Layer 2 Stage | Open Brand: Unlocking the Power of Brand to Accelerate Growth

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   good to go all right next slide please or potato rather up next we have Tom monton talking about opening brand unlocking the power of brand to accelerate growth Tom joins us from the UK and fun fact he secretly even though I guess it's not much of a secret anymore secretly does not know a single thing about web 3 so please welcome Tom to the stage thank you very much thanks for revealing my my top secret yeah I I don't know much about it um but I'm going to talk you through a few things that we've

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   learned I guess uh in the last 18 months I'm Tom um and I'm going to learn how to use a clicker there we go um I'm a creative director of a brand practice in London called fold s design um I'm also part of a wider creative agency also called fold 7 um that's as complex as it's going to get I I promise um here are some contact details we have um uh a little micrite white paper of some of the stuff I'm talking about today so please uh take a

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   look at that we'd love love to show you some of that stuff uh do hit me up on telegram as well if you want to talk a bit more about brand afterwards or in fact during if you just want me to shut up and sit down that's fine um and uh and that's our page as well we'd love you to take a look at that um if you've come to Neon in the past you you might have noticed there's quite a shift this year in the experience of of the near brand and also

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   uh of nearon uh in the last 18 months we've been working with the team at near uh to develop their brand identity system um and so very much in the spirit of the open web uh today we'd love to invite you into that process a little bit more um and shed a bit of light on how you know a great brand identity system can really accelerate uh your growth um and we'll finish with a few things that hopefully you'll find useful to take fors perhaps into your own branding project too and then after that

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   I'm possibly going to invite jack klier up uh to ask a few questions about the process from his perspective so why the need to invest in your brand identity well there are countless data points around how visually strong distinctive consistent Brands create growth and competitive Advantage um and it's a particularly uh potent exercise to do at moments of of inflection in an organization so if you're about to launch a big product if

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   you're pivoting your outfit if you're scaling up or even perhaps trying to regain uh your place in the market it's a really important thing uh and a really um a really cool thing to do at that point so what do we mean by brand identity exactly and I suppose um given the crushing number of logos just in this ecosystem alone uh it would be easy to imagine that it was just about logos and maybe some fancy colors but logos are of course a massive

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   part of the puzzle but great brand identity is is about a lot more beneath so for near uh we've tried to create a istic brand identity system and by this I mean we've wanted to visually connect and make distinctive uh every interaction you could have with the near brand whether it's uh on the swag you just bought downstairs or uh the physical experience or the online experience um that everything needs to connect uh and near as a pioneering blockchain operating system uh looking

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   after the needs of of many Brands and developers and c and creators um it's very much a system needing a system the successful brand system uh should really give the organization Room to Grow uh room to adapt uh perhaps shift and really importantly play as well uh and we're going to show you a few bits of how the system kind of underneath all this uh works for near one of the core things we did was create what we've called the infinite canvas which is a kind of ever scaling

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   grid of possibilities and it provides a structure uh for the brand and the community to explore really however they want in a multitude of ways you probably see quite a few examples of how this grid is deployed here today whatever the content whatever the occasion the canvas in itself acts as a visual manifestation for the near brand so not just the logo but the grid uh beneath it becomes something symbiotic with the with the brand itself connecting things a bit further

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    the infinite canvas is actually made from grid points that inherit the DNA uh of the near symbol and to just briefly talk about the symbol there's a point around like taking stock of what you've got if you already have a mark perhaps you you did it quite quickly at the beginning of a project really think about whether you you you've garnered um you know if there's kind of value baked into it that you could take forwards um we found with

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    the near symbol there was a a you know a strong sense of Rec recognition that had been built by the group already uh stylistically it's very strong and expansive the infinity symbolism that's kind of baked in there um links to a sort of feeling of permanence subconsciously perhaps delivers a feeling of trust which is really useful and the fact that we don't see the shape connect as well is quite interesting it

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    feels like it falls into the distance which delivers again on a subconscious level that layer of possibility you know where does this symbol where does this Mark take us to and quite frankly the symbol was absolutely everywhere and it's kind of cool to see how the community has already used this symbol adopted it uh maneuvered around it and done all sorts of cool stuff with it so it felt like a

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    really amazing thing to kind of keep uh in the mix but we very much wanted to use it as a catalyst to open up a far more expressive system and build much deeper recognition so as I say besides the grid points besides that Infinite Canvas um we also looked at other things like for example a bespoke icon Suite it's a brand that talks a lot about information uses a lot of information those icons are really useful to again just reinforce and Link back uh to the stylistic feeling of the

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    symbol and also a open source hopefully soon to be on the Chain font I'm looking at Jack and he's smiling and putting his thumb up which means we've got the green light um on a uh open source font in the works currently again with all of those moments and interest but you know baked in from the uh from the symbol and you know getting these things right on a deeper level has really

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    helped Aid uh adoption and engagement across the community and I think it's fair to say we haven't even really scratched the surface of of its full potential um and it's kind of interesting to do this exercise on screen here as well when you get to the point and you have motion principles and you have identity assets to just lay it out on a page as well just understand the overall atmosphere of the brand it's really uh it's an important and cool

