Amazon with Arthur Foliard

Speaker A: This episode of A Change of Brand is brought to you by Standards, the no code platform for building web based brand guidelines with total design control. Keep listening to Learn more.

Speaker B: Hey.

Speaker A: Also, this podcast is produced by Matchstick, the brand identity house for leaders taking bold steps towards a radically relevant brand.

Speaker C: I'm not someone that stresses too much. M. I'm not really nervous, I would say. Actually my leadership style is always pretty. Like chill and relax. Because I know that at the end of the day, we're no surgeon. Uh, no one is going to die if something goes wrong. We'll start over. Of course you want that to go well. I mean, come on. And we're taking the work very seriously, for sure. But I remember vividly waking up in the hotel room was probably 6am Because Joe is pretty busy, as you probably assume as a global cco. I'm in the hotel room and I remember telling myself, okay, this is a defining moment of your career today. Don't fuck this up.

Speaker A: Hey everyone.

Speaker B: Welcome to A Change of Brand, a show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory, drama or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard.

Speaker D: And I'm your host, Tracy Clark.

Speaker A: Tracy.

Speaker B: Today is part two of our miniseries on scale and. And the big season six finale.

Speaker D: Yay. Woo.

Speaker B: Can you believe it?

Speaker D: No, no, it's been a, uh, whirlwind, right? I mean, we've covered a lot. We've covered retail, sports, sporty cars, animals, AI. It's. It's been a good, A good range, don't you think?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And speaking of range, have you ever played Amazon roulette?

Speaker D: I. I haven't. I haven't. Is it where you spin a wheel and like whatever you land on your friend has to buy it? Because that'd be cool.

Speaker A: That's a good guess.

Speaker B: No, this is a game I made, um, up. It's where you go to Amazon, you click your order history and you have to confess your last order.

Speaker D: Oh. Um.

Speaker B: So who knows what's in there? So this is all live and not scripted, right?

Speaker D: No, not at all. I have not opened up my orders.

Speaker B: I have not prepared. And we can say, you know, you can choose from your top three in case there's anything that's just like overwhelmingly embarrassing. That way you could, you have a little choice in it. So, all right, so we're gonna go Amazon.com.

Speaker D: i've got it.

Speaker B: Orders.

Speaker D: M clicked on my orders.

Speaker B: Oh, mine's a good one.

Speaker D: Oh, yeah, what you got? Okay, this is really embarrassing. Okay, you first.

Speaker B: Mine.

Speaker A: Mine sounds.

Speaker B: Sounds embarrassing, but it's not. Okay.

Speaker A: Mine.

Speaker B: And it's actually arriving today. I ordered some.

Speaker A: You ready for this?

Speaker B: Um, some leather honey. It's leather conditioner because I'm restoring an older couch so I can sell. It's an older leather couch and I'm going to sell it on Facebook Marketplace. So leather honey is arriving.

Speaker D: Leather honey. I didn't even know that was a thing. But it, uh, I mean, it sounds cool. That's not, that's not embarrassing, though. That's like, you know, that's, that's, that's legit.

Speaker B: I mean, at first, leather honey sounds a little embarrassing.

Speaker D: Well, yeah, if you don't explain what it is, then that, that leaves a lot of question marks, if I'm honest. But, um, yeah. Okay. So mine is a, uh, I recently went to a B52's birthday party and the, uh, thing that showed up first is the, uh, a pink mountain metallic dress that I did not wear that I need to return. And I. Instead, you know, I, I picked a different outfit. So that's, that's at the top. It's.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker D: It's in my return pile. But the order, it's pretty good. It's. It was, it was a fun party, but the, the pink metallic dress just wasn't cutting it for me. The. The thing that's on order is a cute ador. Adorable mushroom sweater for my son. So it's, it's a little. A fall nature lovers sweater, uh, with,

Speaker E: with little cute little mushrooms on it.

