directors to creative directors, to copywriters to photo retouching and almost building an internal team with the same function that you would see at an agency. But the advantage there is speed, right? We're able to bring things to market at a much more efficient model. But not only that you have people that are dedicated to the brand and the creative expression of that brand over the long term. Clients so often hire an agency and sometimes they might not understand the business as well. They might have ulterior motives about winning awards or whatever that may be, and it's kind of like a flash in the pan, which is great in some cases, but having an internal group that is dedicated. To building one brand over the long term, I think matters.
Blake Howard
With big ambitions for the in-house team, Kevin also knew he needed to get the foundations right first, so he brought in Wolf Ollins to lead their team and the executive leadership through the process.
Daniel Renda
So, I always wondered when they were going to address brand because I knew that the product was so innovative and that a brand would. Make it even better.
Blake Howard
That's Daniel Renda, senior creative director of Wolf Ollins and creative lead for this rebrand. Like a lot of people, he started using Instacart during the pandemic, and once they landed this project, he started to really nerd out.
Daniel Renda
They wanted to engage all these audiences across different channels, create a deeper connection. They wanted to focus more on those like emotional sensory experiences that people have with food that are in turn made possible with the product, right? You're getting something, you're cooking it or you're sharing it with friends. There's also something magical and very fortunate for us all that we can get, anything that we want delivered at any time. So, this meant that it wasn't just food. The term came up Food First, but not food only.
Blake Howard
There was an existing relationship already in place between Instacart and Wolf Ollins that preceded both Daniel and Kevin, but luckily for them, their working styles came together like peanut butter and Jelly. Initially there were a lot of conversations and tension around what Daniel called the carrot in the room. Should it stay or should it go if they wanted to be Food First, but not food only. Wouldn't a literal carrot as a logo signal food only? But for the Pro Carrot faction it felt like there was equity and to change that symbol would be anti Max Mullen, one of the founders, who drew the original carrot, right? Yeah, so it gets a little a little tricky when it's one of the founders artwork because man, that symbol was probably really precious to him and emotional and represented the years of hard work founding this company, working through a start up, all the things. It's no longer a carrot. It's no longer just a graphic symbol, it's like this emotional. Identifier for him. How did you manage that? That make you nervous?
Daniel Renda
Oh, of course. I mean, anytime someone has a personal connection to a logo, it becomes hard to separate preferences from what's best for the company. It's hard to judge design. We're constantly reminding people that choosing a logo is different than painting your house. Everyone has to live with it. It's hard to justify a new symbol. Sometimes that doesn't immediately tie to the brand name. They were over that hurdle. They wanted fast, fresh food at the time right there, that was the thought behind it. People already associated it, and it had some recognition. People said it's the brand with the carrot and we thought, well, maybe that could work in our favor to build this emotional connection. There's issues with the execution. But what if we could build meaning into it? In fact, the carrot mythology was so deeply rooted internally, employees often called themselves carrots.
Blake Howard
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of that as a redhead and as someone who has resisted the Carrot Top.
Daniel Renda
As I said that, I was wondering how. You feel about it.
Blake Howard
Hey most redheads out there. Well, I can't speak for all of us. I will say I have never liked being called Carrot Top. OK, internal nicknames aside, Wolf Ollins and Instacart, were ready to kick off the project.
Daniel Renda
You start with a kickoff audit session to hear everyone's ambition, no matter what level they were in the company, and we had, we thought it was extremely important to learn the day-to-day. This is a brand that has to work hard through a product experience. It has to work through all these different communications. It can't just be 1 singular facet; it has to have many. We created a shared working space and shared Figma, where everyone could add at any time words, references, sketches, motion. There were no bad ideas. It was phenomenal. The work that our creative studio could look and just see what they were working on and where they were going with it inspired our team.
Blake Howard
As they started co-creating and doing working sessions together, the overarching idea of a shop and savor started to surface. It was a phrase meant to capture the essence of Instacart and to guide the visual and verbal work forward.
