Media Assembly
Modern Advertising Agency brand positioning + Identity
Brief as received
MDC Partners is creating its first independent media agency brand.
We are famous for being a creative agency group and will be a new offering in an old industry full of established players.
How do we create a modern brand that breaks-through in a trusted way?
Research & Insights
Interviewed fifteen Fortune 500 CMO’s.
Didn’t “trust” media agencies - didn’t understand what they did.
“I can’t name more than three people on my media agency teams of 40+.”
They felt they couldn’t see the benefits and didn’t see any creativity. They’re “Not making my brand better.”
Felt they were being ripped-off, but over a barrel understanding the marketplace. They needed them, “like a bank.”
Re-framed brief
With no “media legacy” to base trust on, create a trusted media brand, around a “different” category point of view that, makes sense to CMO’s in a modern and exciting way.
Sharpened audience definition
Marketers in The Fortune 1000 and Media sales professionals 30-54 years old.
Media planners 23-34 years old in NYC.
People you want to work for, and people you need to work with.
Problem identified
Media Agencies are boring (not creative) and non-transparent.
They model their brands after financial institutions. It's about size, scale and risk management, not creativity and brand building.
Being new means being seen as same, but smaller.
Insight that shed new light
All large media agencies are positioned as “cold fin-tech” companies and smaller media agencies as “creative activators.”
There were no Media Agencies in a “tech forward” and “creative” position of a two x two brand map.
Marketplace & cultural understanding
Media Agencies all look the same.
Most all are blue. Their tone is reserved. Their imagery is flat and old.
Creative agencies and tech start-ups in contrast are modern looking, sounding and acting.
A new way of thinking about the product or brand
Forget media!
Design a brand for the audience, not the category.
Design a brand that could sell something cool to a Fortune 500 CMO or a 26 year old media planner we want to work here.
Look different, sound different - never be same but smaller.
Scale the brand from icon, to word-mark, to office design, to even a clothing line… Nothing should feel out of reach as “everything is media.”
“Assembly Code” is the native machine code between hardware and software and a perfect metaphor for a modern agency.
Leverage MDC Partners creative heritage of agencies like “CP+B, Anomaly & 72Sunny and combine it with Daft Punk.”
Work the brief inspired
MEDIA ASSEMBLY - Media Arts + Sciences
A brand built on transparency at the intersection of a creative and technology.
A black and white aesthetic inspired by timelessly modern flat bauhaus style - “The Orand” [based on Assembly Code]
The brand is a “full system” for technology products, departments, signage and an interior design guideline for materials, architecture elements, color and service design.
The brand book was the employee handbook and we created a “streetwear inspired line of “agency gear” employees actually want to wear.
It’s black. Nothing looks like Assembly in the category. It is not the same, but smaller.
Results
“We just wanted to meet you.”
The look, feel and tone attracted industry attention and included the agency in discussions of technology transparency. Prompted calls from brands like Truth Initiative, Chanel, Timberland, Vans, Etrade and 20th Century Fox.
Media Assembly went from a hand drown logo, to "AdAge Agency of the Year,” Forrester “Leader,” and grew to the largest US media agency launched in last 20 years, in less than fours years.