Speaker B: Perfect. That's perfect. All right, let's get focused here. But you get a sense of the range of things that you could buy on Amazon. And, uh, today we're talking about a big overhaul for the brand. Maybe not visually in terms of a logo change, but they found a way to unify over 50 sub brands. And I just want to know from your perspective, like, where would you even start on something like that? Like, how do you get leadership aligned at a. At a level that's high enough to make the decision to reinforce something that turns into a more cohesive system with that much change? Um, from an implication standpoint.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's tough from, you know, for leadership, but education, for sure, that comes first. I would, I would tell them it's. You're not branding the org chart. You know, it's more about how your customers understand the relationship between your brands externally. And they. And leaders, I think, also need to know the business case for a clear brand architecture. They need to know, well, why. Why does it matter? Right? And, And Why it matters is it reduces customer confusion, which makes it easier. Easier to do business with you. Right. And it maximizes brand equity so that every marketing dollar reinforces that same brand story. So um, and then they also need to know that it creates a pathway for future M and A activity, if that's something that they're thinking about so that they don't continue to just. We've seen companies, you and I have seen them, where they just snap on brands haphazardly, one after another and then it's a mess and they can't keep track of it. So.

Speaker B: So yeah, and then groups like us have to go in and try to clean up that mess. And I worked on a project with a giant organization who won't be named, but they have a global scale and they were really product forward. So it was less brand forward, more M, product identity forward. That's the way it went to the market. And it was kind of a mess. Hundreds of brands all over the place. They each looked like standalone separate brands. They didn't seem connected at all. So we put together and in my humble opinion, an incredible system to keep the brand consistent, recognizable, and for each product to have some unique flexibility. But you know what happened? After all that hard work and all that really smart strategic thinking, it didn't stick. It didn't stick. That's right. This is the womp womp. The CMO couldn't get it all the way up the flagpole to get people really bought into it and so it

Speaker A: just sort of stalled out and they

Speaker B: implemented some of it, like a couple different, um, uh, product brands implemented some of it, but not at full scale. And they just missed out on opportunity like we've seen with this Amazon project. So I say that, to say these things are really, really tricky and at this scale, the largest retailer on the planet, that's next level.

Speaker D: Yeah, totally next level. And that's so frustrating when they can't, you know, running up the flagpole because that brand confusion and inefficiency is just going to continue to be a barrier for that organization time and time again. Because they couldn't commit, right?

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah. And I think the commitment is the scary part. People think short term and they're trying to launch a new product or they're trying to launch a campaign, they're trying to drive short term results or sales and we're asking them to think long term with brand architecture. So yes, maybe a parallel would be like, hey, we need you to clean out your garage. And you'd be like okay, that's great, but my house is on fire, so how can I clean out my garage right now? You know, so that commitment just seems sort of out of place, you know what I mean? So, all right, it's prime time. Enough banter. Do you have a brief end for us?

Speaker D: You know it, Blake. Uh, we're going to cover everything from A to Z. How about that?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Nailed it.

Speaker E: Long before Jeff Bezos became the third richest person in the world, he was working on Wall street, but wanted to enter the digital age of the late 90s with a startup of his own. Bezos wrote his entire business plan while road tripping from New York to Seattle, where he would then launch Cadabra, short for Abracadabra, as an online bookseller in 1994. Kadabra would soon change its name after Bezos's lawyer cited a pronunciation issue, since some people were hearing cadaver instead. Not great. And so Amazon, a name that exudes vastness and scale, was launched in July of 1995. Within just a few years, the company rapidly expanded into music, video, electronics and more, laying the groundwork for its identity as the Everything Store. The brand has always been built around the idea of easy as magic, and this early period set the stage for a brand built on massive scale, convenience, and innovation. Amazon's logo journey began with a bold, stylized letter, a designed to evoke the Amazon river, paired with the full Amazon.com wordmark in lowercase typeface. After some experimentation with zebra striping and serif type, the brand arrived in 2000 at its defining logo, a lowercase Amazon with a curved arrow stretching from A to Z, symbolizing both its product range and a customer smile. Minor Refinements in 2012 gave the logo a friendlier, more polished feel while reinforcing brand familiarity. By 2024, Amazon had grown far beyond its e commerce roots, expanding into industries ranging from entertainment and healthcare to logistics and artificial intelligence. With this growth came a sprawling ecosystem of services and sub brands, such as Amazon Prime, Fresh, Alexa, and a slew of acquisitions like Audible and Ring.