Daniel Renda
It's not just food or tech, it's both. We saw this interesting tension, anytime you can get creative tension, it becomes really interesting for ideas and the way that things can express themselves, both visually and verbally. So, these two ideas didn't immediately go together, technology and food. You think of tech as more cold, right? You think of food as warmer. You get harder lines versus rounder forms. That’s the insight that led us to shop and savor. So, what that means is Instacart Power is how you shop. So, you can savor all of life. Shop is the product innovation, that efficient way to shop and savor is the insight that it gives you back valuable time. So, you could save all of life.
Blake Howard
Daniel said the shop and savor idea didn't come immediately. It was a bit of a curvy process as the team explored additional concepts, but this one worked best with the initial design. It's worth noting they weren't structuring this project with big milestone presentations. It was pretty fluid. They had working sessions with the creative studio core team and saved the high-pressured reveal moments only for the executive team.
Daniel Renda
All in all, this was a very positive relationship where nobody was poking holes, everyone was building and we naturally just like moved away from the things that weren't working. And I mentioned that it wasn't linear. That's kind of how we got to shop and savor it, just developed a long a line where other things started to fall away. In spite of it being a lovely collaboration, as I said it was definitely a non linear path. We didn't have these presentations with the core working team. Everything flowed from a safe space, no wrong answers, but eventually you have to get buy-in from the rest of the executive leadership. The company had just hired a new CEO and CMO both previously at Facebook and everybody was figuring out how to work with each other, which is always an interesting part of the process.
Blake Howard
OK, time for a quick break. When we come back, we learn how Daniel and Kevin handle the executive team. Will it be a nice and smooth express lane checkout experience or a clean-up on all two moment for the brand? All that and more. After the break. Hey, while we're taking this break, I want to give a huge shout out to Brand Pad for sponsoring this episode. I love using Brand Pad here at Matchstick where I work. Gone are the days of static and dusty brand guidelines made by designers for designers. Brand Pad is easy to use and allows us and our clients to make updates instantly because it's become our go to platform for creating beautiful digital guidelines for clients. Our friends at Brand Pad have given us a code to share with you in hopes that it helps you too. Use code Change15 for 15% off of your next subscription. For more information check out Brand Pad dot IO. www.brandpad.io
Tracy Clark
Hey listeners, did you know Blake, our fearless podcast host and Dad joke expert has written a book? Yeah, it's totally true. It covers a range of brand identity topics and solutions to help CMOS and other brand leaders uncover a more radically relevant brand. In fact, that's the name "Radically Relevant. And since we all love to take quizzes, it comes with an assessment too so you can see how your brand stacks up against the competition. For more on the book or to take the free Radically Relevant assessment, check out www.radicallyrelevantbrand.com . And if you're enjoying the show, don't forget to join the conversation on Instagram to see more about today's episode, share with a friend, or send us an idea you have for a future episode @achangeofbrand. All right, let's get back to it.
Blake Howard
OK, so let's recap at this point in the story Wolf Ollins and the Instacart Creative studio are two peas in a pod. They are moving and grooving, but they're about to get served a slice of humble pie.
Daniel Renda
Let's go to our first big meeting with the steering committee. We had CEO and founder Max, who drew the carrot, we had the President, etc. We were used to having these open, long working sessions, now we had 30 minutes to walk through weeks and months of work. I always believe in letting people in early to the process. I think because people were starting to work with each other and learning there was a little bit of trepidation to let people in too early. We had this 30-minute meeting and of course, it starts late, so now there's less than 30 minutes and you know the feeling, a very short time to work and walk through a lot of it. Thinking, we presented several directions, you asked about how many we would do in this kind of presentation. You don't want to go too wide. You want to curate down a bit? People have limited time. You just want to get to the key takeaways. We had several directions that went on a range. I think we had three at the time, no carrot at all, carrot being abstracted, carrots staying very close in. We had explored all different kinds of metaphors. The room was a little tense, people were in front of their bosses. You usually don't get much time with, particularly with CEOs and or C-Suite. So it's all about focusing on the right information. You never know how anybody will be in person. You watch all the videos you want to get an idea, but meeting, in a meeting, it's very different. So, it was an interesting part of the process and it was very reactive. Well at the at the beginning it was actually very silent for too long then it was said that there are interesting ideas here, but none of this is right. And we know at the beginning of the process, nothing is completely right in the first go round.
