Creative Direction | Creative Strategy | Copywriting

Embracing the Grit

When you live and work in a city with a tough reputation, you have two choices: ignore it — or embrace it. 

Our agency was faced with this dilemma in its new business efforts: potential clients believed the best creative came from New York or the west coast. What good could possibly come from a city whose most prominent icon is a giant fist? 

We wanted to change that perception, so we re-branded the agency and fully embraced our Detroit heritage as a hardworking marketing team producing industrial-strength ideas. The rebranding involved a new logo, redesigned web site, and ultimately a physical move from our location in the suburbs back into the heart of Detroit.

 

The redesigned web site reinforced the agency’s gritty, hardworking rebranding with a heavy emphasis on industrial imagery, desaturated colors, and industrial typefaces. 

 

We introduced our refreshed brand to our current and potential new clients with a Detroit-inspired media kit in an industrial lunchbox, containing Detroit-made products and a highlight book and reel bound with industrial tire rubber and steel rivets.