Speaker D: The problem?

Speaker E: Each service was evolving at different paces and often with distinct visual identities. And internally, teams faced increasing pressure to balance brand consistency with the needs of diverse products, product categories. And then externally, consumers encountered a fragmented brand experience. Would they be able to wrangle over 50 sub brands across 15 global markets? And with change at this scale, where do you even start? Keep listening to find out.

Speaker A: Imagine if you had a stack of

Speaker B: random magazines, Time, Good Housekeeping People, the

Speaker A: New Yorker, Reader's Digest, and more. And then imagine if I asked you to pull out as many random pages from them as you could in less than 30 seconds. And then with those torn out pages, I asked you to tear them into tiny little bits. And then I gave you just a few minutes to organize all of those tiny shreds into some sort of a collage on the floor. The end result might look like the Amazon brands assembled together before this refresh. To say they were overdue for some clean cleanup is an understatement. Coto, the agency who led the design for this tall task, according to their website, said it was a project 18 months, 15 global markets and over 50 sub brands in the making. It included an update to the Amazon logo, the first one in over 20 years, with small type improvements and a slightly deeper smile arrow, the one that points from A to Z. Kodo also created custom letters for the logo, calling it Amazon Sans, as a way to unify the 50 plus sub brands into one consistent lockup or logo template. Additionally, colors were unified, going from mini oranges to the orange and from mini blues to the prime blue. They also modernized the original Amazon custom typeface, Ember, which was designed for Kindle screenshots but had been scaled for headlines, subheads and captions on all branded communications, leaving design teams disappointed in sneaking in additional fonts as needed. The new Ember Modern font is bold, playful and loud in high impact marketing moments, as well as subtle and quiet when needed. It plays a major role in unifying the brand. They also created Ember Modern Text to work in the smallest of places. But wait, there's more. More. Coto partnered with Nan to translate this new typeface so it could truly thrive across the globe. The result is a singular typographic system that includes Support for over 364 languages. Custom icons were created as well. Sub brands were organized into cohorts with specific colorways and so much more. I, uh, highly encourage you to see the work for yourself at a change of brand brand.com or go straight to the source and check out Coto's case study. Coto Studio, I had the chance to

Speaker B: sit down with Arthur Folliard, the executive creative Director at coto.

Speaker A: We had him on the show back in season four to talk about the Bolt rebrand. And he's one of my favorites, very down to earth, easy to talk to, so I felt comfortable putting him on the spot.

Speaker B: Have you ever played Amazon Roulette?

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: So it's a game I made up, so it would be weird if you had played it.

Speaker C: Um, but okay, yeah, imagine. Oh yeah, all the time. So yeah, that's my favorite game.

Speaker B: So how it works is live. We both go to our Amazon accounts and tell each other what the last thing we ordered was.

Speaker C: Uh, but you know, it's not going to be great because we use Amazon for Sun now. So I think it's going to be really boring. Ah, uh, well, I'm on it, I'm on it.

Speaker B: Mine's going to be super boring, I would imagine. Okay, last thing you ordered.

Speaker C: So I mean this, I'm going to do the second one because the last one was just the W food order so it's not really interesting. But the previous one you're going to like, it's called the uh, W Busy board Montessori toy for 1, 2, 3, 4 year olds toddlers. Educational activity Developing sensory board for basic dress, fine motor skills. Travel toys for playing. Car gift for boys and girls.