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    thing to do the risk of not viewing the brand um as a whole perhaps thinking of it as a few singular Parts rather than a deeper system um is that the brand can disintegrate as it works its way across comms and through brand touch points so if you imagine the uh most famous Mark on the planet relied only on itself alone you really never know quite what you're going to see uh and then potentially unsee in different

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    places so a brand is a set of expectations memories relationships that taken together account for a consumer's decision to choose one product uh or service over another uh quite an expansive quote but Seth is right um but how do we maybe make it a bit more tangible so what can branding do well a brand program can create value it's really important obviously uh that a brand uh is not a vality exercise and it creates value um

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    but unlike other marketing Pursuits uh branding is typically quite difficult to measure so don't expect instant Roi um but if we for example look at a very famously successful Rebrand Airbnb for example there was a marked shift in the valuation post the Rebrand and so that that could be attributed to a bunch of different factors but the Rebrand itself really just helped shift a gear or two for the organization it can also of course create Clarity and again using Airbnb as

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    an example um their branding very much gave them Clarity of of purpose um and propelled the team forwards that what started as a strategic thought belong anywhere became a strong enough statement that it could be used consumer facing so that's a cool thought too right is that you're not just making things that exist in a document for yourselves that you use verbiage in language that you feel good um to put uh put put outwardly too um and I guess in the case of Airbnb

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    more than speaking just for the business it also spoke to the category um and that leads me to the next Point around a great brand system can of course you know build trust and connection with your audience uh and again with Airbnb the Fe feeling that this was a new component of travel that hadn't been explored yet and hadn't been pressure tested uh that it was a a mark this feeling of trust was conveyed uh that it

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    felt that it was uh it was for the community and then it built it from there um and the fact that the mark can be drawn by hand for example everyone it's a universal Mark is also you know creates that for all feeling another thing that brand can do um and it seems much more minor but is increase efficiency and that sounds really boring I'm noticing some people are falling asleep already that's

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    excellent um uh but how can we make that a bit more exciting well I think if You' if you've invested in a deeper richer brand system you'll have the tools at hand to make more varied Communications so actually it's really useful to think rather than a laborious 150 page brand guideline that somebody might give you um a good program will simply have tested and stretched the limits of these tools doing this answers like a ton of questions of possible

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    scenarios that the marketing team uh might have for for the system and how it might be used and it's a really efficient thing to do rather than invest in something really timec consuming um so for example with uh the ncon uh identity that you're experiencing today um you know the my team just spent a huge amount of effort stretching and testing all the possible scenarios that uh the team could could possibly find

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    it's so cool today to see quite a few of those have come to life hopefully there's no spoilers here I don't think so final one the really important one is that a good brand system can of course make you seem different um you might not be different necessarily but you might be able to seem different um it's probably the biggest thing a brand can do it's where most of the energy should

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    should really be spent I think there's an interesting thing about the fact that everyone talks about the Apple logo the Apple brand system being so simple uh so memorable it's useful that they're so well known already because it really just looks like everything else right now um yet the funny thing is it used to look like that and um and you know colorful distinctive accessible a

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    bit weird kind of garish even um and but the thing is at the time it would have been sat next to that stiff crew there so it would have really cut through so it's always worth thinking about about how to you know go a little bit beyond uh the codes of your particular sector um and we did a similar exercise with with Nia in that we we observed the codes uh in the space uh and I guess at

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    the time of our looking the landscape was full of a kind of dark mode sci-fi dystopia um maybe still is um and that was met with more than a bent towards a sort of nostalgic uh perhaps video gaming reference points um like it or Lo it this is kind of the world that had been created around it so it was interesting to us to understand these codes and understand which ones we could subvert which ones we could push a little bit beyond uh which one could be challenged I

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    suppose so um before I sit down and shut up and I promise I will um are there some extra things that we can give you today that are just um a little bit beyond the things perhaps you could search for yourselves in a brand process um and so here's a couple of things I think that we we always find really useful fold s uh to kind of bring into the process uh invite the novice and I said

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    at the beginning I I don't know squat about um web 3 and uh I could probably write in the back of an napkin everything I knew about it at the beginning of the project but you know if you just have a team of category experts around a brand problem you're just going to get something that's right for the category so um by being a novice you're kind of an empty vessel uh and you just learn the most necessary factors to consider

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    uh uh in your identity um and you also might in a way behave like perhaps an audience segment that you haven't explored yet who might know less about what you're talking about uh so invite the novice along uh and how to do it it's really easy actually you just invite somebody that knows Jack ship about uh what you're doing um this one is make it uncomfy um because you know if it feels

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    too comfy you need to move on um if everything falls into place too easily uh it means that uh you know you haven't wrestled with it a little bit or perhaps even sometimes you haven't uh you know it's okay to not like something initially um because if it does it just means it's fitting in and you're judging it by the standards of what's already there so whether or not it's your bag uh

