An Aussie classic,
new and improved
Koala got famous being loud. Cheeky, blue, a bit of a smartarse, and it sold a mattress in a box beautifully. It does not sell a $3,000 sofa. The brief was to grow the brand up without sanding it down: warmer, more considered, still unmistakably Australian, still funny where funny earned its place.
Digitas delivered the identity. Turning it into a brand the business could actually run was the other job, and the bigger one. Forty thousand images shot in four weeks, across two production teams running concurrently. Every piece of furniture, in every colour, in every configuration, for every market.
Role: Global Creative Director, Koala
Year: 2020
Scope: Identity rollout, packaging, in-store signage, film, web, social, CRM, templates, photography and AI guidelines
Credits: Digitas (identity), Photoplay (production)
A rebrand isn’t
a PDF
I creatively directed everything downstream of the identity. The rollout into CRM. The signage and collateral for the showrooms and stores. The packaging, working with the designers and then with the warehouse staff until it actually fit the racking and moved through the sheds without slowing anyone down. Design that looks right and ships badly is just an expensive drawing.
Then the international teams, so every market could localise without breaking the brand, and the templates that let them do it without rebuilding it each time. Web, social, email, packaging, film. Everything a team reaches for daily, rebuilt out of a guidelines document and into the business itself.
Guidelines are a starting point. Until the brand exists on every product, in every configuration, in every market, nobody outside the room has actually seen it.
