Strategy
Know what you stand for, and say it the same way every time.
- Positioning
- Messaging frameworks
- Brand architecture
- Tone of voice
KGB
Knupffer Global
Branding
Brands that hold up under questioning. Strategy, naming and identity for companies with something to say.
Open a file01 Need to know
Branding is deciding what to reveal, and what to hold back.
Senior people lead every file, from the first briefing to the final debrief, with no hand-offs to people you have never met.
Naming
Names that are distinctive, ownable and easy to say out loud.
- Company and product names
- Naming systems
- Trademark and domain screening
- Taglines
Identity
Everything that makes you recognisable at a glance.
- Logos and wordmarks
- Identity systems
- Guidelines people actually read
- Refreshes and rebrands
02 Approach
How a file moves through the office.
Six stages, each with a clear output. We may compress them for a refresh or stretch them for a rebrand, but we never skip the research.
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01 Briefing
We agree what the work must achieve.
A good brief is our most valuable intelligence. We write it with you, and we do not start until everyone has signed it off.
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02 Dossier
We read everything. Then we read it again.
Market, competitors, audiences and your own history, gathered into one pack before any creative work begins.
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03 Field work
We go and meet the people you sell to.
Time with real customers, in shops, offices and homes, rather than in meeting rooms talking about them.
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04 Cover story
We find the first ten seconds.
The positioning and the line that answer "so what do you do?", tested until they hold up under questioning.
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05 Identity
We make it visible.
Name, mark, colour, type and voice, designed as one system and handed over with guidelines short enough to read.
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06 Debrief
We look back, candidly.
What worked, what did not and what we would do differently, held without blame and ideally with coffee.
03 Work
Training files.
We are newly open for business, so our first files are exercises: the kind of problem we solve, with the names changed to protect the entirely fictional. Real files open soon.
The client had four logos. Nobody knew who approved three of them.
The fix: an audit of every touchpoint, one mark, one owner, and guidelines short enough to read on the train.
Audit · brand architecture · identity system
The new name tested brilliantly in London. In São Paulo it was a rude word.
The fix: a name screened for meaning, pronunciation, trademarks and domains in every launch market, before anyone ordered business cards.
Naming · linguistic screening · trademark
04 Personnel
Senior people.
Specialists on call.
Nick and Ruth lead every file personally. Around them sits a trusted network of specialists, briefed in as each file requires and answerable to us throughout.
Founder
Nick Knupffer
Nick has spent more than 25 years in technology marketing and PR. He has led brand work for AI start-ups, for Fortune 500 companies including AMD, and for public institutions such as the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi. He is at his best making complicated things simple, and getting large organisations to agree on them.
Founder
Ruth Azar-Knupffer
Ruth is a multi-award-winning creative and a former copy chief at The Economist. She has worked as a broadcast journalist for the BBC and Al Jazeera, and specialises in brand identity and the words that carry it. If a line has to hold up under questioning, Ruth writes it.
On call
The little black book
Twenty-five years of brand work leaves you with a good list of contacts. We bring in exactly the expertise a file needs, on a need-to-know basis, so you get a team built around your problem rather than our payroll.
- Research and insight
- Design and illustration
- Type design
- Motion and film
- Digital and web
- Trademark and legal
05 Contact
Open a file
- New work
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