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    the London 2012 Mark for example 10 years ago uh at the time crazy press everyone thought it was horrible uh and then you look at it again 10 years on and you go kind of stands out something quite different and how to do it well I mean the main thing is to have The Bravery to do it but also spot when something is on strategy uh and feels really exciting versus something off strategy and it's just really or funny um and the final one for us this is something we talk talk about quite a lot

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    is um is take with you the communication mindset um so remember that brand is not the end point it just sets up uh the success of everything uh thereafter uh so how to do it I mean it's really as I say all about testing testing testing on all types of media and Communications so thanks very much there's that page again some logos couple of QRS we'd love you to hit some of those up look at our page thank

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    you very much Jack how have I done I've got four minutes 48 what do you think do you have a chat all right thank you thanks Tom I told you it was 15 I think you did a good job that was great too Speedy um just love to ask you a couple of questions really if it's possible um I guess I don't really know what prompted the original feeling you know that moment of needing to you know use a bit more brand thinking and and move into your brand more sure um well I joined

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    the near foundation and the near ecosystem back in May 2022 um and I came to the same conclusions that you guys came to independently with the look of the space you know it's very like dark mode futuristic very you know with the nft and collectibles culture very uh Centric on like video games and things like that and basically 99% of every project in web 3 kind of looked like that and so a near I saw was sort of falling into that category you know we had this concept of

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    like the the unlimited desert and building in the desert um and my thing coming in was like who who builds who builds cities in a desert you know and um and that's not really very accessible and very open and we were kind of falling in with the crowd so um so that's really what prompted me really other than the logo and uh and the logo itself and also the near type face nothing else was quintessentially

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    near and so you know as you correctly mentioned when it came to creating you know things for events or swag or creative anything you know I could I could put all that stuff side by side and you would just not know it was near at all you know it was just very desperate and I found that again with lots of other projects within the ecosystem um and then I guess the third thing is you know we believe a lot in

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    decentralization and um and wanting to empower our ecosystem to do things on our behalf and I think that's where a design system is really important um even more so than in web 2 because you need to give those projects the tools to be able to then leverage them themselves in a consistent way and so you know I really wanted to sort of bring um bring some of that web 2 design thinking in into web 3 so that we can really benefit

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    from all of the uh advantages that it can bring and bring that consistency and sort of uh recognition of things that are quintessentially near so I mean it sounds like you you've seen um you know a lot of success with it but would you say it has created value for you a little bit deeper down yeah yeah absolutely I mean with all rebrands um I think there's always a little bit of like uncomfortableness right at the

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    start you know people are attached to some of the old Cy things that made that ecosystem what it is um and but I think it's been hugely transformational for there I think you know we've set ourselves apart you know we've got the infinite grid as you you you mentioned and you know our whole thing is stepping into the open web say at neon and and we believe in the open web uh for near and I think that really ties into that

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    narrative it's like well yeah you've have the grid which is infinite your possibilities are infinite and you can build whatever you want on top of that and I think we really showcase that with a lot of stuff we we we do here um and you know using a different type of color palette different type of approach different shapes you know I think we've we sort of cemented our mark on something that's you know uh really unique and really like quintessentially near you know like you say you can put

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    everything that we do out uh you know in front of each other and you can see it all looks the same it all looks near it all feels near um and again using some more of the sort of pastel colors and things that you're seeing everywhere um I just find that a lot more accessible to people and open to people and I think that's one thing in web 3 we all sort of fall into is you know the same sort of thinking um and it sort of by doing that alienates every one else around you and

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    so um so that's yeah I think it's had a lot of value from that point of view being able to almost look at something and go oh yeah that's near you know without even having to like uh think about it really interesting um so what would your view be on the sort of importance of getting brand right for for web 3 I mean we've talked about you know there being kind of codes that have been borrowed from other uh you know perhaps passions of of uh folks involved um but what yeah what what where do you

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    sort of see web 3 moving you know visually how important do you think I have seen a lot of other ecosystems move out of that Cy uh feel and I think that's because people realize that you know we need to broaden our reach you know web 3 is still really really small you know and uh and yet we have such grand grand Visions you know all of us all ecosystems have such Grand visions

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    and and so I think people are starting to realize that to be able to access those Founders access those developers who you know almost feel alienated by that I think is all of our responsibility and I think a lot of people have realized that um I would also also add that for you know this Rebrand has generated a lot of excitement in the community right it's it's almost like a rallying point for people to do something that's a bit more out there and you know uh gives people

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    almost like this permission to think differently as well and um and yeah I I I think that we'll see more and more projects over time build sort of Unique Systems that tell their own story in a different way to what everyone else around them is doing and uh I encourage any anyone in the in the near ecosystem and even Beyond to really consider a lot of this thought because U like I say it has such it has such an amazing impact um for or the possibility is amazing for

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    your organization um and really can add a lot of value to you moving forward so fantastic thank you very much no thank you we how are we doing that is the danger clock we're now overtime that's a danger clock right okay what happens when that goes off I don't know I don't like to see it but we should probably hop off um thank you very much thank you thank you appreciate it thanks everyone

48. 22:01

    good man