ABOUT

Inspiration is at the heart of everything we do at Wunderman Thompson and at the core of our global mission of ‘Inspiring Growth for Ambitious Brands.’ But how do you prove that inspiration drives business growth?



WT Inspire is a first-of-its-kind study into inspiration, why brands need to be inspirational, how inspiration drives growth and what brands can do to inspire their customers.



This rigorous three-phased study involved academic research, studying over 33,000 brands in 183 categories across 45 markets over the past six years and a survey of 4,000 respondents.



The study reveals two ways in which inspiration can drive brand growth; growing market share faster and charging a premium for products and services. Inspiration predicts 63% of a brand’s ability to drive demand, 52% of brands’ ability to command higher prices, and 48% of brands’ ability to convert customers at the point of purchase.  





Inspiration – the story behind the identity system



In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have gone to great lengths to understand how the brain reacts when a person feels inspired. As a result, the core characteristics and component processes of inspiration are both well understood and measurable.



Inspiring experiences begin with an outside event that resonates with a person’s values and makes them believe it is possible to reach their goals. Inspiration feels good, it strikes a spark within the brain, which then evokes an emotional or behavioural change.

Two important mechanisms in this process, are Magnetism, coming together of something to strike a spark, and Activation, the emotional or behavioural change that grows and causes a reaction.



To visualise this, our identity system involves a number of elements, the Inspire wordmark, the activated Inspiration Mark and our strategic lens.





The Inspire wordmark



The wordmark is comprised of many individual elements, which make up the letterforms. Our mind perceives these separate elements, and the negative space between them, together as one word to create a complete picture. (Much like magnetism, a theme we explored throughout the project)



We also included a “+” crossbar stem to the “i” creating a connection back to the Wunderman Thompson Inspiration mark, our signifier of growth.





The activated Inspiration Mark



We built a 3D brand universe that visualises an abstract narrative of inspiration, taking a core element of the Wunderman Thompson brand; the inspiration mark, or “+”, and activating it so it multiplies, reacts and grows.



Our strategic lens 

Our study analysis determined that inspiring brands have three core characteristics, Motivate, transcendence and evocation. We used the data from our study to create a proprietary tool, which allows us to measure how inspirational any particular brand is based on how they score on these three core characteristics.

To express this capability in the visual identity, we created a lens device through which we look at brands graphically to signify this aspect of our work. This lens is an overlay through which we study individual brands, ideas in cultural and a wide variety of industry categories.