Speaker B: Wow, that sounds like quite the gift or quite the the toy for your, your kiddo.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, I think about Kodo and you guys as this like really smart design, forward up and cominging design studio. But this project clearly shows that you all have grown quite a bit over the years and really like maybe solidifies your design leadership and your capabilities a next level, not just doing brands for startups, like just the highest level possible in terms of complexity and scale. So tell me about the first time you heard about this opportunity to work with Amazon and to take on a project of this nature.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a funny story because we get the email and um, we thought it was just a small project for Amazon. We had done some work in Berlin with music and a few other sort of Amazon related project and we jump in and we're excited and they say we'd love you to present you know, your creds in a few days and so on. And at the end we say sorry, but what part of Amazon is this? And then they reply, oh, it's the whole thing. And honestly, ah, this was one of those moments where your stomach kind of like flips a little bit and you realize pretty quickly this is not just another rebrand, it's bloody Amazon. That is the whole thing. It's something that is used by billions and arguably the biggest brand in the world. And it's not small part of Amazon.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Because if you were just being briefed on prime and music again or grocery, that would be enormous when you think about it, uh, it's the whole deal. It's global, it's layered and it touches nearly every person on the planet. So, yeah, it felt incredible. And we left feeling really excited and thinking we got to win this.

Speaker B: Was it a competitive process?

Speaker C: If you mean competitive in the sense of like a pitch. It was on a pitch, right? Uh, it was like creds and capabilities, but it was competitive in the sense that they had picked the, um, top tier agencies in the world. Uh, the best of the best, obviously. How do you stand out? How do you make them think and believe that you're going to be the best? And I think that we had to show not just great design thinking, but that we understood the complexity of the brief and what they were facing and the challenges that we could be really good strategic partner. And honestly, we were not really afraid to challenge them. That's it. We just went in saying these are the big challenges and we're going to have to do this or that. And with that said, you also coming into this meeting thinking we don't have all the answers, um, because we need to spend time together. But I think what, what we're doing really well at Kodo, and you probably know that from the conversation that we've had and you've had also with Joey and James, is, um, it's just show that we're going to be that great partners, know that we're going to go above and beyond that we're going to want to build that thing together. And I think we've done that really well.

Speaker B: The problem of inconsistency with Amazon has been pretty clear to me over the years. You know when you do brand architecture work and you reference different marketplace examples and you look at Amazon, you're like, man, it is just so inconsistent and complex and they cross categories and they have different value propositions, they have different products, they have software, hardware, I mean, it's like, you name it, they've got it. So, so what, like flipped for them that made them interested in solving those inconsistencies?

Speaker C: Now the truth is, I don't think it was a HAHA moment. It was more like a slow build that over time the system just frayed a little bit. Uh, too many teams working in silos, too many visual directions. And we'll talk about that, I'm sure, where people introduce new typefaces and we just come up with colors and everything had the logo. It was insane. And at some point that inconsistency became a brand risk for sure. And when you have, like you said, touch points like watch screens and delivery truck, uh, and packaging and all of that, you can't afford confusion you want to make sure that there's this consistency from the moment that you check and you play that lovely game to the moment where you get your thing delivered or you access your favorite show and everything. And they just needed something likelier, more modern and unified. And so that refresh became about redefining really like what Amazon was and what the center of gravity was altogether. And really projecting that with clear confidence

Speaker B: was sort of the, uh, inciting incident, the need to update the parent. Or was it the feeling of there's just so much that needs to be updated. We just need to have a giant project that we bring an agency to help with.

Speaker C: There was a lot of challenges around parents and retail altogether, like not to make it feel quite corporate and still having obviously the orange at the core, but feeling a little bit more modern, like I said, and digital. And when you think about parent, you're also thinking about recruiting jobs. Ah, everything that is also in the background. But they didn't want to work in silos. And they had done some interesting work in the past that they had just to work with prime, you know, like a little refresh of it. And they were working also with Kodo on the side with music. And it was other things that were done by other agencies on like Fresh. But again, it is done in silos. And clearly what we realized when we worked with them was how can you actually tackle any kind of refresh or rebrand when you don't look at the whole overall thing? Because from the choice of color and the choice of the typeface and, and like you said, there's so many things and so many subarounds that you might do something really great, but it might not make sense.

