Creating a new credit union brand to break yesterday’s industry mold.

After 80 years of helping people and small businesses with their financial needs, Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union – better known as NEFCU – stood at a crossroads.

The service-based competitive advantage that had enabled the credit union to grow its asset base to $3billion was slowly being eroded by digital and mobile technologies which are redefining the banking experience. The nature and meaning of personal service and relationships – at the heart of the credit union industry for decades – is being undermined.

Armed with research helping to identify the future opportunities in the market OTTO Brand Lab and the NEFCU team created a plan to build the Innovative Credit Union of the Future.

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Scope

Research / Strategy / Brand Development / Tagline / Forms / UX / UI / Website / Branch Design / Marketing / Collateral / Social Media / Advertising

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Hammermill

Capturing the essence of a brand to build a business.

Citizen Stock was launched to meet the underserved need of the market for fresh, new stock photography images featuring real people. The models aren’t models at all, but children, moms, dads, grandparents, skateboarders, lawyers, teachers, musicians, chefs, artists, office workers, clothing designers, shop clerks and small business owners, to name a few.

Otto Brand Lab first developed a brand identity that captured the universal spirit of portraiture in a single word: “Smile!” The most fundamental word in photographic portraiture became the foundation for the Citizen Stock brand.

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Scope

Positioning / Branding / Tagline / User Interface / Website / Marketing

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Curtis Institute of Music Brick Works Joyous Shout

Reimagining a website as a solutions-based sales tool.

Although GE has a large corporate presence online with more than 1,000 sites, the GE Energy Financial Services (GE EFS) site was seriously lagging behind the needs of the market and the new possibilities of digital technology.

Our challenge was two-fold: GE EFS needed a dynamic new site that was an inviting gateway into GE Energy Financial Services but one that was also consistent with the GE and GE Capital template system.

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Scope

Research / Strategy / Site Architecture / UX / UI / Website / Branding / Design / Content Strategy & Management / Writing / Illustration / Development

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Measure Elsevier Hammermill

Deepening brand relevance and loyalty in a digital world.

Hammermill is a one-of-a-kind brand in the paper industry. With a reputation built over more than 100 years in the market, Hammermill lives at the center of a complex ecosystem that touches B2B companies, large retailers such as Amazon and Staples, and the ultimate users of the brand – individual consumers.

With declining awareness, shifting consumer preferences towards digital applications, and increasing availability of cheap paper brands at large chain stores. Hammermill’s market share was declining. The high quality and the tactile characteristics that Hammermill paper was known for were no longer enough anymore to drive market demand and sustain customer loyalty.

Hammermill engaged Otto Brand Lab to help meet the challenge and reverse the declining fortunes of the brand.

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Scope

Research / Strategy / Brand Development / Tagline / Forms / UX / UI / Website / Branch Design / Marketing / Collateral / Social Media / Advertising

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Jovia Curtis Institute of Music Elsevier

Putting knowledge in the palm of your hand.

Since Elsevier was, essentially, moving from web-based representation of its print heritage into the digital world, we needed to develop a unifying brand language to flow through this environment, thereby tying all for the components together.

The solution lay in the hands of the celebrated Dutch typographer Martin Majoor. He was commissioned to design a completely new proprietary font system for Elsevier to support its brand journey and the needs of modern digital applications.

A critical consideration in the success of the strategy was to empower the business divisions within Elsevier retain their individual character. To solve this mission critical issue, we created a “Logo Generator”. The generator, built on custom font developed for the Elsevier brand, creates unique letterform combinations based on the characters in each business group’s name.

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Scope

Brand System / UX / UI / Website / Training

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Hammermill Measure GE Financial

Performance and celebration combine to unify U.S. soccer teams.

For the first time in history, both the Women’s and Men’s U.S. Soccer teams donned the same uniforms. It was an historic occasion Nike wanted to celebrate. They turned to OTTO to create a visual concept for its retail partners.

Another key element Nike wanted to showcase was the industry-leading technology woven into the uniforms which were made from100% recycled material and to highlight Nike’s “laser cooled technology” used in the design of the jerseys.

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Scope

Positioning / Strategic Planning / Image Creation / Messaging / Marketing / Retail Experience VC

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Jovia Keepwell

Creating a lifestyle brand around a nutrition beverage.

The French pharmaceutical company Waypharm came to America with a big idea – to establish a company focused on creating nature-based, scientifically designed nourishment products for ‘on-the-go’ women and men. Working with the University of Florida, the company formulated all natural products which encourage people to stay healthy, active and engaged in their daily lives.

The newly-formed American Company turned to Otto Brand Lab to help bring the concept of a science-based, nutrition beverage to life.

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Scope

Competitive Analysis / Strategy / Positioning (Corporate & Consumer) / Naming / Brand Development / Language Lexicon / Packaging / Marketing—Online & Print / Image Library / Website / Social Media / E-Commerce & P.O.P Materials

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Jovia Nike Rosas & Xocolate

Orchestrating brand success for the future.

The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory based in Philadelphia that offers courses of study leading to a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, or Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. Founded in 1924, Curtis is among the most selective institutes of higher education in the world with an admissions rate between 4 and 5 percent.

The students who study at Curtis are the finest in the world. As musicians they come to this school because they can have musical conversation with the faculty that they cannot have with anyone else. Our mission was to help articulate the magic that happens within these halls and to engage new donors to help maintain and support this organization.

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Scope

Research / Strategy / Brand Development / Tagline / UX / UI / Digital Integration / Website / Marketing / Fund-Raising / Enrollment Advertising

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Citizen Stock Elsevier Hammermill