I was surprised that everyone was very focused on the app icon and maybe even more so than the emotional idea because we had heard so much about going from transactional to emotional. This was completely different than working with the core team. We were not talking about feelings here very, very deeply. We were looking at visceral reactions. And I think that people were also expecting just the singular focus on logo, but maybe not thinking about the system as symbiotically as we had. Trying to think we had some notional product design that I think from, you know coming from product led organizations, that's always a little touchy the screens and stuff that we showed to present the logo ideas were quite different than what the product looked like in present day. That makes people nervous, like how can we change the product that takes a long time. And so a vote was cast in the room of whether or not we would keep or cut the carrot. It was like get right to the point because that was the question. The carrot in the room, that is not something that typically happens to us that will fall on us, that we have votes in the room. Only one exact voter wanted to move away from the carrot. Everyone else was adamant about staying while the core team had this appetite to move beyond it, it was clear that executive leadership did not. The scary part of the conclusion here? The scary part was that they started questioning any change and we were like, whoa, OK, that that's very different. They started saying things like we need to see something that's 10 times better. And I could see a lot of our team members were deflated. But I remember saying to myself, I was like no way. We can make something better for this company like they have grown so much. They have equity there, but there's no way we can’t evolve that. To have more. So, I became a little bit more energized, I think than some.
Blake Howard
The executive meeting didn't go quite as planned, and that's the way the rebrand cookie crumbles. One minute things are going great, and then the next executives are questioning any change at all. Kevin Byrd, however, wasn't discouraged. Rather, he felt like the meeting gave him clarity.
Kevin Byrd
And the majority of us were fairly new to Instacart, so we hadn't quite figured out everyone's working style and preferences. I will say the best thing that we could get out from that leadership presentation was clarity. Sometimes you might get a comment that's in passing, but it's not until later that you get full clarity. I think initially it was the, you know, the world is your oyster, everything can be changed, and I think this was the first time we heard from them loud and clear that they wanted us to focus on evolving the carrot icon and that this brand identity refresh should be an evolution, not a revolution. And that was really helpful to walk away with right. Because then we became much more focused on what the work ahead was for us. It was about bringing new meaning to what the carrot could be. So, I think we left that meeting with much more direction, albeit less time to pull it off. But we knew for the first time what our North Star was.
Blake Howard
With the carrot out front as the overall direction, the Wolf Ollins team started to explore new ways of adding meaning to the Carrot Top. My not so favorite phrase became a really strong answer.
Daniel Renda
Strong answer and that Carrot Top sketch started to work really well in the system and we saw the opportunity to build on that insight of combining the technology with the food right, you have this slit efficient arrow that we also bring together with this juicy carrot and it brought together tech and food in a lovely way.
Blake Howard
Meanwhile, Kevin and CMO Laura Jones were working from the inside, having meetings with leadership to sow the seeds of change and to soften the ground for the new direction to take root.
Daniel Renda
Shop and savor. That was all about duality, and that duality started to inform all the different elements of the system. We grew to love it and everybody on the creative team with us since the creative studio really loved it as well, but we still had to convince the broader team and I think where we went from there is when we got solid enough, we actually had a meeting directly with Max. We knew that he was such an integral part of the company, had such knowledge of where the company had been. Major decision maker, Ambassador to the culture and as we walked him through the glory with the logo change with the typography direction with the color and how the color was playing on that duality, how everything was starting to come together and it really landed well. He congratulated us on transforming that metaphor into something else. And when that happened, we knew that this new design system could take root.
Blake Howard
Founder Max Mullen loved the new direction and felt like the Wolf Ollins team nailed it. And once that happened, it was all downhill from there. He was championing the work with his fellow executives and the company was on board. From here it was all about fine tuning and rolling out. They created 2 custom typefaces and created a really unique art direction overall for the brand.
Daniel Renda
Colors are always polarizing and important. We knew that the color had to relate to food in some way and we also had the advantage of having a carrot in the system. We knew that we can own green and orange, and especially with like bold and purposeful usage. So, it builds this memorable connection because it's a carrot because we use it so intentionally and then we have this cornucopia, this cart full of secondary colors in photography and illustration, supporting graphics, you know, this marketing team has to deliver a lot of messages. It's never going to be so singular that it's just green and orange, right?
