Proudly, a Veteran-Owned Business
Discover how we transformed an innovative pet nutrition product into a fully-fledged brand. From naming to digital design, we engineered every element to reflect NOBL's one-of-a-kind approach to pet wellness.
HAND-CRAFTING A BRAND IDENTITY FROM SCRATCH
Brand Development, ID, Messaging
Delivery slides and assets during our naming, brand development & visual identity, messaging framework, integrated go-to-market north American marketing plan
Exploring The Wordmark
The co-founders and newly defined NOBL name stands for something, a different approach to nutrition for pets. A brand expressing a noble, no nonsense, and no bullshit approach to dog food needed a wordmark to reflect the same. At the same time, we were not aiming for irreverence or overtly ‘in your face’.
We feel it’s prudent to explore in black and white, especially given the rapid iteration we were doing to hit dates and launch the brand at Global Pet Expo. We began playing around with the idea of the nose in an integrated way with the wordmark. Eventually, the nose warranted it’s own creative exploration.
The Final Wordmark
Delivery slides and assets during our naming, brand development & visual identity, messaging framework, integrated go-to-market North American marketing plan
The short bar under the “O” informs pronunciation and is a silhouette of a NOBL food bar. In a few early explorations, we used actual bars with the 5 segmented break lines, with one reflecting the slight curve some of the early food bars had.
The Nose Knows
The idea behind the mark was closely tied a dogs leaving a nose print on frosty glass. It also amplifies a brand truth that nearly without fail, dogs loved the smell of the bars and treats. The CRRNT team witnessed it first hand and I later saw it in much higher numbers at the Global Pet Expo during launch.
You can see an early iteration of the NOBL nose in the tagline presentation slide above. One wouldn’t think there could be a deep dive design exploration in nose shapes but it spurred quite a passionate creative debate. Once the idea of the nose was locked in, we rapidly iterated eventually landing on the one in market today. Below is the exploration and final nose along with “The Stamp”.
Our branding framework starts with black and white logo and wordmark exploration. We don’t want to waste time iterating on colors. If a mark doesn’t hold up in black and white, we won’t waste time exploring color variations. Plus, we intentionally stagger the visual design phase so it begins after the brand platform, name, and logo’s have been locked.
The Final Nose
The final NOBL Nose mark/stamp and the nose itself is one of a kind. Again, a big shout out to the entire team for developing such a unique, smart, and modern brand. The visual ID and branding work by Lando is some of his best – let alone given the rapid way it had to come together.
The Stamp is recognizable by itself or with the wordmark in all primary brand colors and sizes. My favorite remains the r1 version (shhhh), and passionately made my case but the one in market today is a close 2nd.
Color Exploration
Keeping the outdoor enthusiast and female demographic in focus the finalists presented to Jim and Ryan are below but not the selected one we extended and launched into market. The selected color palette was uniformly loved, it’s grouped with NOBL Foods brand extension in market today (next section).
Some of the feedback shared across the NOBL Foods co-founders along with the CRRNT team, with few exceptions, felt masculine. The colors really worked and you’ll see a two of the directions below extended into the brand extension sprint. In the end, we landed on the best one.
The NOBL Foods Visual Backbone
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Direction #1: True Freedom
This visual direction hooks into the portability, feeding style, and good smell of the good. The photography in this section portrays dogs in a proud and noble way; they are happy, eager, curious, and healthy.
Messaging snippets from this direction were in the final GTM marketing plan: True Freedom and Let’s Make Dinner Exciting Again. The photographic intent from this direction overlapped with direction #3
Frame #1: True Freedom amplified the portability product benefit of a nutritional dog meal in the form of a bar. Even if you’re not backpacking with your dog for a week, the amount of space you save on the lightweight, nutritionally dense form factor nature of it is a win.
Frame #2: The Let’s Make Dinner Exciting Again along with the photographic style of the dog looking up at camera, happy and healthy amplifies sentiment almost universally shared by pet parents when feeding their dogs NOBL Food bars. When feeding NOBL bars, meals are no longer boring. I can attest to it personally, as in my own lived experience when I’m hand feeding Nelli (insert Instagram link). It’s the closest thing to sitting down at night for a family meal with no distractions. Some (ahem, never me) pet parents got into a habit of putting kibble in a bowl on the floor and forgetting about it. Feeding your dog NOBL allows for a more intimate meal with your dog.
Frame #3: This frame connects some of the ideas behind the nose mark in a fun photograph with simple messaging. The, “They Won’t Smell Any Bull Here.” Reflects how much dogs love the smell and the brand attribute about being a transparent, truthful brand about all things pet nutrition. Something many big dog food companies are not prone to.
Frame #4: How this visual brand direction might be expressed on a billboard using the tagline, brand colors, a food bar product shot, and positioning snippet.
Frames #5 & 6: In a subway or airport, there’s an opportunity to tell a different story than the billboard. The freedom of a dog having fun through ease of travel. This slide reflects how this visual brand direction might be expressed on a billboard using the tagline, brand colors, a treats bag product shot, and positioning snippet. We explored "Not a Wolf" in messaging to contrast CPG pet food advertising tendencies although it didn't make the final cut.
Frame #7: The photography in this brand extension direction reflects warm, curious, fun, proud, loyal, and healthy dogs.
