Brownstein, one of the longest-running independent agencies in the country, has announced a major brand refresh and a new tagline: “We Build Unstoppable Brands.” The brand refresh will complement a refined approach to marketing sourced from decades of agency experience and ongoing research on the secrets of brand longevity.
“An unstoppable brand is one that can withstand cultural shifts and economic shocks. It’s a brand that knows how to manage the tension between its heritage and its future, and accelerate through change,” said Marc Brownstein, President and CEO. “We know unstoppable brands because we build them every day.”
In designing Brownstein’s refreshed identity, the agency’s creative team looked to sharpen the edges of key elements from across the agency’s history, finding ways to both remember the past and prepare for the future.
This approach complemented the agency’s research into developing a model for brand longevity:the achievement of social relevance and ongoing consumer engagement over a sustained period of time, and across consumer lifecycles. With Brownstein’s new Brand Longevity Model, the agency can look at brands holistically to help inform marketing decisions through a proprietary formula. By mapping the brand ecosystem, and the cause-and-effect relationships of change across brand elements through time, Brownstein can see how marketing decisions send ripples across brands.
When it came to developing the agency’s own refreshed identity, the creative team started by looking into what was already there: years of success stories defined by brave work, bold ideas, and brilliant results.
“A brand in charge of making and shaping other brands has to work in concert with all kinds of graphics and styles,” said Gary Greenberg, VP and Executive Creative Director. “Therefore, Brownstein’s new look exists in a kaleidoscopic universe of secondary color combinations and variations. It is a canvas from which other brands are made. But Brownstein’s primary colors — red, black, and charcoal gray — still pay homage to the agency’s iconic door at 215 Broad in the heart of Philadelphia.”
For the typeface, the creative team looked back at the origins of the agency in the Creative Revolution of the 1960s. Brownstein, the agency’s simplified moniker, returns to these roots with a clean and bold modernist typeface. Moving forward, Brownstein Group will refer to the parent company of Brownstein and its sister agency Nucleus Digital, positioning the agency for growth and diversification in the future through additional service offerings and brands.
Meanwhile, the agency’s new crossroads symbol, which retains the iconic nine-square form of recent brand iterations, takes on a new meaning. Whereas it once represented the range and creative depth of the agency as a color palette, the new symbol is a versatile representation of the crossroads moment: where brands need to make the decisions that will carry them forward into the future.
“We are at a crossroads now. With unprecedented cultural, social, and economic changes underway, brands need a partner that will help them know when to adapt and when to be steadfast,” said Erin Allsman, EVP and Managing Director. “They need to become unstoppable.”
Brownstein’s new motto “We Build Unstoppable Brands” will serve as a reminder of the agency’s role in the journeys of client brands, and continue to guide the team as they embark on a new chapter of the agency’s history.
