It’s me, my brand and I

We now were able to explore brand personality and Christian challenged us with two very daring territories.

Driven by the insight that our value proposition would mostly be attractive to people who share a similar mindset we started to get confident with a more sophisticated approach, one that would reflect our insightful and thoughtful approach.

We also let go of the thought of being able to please everyone.

We felt Christian now had everything he would need to explore executions.
Before his final presentation, I was prepared to surrender. I would have taken the best of whatever is going to be presented.

“If we can’t meet my expectations after all that work and preparation, it’s probably me. I am the problem”, I thought.

He showed us the first line and I thought: “I could live with that” – in the past we’d explored similar directions.

His second proposal was very modern. We mentioned Nike a couple of times in the brief but could now see that this is not us.

And then he showed us his final draft.

And there it was.

I immediately connected with it. I could sense the excitement mount while looking at it.

• It’s timeless – reminding me of fashion brands and colleges.
• Its typography reflects Robin Hood but is still contemporary.
• It’s a badge. A crest. A coat-of-arms.
• It’s bold, confident, elegant. A bit hipster.
• It works well in all sizes.
• The { represents the bow.
• It’s portrait mode representing a mobile-first approach.
• The {} would allow us to brand things we feel are at our core like {Diversity} or {Purpose}
• It also has something nerdy with them being used in e-sports to show clan membership in front of one’s nickname.

I loved it.

“All we had to do” now was refining the details and develop the visual principles.

As a last highlight, I want to mention the brilliant color palette Christian designed.

Designers, if you want to give your color palette some life, name it! It’s details like this that make the difference between great and brilliant.

What did I learn? A ton.

• Things take time and you need to dedicate some serious resources & budget.
• Don’t rebrand when you are in the middle of a transformation.
• Get support from an outside perspective. Someone without the emotional and legacy baggage you carry.
• Start with business strategy and a clear positioning or you will be lost.
• Clearly define your purpose and keep it separate from your mission statement.
• Don’t start to involve your creative team before you are able to brief on the above positioning. You will only cause frustration by expecting your creatives to “get it” while in reality, it’s a gamble to hit your taste.
• The rebranding is the END-result of a change-management process, not the kick-off.
• Be careful when tapping into a public commons brand like Robin Hood. You will have a hard time not gravitating to its power and will be limited by its boundaries.
• Avoiding trends is difficult. There is only very little that hasn’t been done before.
• A rebranding is not done with the guidelines. The real work starts now. You need to change all templates, adjust the interior design, relaunch the website, change all social profiles, train all your designers all next to daily business. Brace yourself to plan some resources across the company.

As RDB is my baby, it grows with me and I grow with it. Almost 7 years is a long time. There are moments you feel the clothes you are wearing no longer reflect the person you are.

The feeling when you get clarity about who you are and where you want to go is beautiful and creates a lot of energy and momentum for the business. I’ve never been more proud of RDB than I am today.

For the first time, the brand is no longer about me or about what I thought it would be, but what it became through the countless people who shaped it for the last 7 years. Thank you.

If you can relate and

don’t hesitate to contact us and check out our work.

I am confident {RDB} Robin des Bois can help or recommend someone to you who can.