It has to have that flexibility and we built the system that way and then I'll for me, I'm a type nerd and we had the opportunity to build a custom typeface, something we love to try and do on every brand when it makes sense. And the typography also speaks to that ethos and allows the brand to speak in this range of tones. Instacart Sans, it works for the product. It's clear and clean, but it also has personality to it. For Instacart, it allows the brand to speak in a more editorial way. It's sophisticated, but it's quirky. It was like actually influenced by some of the gastro type of Herb Lubalin and Lou Dorfsman. So, it has a little of that bodacious feel. It has this kind of voluptuous weight to it at times, and it can feel tasty and bring in that emotion. We developed the voice. The voice is magnetic, joyful, adventurous. We have words, lines like “you, me, and umami” like I think that's really great to think about how we are going to have that range and go from engaging and alive and you know, but then when it has to be sober like something like preventing underage alcohol delivery. You believe the typeface you have, Instacart Sans. So, you have this flexibility to go throughout the brand.
Blake Howard
One part of the updated identity I was curious to get Kevin's take on was the overall photography style. It's very dramatic, almost surreal, with interesting looking people and super cool clothes. Some people criticized it for being too trendy and not quite authentic enough. So, I asked him.
Kevin Byrd
Our consumer-facing photography, for example, is vivid. It's craveable and inspirational and embodies that sort of delight of using the service, but that's a way for us to make an emotional connection to our customers. For shoppers, the photography work that we do there is a little bit more and the style that reflects the work we do with the community, so building transparency and the real connection that they have to the work. And therefore, the photography style shifted to be a little bit more of that journalistic sort of style, feeling a little bit more real, being connected to the customer. So, on one side of the fence, the stuff that you're probably referencing is sort of the craveable vivid, delightful sort of inspiration, even hyper real. Sometimes the delight that you get from using the service, but we're conscious that just like voice and tone as your tone modulates to your audience, the photography style must modulate to that.
Blake Howard
The launch was going to originally be a slow rollout and not a big splash, but CEO Fidji Simo was eager to debut some of the work.
Daniel Renda
So, we're feeling hurried to release a beta set of assets. As a design team, a creative team, a consultant that develops creative work in the world, you always want them off the ground and running and you want the launch to be perfect. But the reality is business needs come before design blog posts. The CEO had a speaking conference where the new brand was going to be featured, and then we needed to expedite assets. What we care about most is our clients need to be successful. We worked with the creative studio to build a story around it, a tight set of assets to deliver, knowing that we were going to build into the brand, rolling out fully, it's still rolling out, it's still rolling out across products and product updates you know are never finished and keep going. Unfortunately, we're developing a lot of the brand still. So, with that, we thought about, like beta typefaces. You know, the logo was still being refined. Like, how can we limit and make sure it's used in a few key places. So then when we, you know, finally release it company wide, everybody has the right assets. It's always a nightmare when you have slightly different assets. It's very, very disheartening when you see like old assets that haven't been taken away. So, we were very careful about that. And then internally there was the unveiling that was led by Max.
Blake Howard
With a launch like this, you've got your eggs in one gigantic basket, so there's a lot to worry about for Daniel. He was most concerned that the logo wouldn't get shared in the right context and would maybe be shown in isolation.
Daniel Renda
I was particularly nervous about making sure that the logo itself didn't just get shown in isolation. I wanted the story to be around it and I think, you know, we had more of an opportunity as we developed like brand videos and things like that. But it's always nerve wracking when you just have something go out there and you don't get to build into it. That's why a lot of agencies do this like this is why we changed. Look at the new book. And this is. What it means strategically. You never want people to feel like it was just a, you know, fresh coat of paint. You want them to understand the intention that is linked to the ambition. That's the meaning we crave. When it just looks like it was a formal shift that could be devastating and ruins the impression of all the work that the team puts into it.
Blake Howard
The work launched in March 2022, with mostly just the new logo, but overtime more mockups and applications and information were released over that summer. Shortly after in August the “World is your Cart” campaign aired, starring none other than Lizzo.