Speaker B: And projects like these often can start with reams of research, like so much audience research or consulting groups with, you know, two by two framework or maybe just the, uh, creative execution. You dive right into that. For you guys, where did you really start?

Speaker C: For, uh, us specifically Kodo, it was, was the system really. And how we take that incredible brief and challenge vision of the brand and just tackle that in a visual way. Right. And so what we started to do was mapped out what existed. Every logo, every page, every weird sub brand no one had looked out in years. And you have obviously everything external and you got so much internal and you've got the sub brands and you've got the house brands and you've got like, functionalities and you've got like so many small little things that, you know are important. And we wanted to make sure that we were Thinking about big picture, but we understood also the small details, like I said. And once we saw the jungle, as we said, we could start shaping the path, you know, through it. So yeah, we put everything on the table. It was observations, opportunities, and we're coming with this beginner's mindset as well. As much as we understand what they need, there's a lot of things that we're going to suggest that uh, can't be right. But questioning the size of the search bar or the use of the orange and why is the one click checkout yellow and the relationship with prime and the iconography and all of that stuff and even how the brand show up in those tiny icons. Because actually if you search on your, on your phone, there's so many Amazon apps versus a big billboard that you might see here in Times Square in Williamsburg, and nothing was too small or to say create to question, which I really liked. And as Kodo, that's how we also like tackling some of these briefs, which is we're not here for ourselves, we're just going to make the decisions that are right for the business. And luckily Amazon had done incredible, incredible foundational work with Sylvain on uh, like the whole actually architecture which they were involved with. So it gave us a solid structure to build from. And that architecture, I'm sure we're going to talk about this, but, uh, set the stage. It was really, at least our job was really about bringing clarity, cohesion and creative expression throughout the whole thing. So, um, yeah, really good. And one last thing before we move on. In some ways I think the great thing about Coto and the way we tackle this project, that we never do things for the sake of doing. Like everything that we do well is explained on decisions.

Speaker D: Right?

Speaker C: Nothing is left to chance or is based on a hunch. Every choice that we make day in and day out is rooted in strategy in the business, uh, challenge.

Speaker B: What did it look like engaging with Amazon? You know, like a project of this size or scale? Do you have just a couple points of contact that you were working with? Was it a large team? And then what was the like, mechanism for touch points? You know, was it like a weekly check in? Was it a shared Figma file? Was it monthly? Like, how did you engage with Amazon?

Speaker C: So the main team that we worked with to start with was xcm. And the great thing about xcm, they're very much in charge of like the whole thing in some ways. And we had really senior people at prime and retail and the whole thing, our most senior Client and the person that we were presenting to for just moving things forward was the global cco, which is Joe Shoesmith. After we were really happy and she was happy with everything, we had to go out and like go to other teams and present it because at the end of the day you also had to go to the, to the big dogs, uh, as well. But in terms of the partnership, it's happened naturally. Like I said at Kodo, one of the thing that makes us unique is that real, real authentic sense of collaboration. And that XCM team was really fantastic. Always open to chat, jump on calls, answer questions at all times. We spent weeks calling, uh, Chrissy, he's the head of Prime. What you realize with Amazon is Prime is present everywhere. You're going to have the grocery experience with Prime. What does it do now? Does it bring a better delivery, a faster delivery, some discount? It's the same with pharmacy, it's the same with music. Everything has it. And so, uh, I, uh, would spend so much time just asking the silliest question and I always told the team and told myself there's no silly questions. Actually everything that we're doing right now is trying to immerse ourselves and understand why this thing exists and why it's so important. So we do a lot of that. We also had weekly check ins, like regular working sessions, key milestone reviews. But honestly, it felt like the line was blurred between client and agency in a really, really good way. It, uh, felt that we were part of their team, we were part of ours. We had the same Slack channel. We were just like joking around, we were just having fun. It felt really great, uh, almost. We were all in the trenches, you know, together, figuring this out in real time and we really, really bonded over this idea that we could make a change.

