BACKGROUND AND CHALLENGE
Definition has worked with AD since 2001, building enormous institutional knowledge
and consultative value. Known for much of its history through the narrow prism of its
Avery retail office products brand, Avery Dennison is a complex, enterprise business
that ‘branded below its weight class.’ Its appellation as ‘The Label Company’ obscured
its moves into advanced adhesives and engineered materials, RFID, bar code and tag technology, medical products, and nanotechnology, backed by world class R&D.

SOLUTION SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Circa 2018, Avery Dennison spun off the retail OP brand and became a B2B pure play.
This became the pretext to reposition it as a sophisticated materials science brand—an innovative technology company with world class process manufacturing muscle on a global scale.

• Global Product Naming Guidelines
• Creation of the ‘Smart Label’ and ‘Intelligent Label’ brands
• M&A brand integration with Paxar
• Brand refresh of FASSON roll materials business
• Corporate Retainer Services
• Positioning/Messaging of Apparel Solutions Business
• Positioning/Brand Story/Messaging: Material Science









BACKGROUND AND CHALLENGE
Elsevier is the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals and textbooks, including iconic
imprints like Cell, The Lancet, and Gray’s Anatomy. In the 21st century, Elsevier began to
acquire information technology and analytics assets, evolving from a traditional print
publishing house to a digital-print hybrid and then, most dramatically into an information
analytics company, offering scientists research technologies—not just the means to
publish their work, but the tools do conduct that work and advance their careers.

SOLUTION SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Developed a sweeping new brand architecture that rolled up myriad acquired brands
into a handful of master-branded solution suites that efficiently communicated a much broader offer than publishing per se, subsuming it under an ambitious new tagline—’Empowering Knowledge,’ to communicate the repositioned business.

• Repositioning: from digital publisher to information analytics/research technology business
• Brand Architecture/Portfolio Rationalization
• Corporate ID/Branding Governance Guidelines
• ‘Empowering Knowledge’ tagline
• Positioning of Research Intelligence business
• Positioning of R&D Solutions business
• Positioning of Clinical Solutions business









BACKGROUND AND CHALLENGE
ABM Industries Incorporated began as a window washing business that became a
janitorialservices giant. As this century-old business grew, it built up a wider portfolio of services around building maintenance—parking systems, elevator services, mechanical engineering, and security. The acquisitions summed up to a new category—Integrated FacilitiesSolutions, a suite of services that turned it into a turnkey offer for
building and campus property management.

SOLUTION SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Beyond keeping things clean, beyond repair and maintenance, ABM’s offer was about
maintaining and increasing the value of its clients’ properties, a concept captured in the
double entendre of its new ‘Building Value’ tagline, where the first word ‘toggles’ between
noun and verb, and a bold visual identity makeover.

• Repositioning: from building maintenance/janitorial to integrated facility solutions
• Brand Architecture/Portfolio Rationalization
• Corporate ID/Branding Governance Guidelines
• ‘Building Value’ tagline
• AR design and writing









BACKGROUND AND CHALLENGE
5.11 started as an innovative rock climber’s specialty pants product. It evolved exponentially into 5.11 Tactical, a professional uniform and gear provisioner for law enforcement, first responders, security, and military—and strong associations with firearms. Circa 2019, sensing a wider retail market opportunity, it expanded its product set and built out a vast network of brick-and-mortar stores, offering its ‘engineered’ apparel/gear to a wider market and a new set of use cases. A key challenge was simultaneously expanding consumer appeal without alienating a loyal core by diluting the brand they knew and loved.

SOLUTION SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
To signal these shifts, ‘Tactical’ was subtracted from the name, the ‘Always Be Ready’
tagline was re-interpreted to incorporate non-tactical audiences/use cases, a new product nomenclature was created, and store environments and communications were audited
with recommendations tendered to moderate (not remove) the presence of firearm-related imagery, exhibits, and products—while carefully segregating, preserving, and protecting
the status quo around the B2B business and its legacy branding.

• Name modification
• Repositioning to a hybrid B2B/B2C, with an increasing emphasis on non-tactical
   sectors and use cases
• Reinterpreting ‘Always Be Ready’ tagline to accommodate non-tactical audiences
• Store environment and communications audits
• Development of product nomenclature system









BACKGROUND AND CHALLENGE
What began as a brand architecture exercise, designed to radically slim down and structurally re-organize a business division’s bloated and complex product portfolio (over 170 individually named items), ended up inspiring a bigger ML power brand. The product taxonomy built to house and order the US Private Client Division’s financial products, was taken up by ML and translated into its ‘TOTAL MERRILL’ power-brand concept, which effectively translated ML from a tony Wall Street investment brand into a diversified financial services brand serving Main Street and Wall Street.

SOLUTION SAMPLE APPLICATIONS
Brand architecture was translated from a House of Brands into Branded House. Trademarked product names were de-listed (converted to descriptors), prefixed by a short, familiar brand acronym—the initials ‘ML’—to underscore perception of product ownership. Product categories were then created—also prefixed with ‘ML’—to ‘bucket’ and organize products into a navigational system and associate Merrill Lynch with a broader offer of product and service categories.