LIZZO Spot:
What am I gonna get? Oooh cherries! How about cherry ice cream... with sprinkles and maybe a baguette? And a French boy (bon jour). LaLa, baby. You know what I need? Bath bombs. Bombs away!
Kevin Byrd
The manifesto there was like one cart, many possibilities. The “World is your Cart” and that campaign really shines a light on the stories that our shopping carts tell about our lives, right? So, giving customers these exciting new ideas about the possibilities of their own digital cart. I guess it's the, it could be thought of as the digital version of being at the supermarket and the conveyor belt going by and you see items on the conveyor belt that says a little something about the person in in line, and there's just a sort of delightful storytelling to that. So, in the sixty second film, we manifest the inspiration of the cart as so much more a collection of goods. But by exploring how it can transform inspiration into reality with one tap through stories told in these delightful, hyper real ways right? So that was really the the concept ever before Lizzo was involved. The idea was how can we take the act of adding things to cart and the changing one's mind for instance, and how that could manifest itself in the physical world? Because that's where the Instacart product fits in, right? Like it's what enables these things to happen. As you're defining a brand, you're also thinking about the cultural land. OK. And you're trying to find celebrities, whether they're musicians or actors or like Lizzo both people that align with the brand from a value perspective and there was a lot about Lizzo that really was in line with how we thought. About the brand, particularly for Instacart, being a service for households and internally that sometimes equates to a short list of celebrities that kind of match the value system of our brand and where we are and where we want to be in the cultural landscape. And then you do a lot of criteria and defining who that would be, and Lizzo was always at the top of our list, you know? And so, when that happened, I was just head over heels. Truly, we're interested in building an iconic brand over the long term, being visually recognizable is one aspect of that, but equally is being part of the cultural conversation. Brand director Rahela would call them fireworks moments that you are being part of the dialogue of what's happening in culture.
Blake Howard
OK, it is time to wrap this up and check out. I'm a big fan of this work overall. The design added meaning, personality and emotion. What could have been a very functional tech brand pushed beyond the expected and used the design, messaging and advertising in a way that makes us feel something. Much like what Dropbox did for online documents. By comparison, Instacart feels like it has a sense of soul, especially when compared to Amazon Fresh or Walmart plus. Also, everyone talks about collaboration on this show. That is a theme, but this is the first time I've ever heard of a shared Figma file for both agency and in-house creative teams to contribute to. That's next level co-creation and probably a big contributor to the success of this work.
Kevin Byrd
It takes a lot to like make brand changes happen in a company you know, particularly the larger the company is, the more stakeholders, but also the more surfaces that have to be considered. And it's a lot of holistic things. But the point being is like the way in which we worked with Wolf Ollins in that collaborative space set us up for success over the long term because it wasn't just the handoff to our principal designers in house. They felt like they had a role in taking the brand right.
You know this type of thing takes six months to a year for it to fully see its way through all of the nooks and crannies of your marketing. I truly was kind of thankful for the working style because it got my team members invested in such a way that they were able to be knighted and could make those decisions themselves and be energized to make this change.
Blake Howard
As for Daniel from Wolf Ollins, there are several reasons to him this was a success, one of which, however, was what led to the real magic.
Daniel Renda
People love evolutions when there's something familiar and you can deliver on it in an expected way that people could relate to because they have something that they could link back to. It's the case that you've seen with all great art over the years. If you make your jump from you know the Renaissance to Picasso. It's like, forget it. I think it's like in "Back to the Future” when it goes from Chuck Berry to Jimi Hendrix and he goes into, like, slamming the guitar and people are like “what did you just do”? So, I think if you can link to something familiar, but doing it in an unexpected way, that's magic.
Blake Howard
OK, that is a wrap. Thanks to Daniel Renda and Kevin Byrd for giving us their take on this change story. To see more visuals from today's episode, head on over to www.achangeofbrand.com . And if you liked today's show, share it with a friend, pal, or leave us a review on Apple. Today's episode was edited by Landon Oseitutu, fact checked by Jill. Jeffries, written in part and produced by Brianna Belcher. Special thanks to Tracy Clark for the brief-in and Rachel Jackson for today's artwork. This is your host Blake Howard signing off.