Frame #8: The color palette for this direction.
Frames #9-10: The nose and small wordmarks in the primary brand colors within this direction.
Frames #11-12: Potential merch and business cards.
Direction #2: Tuff Color
The idea behind this visual direction uses color and messaging choices to suggest dogs know better than owners about dog food. Stop feeding them shitty kibble. The messaging choices leaned more into the bold attitude and clear benefit of less poop by way of a more efficient digestive system through a nutritionally dense dog food.
Purely as a creative, there’s a lot to love about this direction. It lent itself well to a personality we could have fun with if NOBL got secondary funding for an advertising campaign, particularly across broadcast, digital, social, and print. The photography direction shows a healthy, confident, knowledgeable, somewhat impatient canine, maybe with the brand attitude of a competitive, smart college coach.
This direction wasn’t selected but we used the idea to give a voice and brand to Kibble Anonymous, the customer loyalty program CRRNT designed and launched later in the project.
Frame #1: This frame shows coach NOBL stating a fact, “We kicked the crap out of kibble”. We felt the palette in this direction might help catch the attention of a slightly younger demo.
Frame #2: This frame shows a nutritionally informed and focused canine who’s tired of you, the pet owner, being lazy by feeding kibble. Creatively, it’s analogous to feeding your family Hungry Man dinners every meal, forever.
Frames #3-5: This insitu frame shows how direction 2 might be extended into mass transit displays. One of the challenges we found with this direction was the increased difficulty in the variability of using the product, photography, tagline, and messaging elements without getting noisy. For the billboard on the right, internally, we began referring to this dog as “crap dog”. CRRNT recommended this graphic be used as a primary launch graphic, like for a booth monolith at Global Pet Expo and the home page hero for the custom Shopify website we were building for NOBL.
Frame #6: In this frame, we used the color palette as the background to help express the attitude tied to a NOBL brand attribute or product truth. This direction leveraged the dog as the hero, not the pet parent, not the product.
Frame #6: Showing the wordmark works in all sizes with this color direction.The NOBL nose stamp and small word mark in two of the primary palette colors from this direction. The light tray, orange and green, works well, while the light blue pops.
Frame #7-11: We had an extended color palette for this direction. We applied the extended palette to the wordmark in all sizes and the NOBL nose.
Frane #12-16: These frames had the extended brand colors to the messaging, tagline, business cards, and example merchandise.
Direction #3: Big Adventures
The idea behind this direction was to use key brand attributes, product benefits, and nutritional truths by showing pets and pet parents out and about. Walking in the park, paddle boarding, hiking, or a drive in the car made easier with NOBL. The photography used in this direction was about dogs and their owners and the adventures shared together by not having to lug around heavy, bulky kibble. We also leverage some of the photography and messaging snippets from Direction 1 for the launch at the Global Pet Expo
This direction resonated most with the CRRNT and NOBL co-founders. The earthiness of the orange/red paired with deep green gives the NOBL brand an instant outdoor feel; the sky blue felt unique, modern, and balanced to the green and orange. It felt less heavy than others we considered, less masculine, warm, and inviting. With a few tweaks, this is the one we extended.
Frame #1: Little dog and big stick; a perfect example of a puppy wanting big adventures. Playful and confident.
Frame #2-5: A few institution frames; everything can be a pit stop on the way to your next adventure when feeding NOBL. Lunch on the Run out of home board in a subway or We Kicked the Crap out of Kibble billboard. We imagined what a True Freedom inner city wall mural might look like.
Frame #6: This frame highlights the portability of taking your dog on trips without carrying the bulk of kibble, like having Lunch on the Lake.
Frame #7-8: The photography angle was a mix of active, happy, healthy dogs on adventures with their owners. This was the selected visual backbone to launch. The color palette was not as bold as direction #2 and provided a healthy outdoor feel.
Frame #9-11: The color palette is applied to the Nose, wordmarks, messaging, and tagline.
Get the Whole Story on How We
Built and Launched NOBL Foods
Strategy & Brand Platform
NOBL Foods wasn't born in a vacuum—it emerged from our deep dive into the pet food category, strategic analysis, and brainstorming. We saw a clear opportunity to evolve from Guardian Bars and MoRE treats, informed by our brand platform which would inform everything from naming to messaging.
This foundational work wasn't just about creating a new brand; it was about crafting a one-of-a-kind identity that would challenge the status quo of pet nutrition.
North American Brand Launch: Global Pet Expo and GTM
NOBL's market entry started with a bang at the Global Pet Expo, where we launched NOBL Foods and Dog Almighty Elixirs, designed a smart, gorgeously designed exhibit booth, and facilitated social conversations about NOBL’s revolutionary approach to pet nutrition.
This initial splash laid the groundwork for what would come later in the year– a custom Shopify eCommerce store that would bring NOBL's innovation directly to pet parents' doorsteps. Each launch phase was strategically timed to build and maintain market momentum.
Relationship Timeline
The NOBL-CRRNT timeline reads like a masterclass in agile brand building. Starting in January 2021, we moved from strategic conception to Global Pet Expo launch, navigated a pandemic-induced pivot, and culminated in an e-commerce launch in Q4 of 2922, transitioning the account in January 2023. Each milestone represents a testament to the power of strategic partnerships.
