Creating patterns
Marc Shillum of the creative consultancy Method has something provocative to say about branding in the digital age: ‘Adherence to a big idea and endless repetition of centralized, fixed rules …
Course: The Secret Power of Brands
Open questions
We asked some of the academics who’ve helped create this course: what, for you, are the big questions that still need research? What do we still need to discover, in …
10 Ways Consumers Are Also Producers
Consommacteur: the consumer-producer It’s all too easy to think of production and consumption as opposites. To imagine consumers as passive. And to conceive of brands as something that companies actively …
Brand-led change at Historic Royal Palaces
Here’s Michael Day, chief executive of an organisation called Historic Royal Palaces, which runs (among other things) the Tower of London. Michael talks about his organisation’s brand idea, which he …
Latest thinking on brand-led innovation
Listen to two UEA academics, James Cornford and Dr. Alfonso Avila-Merino, as they discuss the role of brand in innovation. As you listen, ask yourself: what are the three main …
Brand-led innovation at Mercedes
Mercedes-Benz and Wolff Olins produced this short film, which shows how the company created not a new product but a new service, the Driving Academy, using the principles of brand-led …
The quadrants in practice
This slideshow shows how the quadrant model could work for one famous brand, Virgin. Think how you’d use it for other brand-led businesses you know.
Introducing the four quadrants model
In this video, Robert Jones explains a model used for many years in Wolff Olins, to show how the idea you want to stand for should drive every aspect of …
What’s wrong with brand-led?
Many successful businesses are brand-led. Brand is central to their thinking. But are there dangers in brand thinking? In this article, Robert Jones suggests that brand may not be the …
Brand-led business
Many famous organisations are brand-led: their decision-making is guided by what they want to stand for. This slideshow explores the idea of a brand-led organisation. It’s a great ideal, but …
Why brand-led business do better
In 2005, Booz Allen Hamilton produced a research report, Managing Brands for Value Creation, that suggests that brand-led businesses do better than their rivals. How convincing do you find it? …
Rethinking an existing brand – AOL
AOL (previously known as America Online) is a multinational media corporation, based in New York City, that develops, grows, and invests in brands and websites. In 2009, Wolff Olins helped …
Renewing an existing brand – Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organisations, networked together in more than 90 countries as part of a global movement for change. It aims to build a future free …
Creating a new brand – FutureLearn
FutureLearn is, of course, the platform on which this course lives. Wolff Olins created a brand identity for FutureLearn in 2013. Here designer James Titterton reveals the story behind the …
