‘Virtually identical to the others, but twice as much!’.
It doesn't sound like an enticing sales pitch, but we all happily pay a premium for certain products.
Not because they're more complex to manufacture or use more expensive ingredients, just because they have a certain vibe.
We willingly hand over an extra £300 to have an image of an apple on our phones.
Or maybe we want to signal to others that we are part of a certain gang?
Or it makes us feel more confident?

This is particularly true in the fragrance category.
Nobody knows what goes into the bottles or the manufacturing of the liquid, but you could buy 100ml for £10 or £10,000.
You can smell the the difference, but can you smell the difference in quality?
It's terribly subjective.
Much of your judgement is projection.
Informed by the surrounding details; the name, bottle, marketing, etc.
It's hard to block out what you know about, say, Tom Ford, when you sniff of one of his new fragrances.
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The most important part of any communication is visual.
People judge an ad, and therefore a brand before reading a single word.
In the fragrance category, you can times this by ten.
Times it by twenty in the premium fragrance category.
People feel whether a brand is cool or dumb in a nanosecond.
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The difficulty is that brands endlessly launch new fragrances, each with it’s own distinctive vibe.
Pulling the brand left and right.
Sexy and Moroccan one month, delicate rose-petaled the next.
Every new product feels like it’s from a new brand.
So each launch starts from the bottom of the hill - ”It’s a Moroccan one from who again?”
With a known brand, you start halfway up the hill - “It’s a Moroccan one from those people I like".

Creed needed a centre of gravity, to unify their comms.
They have an amazing, but secret history.
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We looked at what they could they stand for.
After conducting a series of internal interviews, a number of routes presented themselves.
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1. CUSTOMERS. Over the last 260 years, they've dealt with everyone, all the big cheeses.

2. WORD. Make the word Creed better known and give it meaning, eg...

3. STYLE. Creed has stayed steadfast for over 200 years in style, watching fads come and go.

4. BATCHES. Creed are small, so make tiny batches, compared to their rivals. Numbered batches sounds precious.

5. PRODUCTION. Creed still make a fragrance from beginning to end, unlike the rest.

6. TAILORING. Talk abut how Creed started life.

7. EXCLUSIVITY. Creed is hard to find. Make it a virtue.

The most difficult part of this kind of process is picking just one.
Or to be more precise; reject six.
Most companies have a lot of options on what they could say about themselves.
Creed has more than usual.
Why focus on just one? The goal is to get into people’s heads - the more focussed and consistent our message is, the quicker it will worm its way in.
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We all agreed that tailoring heritage was the most relevant and distinctive.
On a visit to the Mount Street store, I was taken through two hours of selling, history and the world of fragrances.
The next day, the thing that stuck with me was something the salesman told me about the logo.

"It looks like a random criss-cross design yeah? It's a pair of scissors".
It was a link back to their tailoring days.
"it always gets a good response from customers."
If we're going down the tailoring heritage route - let's highlight the scissors.

It needs another clue to help you see it as scissors, an appropriate word, like ‘cut’.
What should our brand line say? Creed aren’t like the big fragrance houses, they approach almost every aspect of the business differently.
Bingo!

It references tailoring heritage and says they're different.
In two words.
Also, totally accidentally, each word starts with one of the black highlighted letters; C and D.
Plus, cut is a very visual word to bring to life in marketing.
Together with the scissors graphic we have a distinctive visual asset.
Which would work even better moving as a mnemonic.
It's meaning is even clearer.

The first brief to execute the new positioning on was for their signature fragrance; Aventus.
Let's not be subtle with the ‘cut’ idea, let’s be loud and clear.
But stylish and sophisticated.
We needed a visual idea that separated Creed from the pack.
The best way of appearing different from the competition is to prove it, by doing something they never would.
Even budget fragrances treat their products reverentially, like nectar from the gods.Let’s do the opposite.
Let’s cut ours up.

But in a way that looks like art.

I chose Fine Art photographer Giles Revell.
Having worked with him regularly, I knew he would sweat the detail – how does the liquid move? Should the bottle be cut at a 46 or 47% angle? Should the cap have one highlight or two?
I wasn’t wrong.

The ideal time length for social is considered to be six seconds, so the ideas needed to be more like moving outdoor than tv.
Not a flicker of movement, a ‘story’, but a terribly simple one.

‘Cut Different’ also unified everything from old, repurposed assets...

...to tactical offers.

Giving Creed a centre of gravity.
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