PPB May 2021

Branding GOLD WINNER HPG Braintree, Massachusetts Entry Name: Hub Rebrand Objective: To modernize and reintroduce one of the industry’s best-known names to the market. Hub’s reputation for customer service is outstanding but had little brand presence or affinity. Strategy And Execution: The inspiration for Hub’s logo came frommodern, San Francisco startup companies including Allbirds and Faraday Bicycles. The thin, simple line weight and cursive logos looked modern yet whimsical. The word “pen” was dropped from the name in the logo for a few reasons. One, market testing showed the word “Hub” within the context of pen suppliers was/is synonymous with pens. Two, Hub already had products beyond pens and planned to expand that part of the assortment. Competitors use a motif imprinted on all of their pens to tag their products without distracting from the end-user imprints. Hub was doing this on some SKUs but was doing so inconsistently and the logo was visibly spelling out the name as well. By creating a distinctive “H” for Hub, it could be used as an icon on pens instead. All new pens produced by Hub include the “H” and older SKUs will follow suit as manufacturing tooling is replaced. The color palette was chosen to be more relevant to Boston, the city that the company’s name comes from. Boston sports teams and its proximity to the ocean were inspirations. The logo also needed to be more modern, distinctive and consciously less masculine to broaden the design appeal. Results: The rebrand saw an increase in customer sentiment and significant improvements in web traffic including doubling traffic in the two months post-launch compared to the two months prior. A redesigned, rebranded pen mailer sent to more than 15,000 customers yielded a 300-percent increase in promo code usage. In the two months post-launch, the bounce rate was reduced by 52 percent and page views increased by 227 percent. The redesigned, rebranded pen mailer had the highest promo code response on record with over three times the prior average usage. SILVER WINNER AIA Corporation Neenah, Wisconsin Entry Name: 2019 National Sales Meeting Objective: To reset the stage for what the AIA Community can expect from events moving forward. Strategy And Execution: The development of the theme and brand for the meeting (Momentum In The Mountains) started with months of research on the event location of Park City, Utah. After completing numerous site visits, the distributor team left inspired by the landscape of the location. The theme and brand were created by combining the beauty of Park City and the desire to show that the event would create movement (momentum) and growth in AIA’s owners’ businesses. The meeting’s slogan consisted of three powerful words—strengthen, summit and succeed—to describe the benefits that attendees would reap by attending the event. The logo is constructed with two main symbolic components: a mountain range nestled inside of a circle. AIA also took into consideration that its logo would be imprinted on a variety of promotional products. By utilizing one color and four layout options, AIA was able to successfully create a flexible logo family that could be incorporated onto any promotional product. Results: With an increased budget of $350,000 and the in-house ability to re-brand the event, this event successfully set the stage for what can be expected at future AIA events. Pyramids In Marketing | FEATURE | MAY 2021 | 15