Uniqers

Agency: Lemmy
Creative Director: Danka Gralik
Copywriter: Selina Hill
Location: Australia
Project Type: Produced
Client: Uniqers
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Shoes
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Cardboard
Printing Process: Screen Printing

Uniqers have taken the shoe back to its basics, creating an extremely simple sneaker perfect for customisation thus allowing the wearer to get creative. Unfortunately, despite the unique, comfortable and sustainable product, the brand struggled to connect with gen Z – their desired target market.

Our aim at Lemmy was to give this brand an identity that truly relates to its younger target market and a brand story they truly connect with. We wanted the wearer to feel that with the purchase they have bought into like minded creative hub and turn this product from a simple shoe into a platform for self expression and creativity.

Our strategy was very heavily lead by the target market research. Gen Z being a generation brought up alongside the internet has a very different attitude towards brands and consider individuality as one of the most important values. For them, looking different (cool!) is paramount, and looking weird (even better!) is attractive. It means you’re confident enough to be unique. Another thing they value is personalisation and a more personal approach. Gen Z is often undervalued by previous generations and is bombarded by expectations to change their behaviour in order to meet Millenial’s or Gen Y’s now outdated standards.

From everything we’ve learned we decided that the new brand should flip the narrative and instead of telling the consumer its story, it should put them at the heart of it.

Driven by the findings we created a brand story ‘F#*k this Be U’ revolving around dropping all the expectations and simply being yourself. From this we derived a strapline ‘Million ways to be U’ simply explaining the brand customisable product. Be U then became the purest form of the brand communication.

Our icon – ‘U’ obviously derived from the name Uniqers puts the consumer at its center communication its core message – ‘it’s all about You’.

The blocky shape of the icon as well as the bespoke logo font is heavy, sharp and not particularly attractive in a typical sense of the word. But just like our brand it is bold, confident and most importantly unique. Its chunky form allows the word mark to work outside of the logo as well as in a more distinct way sitting inside the corner of the U icon.

To compliment this, the colour palette we used is clean, bold and bright.

With the strapline ‘Million ways to be U’ it was important that whatever graphic elements we create there is a high level of flexibility.

Thanks to the bulky shape, the icon became the perfect vessel to house different colours and patterns thus being adaptable and ever-changing.

Since the tone of voice was an extremely important part of this brand, we changed the sub brand names from the more generic ones: Pre designed, Plain for DIY, Customisable and Artist Collaboration to for U, Be U, By U and U*. (*Artist’s name). Those were then used on variety of elements including a variety of Thank U cards.

The packaging which doubles as posting box (to reduce the amount of unnecessary waste) is basically a homage to our icon and strapline.

Made from a recycled cardboard the entire pack is basically a 3D ‘U’ icon with the strapline written inside it making the pack directly addressing the consumer with our core brand message.

All the information on the pack are written in a no nonsense way addressing the wearer in a second person.

There are 2 types of the packs – plain ones and patterned one both following the exact same format. Just like the shoes – great plain and simple but also ideal when covered with art.