LADBIBLE GROUP REBRAND

TitleLADBIBLE GROUP REBRAND
BrandLADBIBLE GROUP
Product/ServiceMEDIA BRAND
Category A02. Rebrand / Refresh of an existing Brand: Consumer / Corporate / Non-profit
Entrant LADBIBLE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation LADBIBLE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation 2 UFO STUDIO London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement LADBIBLE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production LADBIBLE London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Ben Walker UFO Design Director

The Campaign

We aligned our new brand identity with the aspirational side of what it means to be a LAD in 2017 The identity can be high end and progressive whilst being inclusive and universal. Just because we aren’t niche doesn’t mean we can’t be cool. We looked at some of the personalities which lads might aspire to, we aimed to capture this spirit and personality within our visual communication. The LADbible visual identity and overall aesthetic was designed to be bold, irreverent, optimistic and sure of itself.  About sticking to what we know and being who we are, young & British. The new identity might be from a scene which looks a bit nineties, but behaves itself a little better. We don’t want to appear as though we’ve tried too hard to craft our visual identity. We wanted to be authentic and natural whilst being young and disruptive, real and masculine.  

Creative Execution

Working to a small budget, our brief was a complete visual overhaul of the brand identity on all of our channel and every visual touch point. This included everything from the logo to colour palette and fonts. We first set about creating a design strategy based on typical audience types and their aspirations. The rebrand needed to reflect our core brand foundations and values. The new brand guidelines show a bold style, with simple combination of big, capitalised type against photographic imagery that conveys its fun, youthful and irreverent tone of voice. In keeping with the brand’s personality, the logo was re-imagined and designed for the purpose and with icon functionality at its core. Druk was chosen as the core typeface for its wide range of expression. The commitment to using black and white in the logo and brand guidelines honoured the truthfulness in the brand values, with the splash

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The new design and typography positioned us as a modern youth brand. With the aesthetics drawing influence from both modern and retro culture, it reflected our brand personality: drivers of social change creating cultural moments, with values rooted in community, originality, boldness, fun and yet seriousness – on serious matters. The redesign was implemented across all LADbible channels taking our new modern look to our billion plus global audience. The redesign was a sound commercial development for LADbible. The number of campaigns LADbible has won has more than doubled from this time last year too and includes giant, yet diverse brands, such as the Home Office, Fox, Sony Pictures, Disney, Sony Playstation, Unilever (Pot Noodle), RLNI and Beats by Dre. The rebrand and visual identity was also instrumental with our Awards success around Redefining LAD with the strategy winning the Grand Prix at the Drum DADI Awards.

LADbible has made strides to reposition ourselves as a youth media brand of a generation. Through changing the narrative of what it means to be a lad to reflect our diverse, young, modern and gender neutral young audience (1 billion reach a month). To us a lad is an everyday hero and through our editorial and campaigns we aim to drive optimism and authenticity to engage with our audience. We felt a rebrand was necessary to reflect the scale and new direction of the business. With a logo and visual consistency, we are driving our brand forward in the mind of commercial partners and consumers alike through every touch point: 1. Logo and fonts - to reflect a more youthful modern brand 2. Illustration approach - to drive more aspiration 3. Colour pallet 4. Video and memes for social- Driving design consideration in viral social media assets