American Express OPEN Forum: Powering Small Business Success

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WOMAN
American Express Open is empowering business owners. Follow our new mini-series as we pair different small businesses, each with their own experienced branding agency, who is also a small business. Last time on Project RE-Brand, Dominic and Lesley from Officelab, presented a selection of directions and logo treatments to Iris and Elliot Schreier of ArtYarns. Following several late nights, visits to knitting shows and continued dialogue with Iris and Elliot, Dominic and Lesley prepared to deliver the branding that will poise ArtYarns’ hand-painted yarns as the luxury range it deserves to be.
DOMINIC SINESIO
So all right, so we want to build a … a system for you guys, and an image in messaging and in graphics that lets you tell your story in lots of different contexts, uh, in lots of different ways. So I give you the new and improved ArtYarns.
IRIS SCHREIER
Oh, great. Fantastic.
DOMINIC SINESIO
So what are we saying to people? What … what’s our message? Before the art of knitting, comes the art of yarn.
IRIS SCHREIER
It’s so perfect.
DOMINIC SINESIO
As counterpoint, ArtYarns – elevate your art. Now it’s … the ArtYarns brand says why there needs to be ArtYarns. I mean it says why the art of yarn comes before the art of knitting. So now that why is what’s being communicated. The aspirational image is at right, it’s a nice kind of balance. It’s showing the garment in a really subtle way. Um, but it’s doing a job of connecting it to a human being without, you know, showing the typical model shot.
IRIS SCHREIER
Yes.
DOMINIC SINESIO
You have your double-page spread. Okay? Full page. Half page. Okay? And your banner treatments for the Web.
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
You know, to take ArtYarns out of the mind-set that everything has to be done on an expensive model shoot I think was a real sort of advance for them.
IRIS SCHREIER
I think that it really evokes luxury at every level. And the ads that we saw just jump off the page. I mean you could just touch and feel the … the luxury and the silkiness.
DOMINIC SINESIO
I’m … I’m thrilled. I’m completely thrilled. I’m so proud of what we were able to pull off in a very short amount of time.
IRIS SCHREIER
I think rebranding is like a face-lift.
ELLIOT SCHREIER
Most companies our size probably would not think of branding or rebranding as something we would devote too much resources to. We think of all the day-to-day things that we need to spend money on and probably branding would be low on the priority list. But having gone through this project and for this process, I would think that any small company would gain by even doing just a small amount of looking at their own brand and … and just taking certain elements and expertise from others and saying, “What is our brand? What … what are we about? What we … what can we do to improve it?”
LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
My advice to Iris and Elliot would be to look outside the industry. Both for inspiration and ideas. There’s a lot outside the industry that … that they can … that they can …
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LESLEY MAIA HOROWITZ
… learn from.
IRIS SCHREIER
And have them our business this way, it’s just been amazing.
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WOMAN
Join us again on Project Re-Brand. And follow the progress of several other small business owners as they too are paired each with a different leading branding agency.
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