When working on an established or existing brand, often there’s a foundation and history to build upon, even if the intention might be to evolve what’s already been created. From scratch though, the task is to not only work out who the brand is, but also who it’s for and how to get it to resonate with people.

“It’s a fascinating creative challenge, because unless you start out doing that, you often get trained in orthodoxies of brands and storytelling,” says Al MacCuish, founder and chairman of Sunshine, a creative agency that’s made a name for itself in building brands from the ground up.

Sunshine’s first project that set the tone for this was its work for luxury skincare brand Augustinus Bader, which saw the team create and launch the cult brand. The brainchild of Professor Augustinus Bader, a scientist who wanted to apply his revolutionary technology to commercial skincare to fund his scientific research, Sunshine was responsible for everything from naming to tone of voice, brand ethos to packaging design.

Gucci was Sunshine’s founding client and Balmain is still a client after seven years, so while the agency was comfortable in the luxury market, the skin and beauty space was new territory for both the agency, and the founders of the brand. “Professor Bader was a professor of stem cell biology at the University of Leipzig. His partner, Charles Rosier, had come from the investment world and had been interested in beauty as a category but not a beauty expert,” explains MacCuish.

“We were the same, and I think that was our secret weapon, because we were able to be open-minded about everything and all the questions we were asking. Before we got anywhere near branding and design were fundamental questions about strategy, positioning and story.”

By ingraining themselves into the founders, the ethos and then eventually the product, this grounding meant that they were well placed to take the brand from nothing to something. “We spent years understanding the science behind it all,” says Jenna Barnet, CEO at Sunshine. “It’s like we became experts together with the founders and the people behind it…. Ultimately it’s really about spending that time you’re never going to get back as a brand in doing the groundwork properly before you launch it into the universe.”

WHAT’S THE STORY?

Once Sunshine has invested time in understanding the founders of a new brand, the next step is uncovering the brand story, as that is what will sell the idea of the brand to other people. “We started Sunshine because we believed that story fundamentally drove all forms of organisational success, whether it’s a charity or beauty brand,” reflects MacCuish. “If you have the right story at the heart of your organisation, the right spirit, there’s a place for you in the world.”

For Augustinus Bader, the story was about Professor Bader’s work, his knowledge of stem cell regeneration, and how he’s applied it to skincare. While this is communicated throughout the branding, for a more direct hit Sunshine distilled this down to key phrases such as ‘biological wisdom’ and ‘revolutionary science’ alongside the simple line, ‘The cream that works’, to effectively convey the strength of the product.

MacCuish adds that without this depth or story, aesthetics can only get you so far when it comes to building a brand. “A boss said to me years ago that the quickest way to kill a flawed product is great marketing because it’ll just draw attention to it and the consumer will feel disappointed,” he says.

“Aesthetics have the ability to catch the eye and engage, but it’s a dangerous business to bring somebody to the point of interest and to then let them down. It’s one thing we couldn’t do as a business now, because it would undermine everything that we operate by, if we didn’t believe in the efficacy, we wouldn’t do a project.”

STAND OUT FROM COMPETITORS

For Augustinus Bader, and other projects since, the key has been working out how to stand out in already crowded markets. While they knew they wanted to do something unconventional for the skincare brand, for instance, the challenge was justifying the premium price point with single products on sale for hundreds of pounds.

So the team invested time and money into making sure the product’s packaging stood out from its competition. “We were told a hundred times that we were crazy to try to create a brand that had a colour system using a very strong blue with copper gold. Nobody else in the category looked like that because at the time everybody was trying to signal clean, premium, and pristine. There was a lot of conformity,” explains MacCuish. “Even now the whole category has virtually no colour, and while this can create a nice aesthetic, for a new brand trying to attract attention we needed to deliver impact.”

The packaging itself is also unique, with the use of a magnetic lid for its primary product, The Cream. Specially created for the brand, the satisfying weight and click of the lid has become a notable feature. “There needs to be an ergonomic quality to all luxury products, and with us driving that process from the beginning, it allowed us to engineer every touchpoint,” notes MacCuish.

This approach has trickled into other projects, such as Sunshine’s recent work for AWvi, another science-backed skincare brand, this time created by founder Alexander Werz, partner at Karla Otto. For AWvi, again the science within the products informed the packaging with the team deciding to use a vibrant Pompeii red. “I became obsessed with those 19th century medical anatomical models that are used to teach students about the anatomy of the human body,” MacCuish says. “The vital organs are a really deep red so it’s kind of associated with life, health and vitality.”

The brand’s vision centres around “skincare meets wellness” and the relationship between gut health and the performance of skin. “We wanted a way to signal that through the colour. And we wanted to communicate the carefully calibrated formulations of the products so we adopted a scientific, clinical graphics system where the ingredients are shown on both the secondary packaging and the vessel itself to put the science front and centre.”

MONEY IS NECESSARY

Part of why the brands Sunshine has built have been successful, whether its skincare or tequila, has been because of the healthy budgets they’ve had to work with. It’s not the most romantic way to view things, but money is necessary when creating a new brand.

“Most new businesses have got some good reason for them coming to market, but what we won’t do is take somebody’s money to get to a certain point for them to run out of capital and not be able to take it all the way,” says MacCuish. “There’s been a number of occasions where we’ve really believed in the founders and we really believed in the brand, but they didn’t have the capital to be able to do the job to that level, and then sustain it beyond that.”

It’s not enough just to get the brand or product to market, there’s a whole set of “operational, marketing and sales complexities” that require significant funding, especially in the luxury space. Barnet believes that there are also too many brands coming to market looking “cute and puffy”, which isn’t enough. “There’s so many brands, particularly in the beauty category, that are being launched every other day. It makes them inconsequential, even when the product is good. A lot of people don’t understand how to aggregate things beyond that,” she notes.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

While you may have set up all of the above, ultimately if you’ve gone too fast or too slow, this can make or break a new brand. “Augustinus Bader was a masterclass in pitching the cadence just right. They had enough capital, enough product development, and enough characteristics that were distinctive enough, and a roadmap that we were meticulous in planning, even for serendipity,” says MacCuish.

“You do have to be in the right place at the right time to make sure the product ends up in the hands of talent and influence…. If you go too slow, you’ll get overtaken probably by somebody else being the new news. And if you go too fast, you just won’t have all the building blocks in place.”

thesunshinecompany.com