Speaker B: And um, what about on the, on the Kodo side? You know, how the heck do you staff something like this? Is it, is it like one poor strategist who's just locked away forever? Or is it like, you know, an army of designers? How did you, how did you guys staff it on the Coto side?

Speaker C: Uh, it's so funny you said that. First of all, you want to build it with your best people, really, so you just get the best of the best. We had some people coming from London, like people we really trusted just to help us for a few weeks, people that had been at KODO for years and years, but then here in New York, because it was also a bit of a celebration in some ways of all the great work we had been doing. For nearly two years, we wanted people just to feel that ownership. We had James as well, James Greenfield, our CEO, just being involved because it was such a big thing that we wanted someone really senior, obviously, uh, in that room on top of, like, me and Alex. But, yeah, you put great dd, senior motion strategy copywriters, the whole deal. And it's the same with the client service because, you know, that becomes obviously a big focus of what you're doing and you want to do the best ever.

Speaker A: Okay, so an army of creatives from Kodo Kotoans maybe have been hard at

Speaker B: work collaborating with the XCM team at Amazon.

Speaker A: The, uh, Amazonites, maybe.

Speaker B: I don't know.

Speaker A: All of this work building up and leading to a round one presentation. Both groups really want to wow those Amazon executives out of the gate. And I'll say, in a project like this, making sense of everything from A to Z at the beginning maybe is the hardest work. Which brands have equity in their logo and are untouchable, or which brands use what colors and why? So the pressure to deliver was on.

Speaker C: The big, big one is the first creative presentation. So we're doing all of these lovely immersions. Audit. We spend a lot of time asking questions and the Amazon team said, we'd love to come to your studio just to do a bit of a tissue session. Tissue session is really, did you understand the brief and all of that? But what we were thinking is let's just make a great first impression here. Let's just show them that we get it and we're going to smash that. And what we actually did was came up with three boards, three big visions of the brand and where we could push it. And each of these boards, like I said, had really thorough, uh, intense, you know, so, like, deep dive into the product. We had a bunch of questions, a bunch of observation, a bunch of opportunities around the orange itself, and the same with the blue and what we needed to make with the blue, and the same with the tone of voice and the typography, graphene, everything that was making sort of like the brand. The brand. And the team really loved it because first of all, they were really impressed of the amount of stuff that we had done in so little time. And they stayed a few hours every day for, like a few days. And we were just like, chatting again, collaborating on what we think was right and what we could push it and understanding the complexity of Amazon. And it's not because something makes sense that it's going to happen. So, like, being really resilient and understanding how to tackle that and the team loved it and they were really excited and they felt like the care that we were putting into the project, like I said, and we're leaving this tissue session feeling very empowered, excited. We feel like the Amazon team, they're behind us, they're rooting for us. We're going to do it. And we decided for the next week or so we're going to build a slightly bigger presentation together. We're going to get them in Figma and we're going to build it and every day we'll jump on a call and we'll just do it together. Which made the whole thing feel really great. And we get to this first creative presentation in Seattle and the whole team is like, we're going to smash it. And the Amazon team is like, we're going to smash it. It's going to be great. Maybe you know that from the conversation that we've had together, but I'm not someone that stresses too much. I'm not really nervous, I would say actually my leadership style is always pretty. I chill and relax because I know that at the end of the day we're no surgeon. No, uh, one is going to die if something goes wrong. We'll start over. Of course you want that to go well. I mean, come on, we're taking the work very seriously, for sure. But I remember vividly waking up in the hotel room was probably 6am Because Joe is pretty busy, as you probably assume as a global cco. I'm in the hotel room and I remember telling myself, okay, this is a defining moment of your career today. Don't fuck this up.

Speaker A: Okay, time for a quick break. When we come back, we see if Arthur can keep it together before this next big presentation and how they managed to get this new identity signed, sealed and delivered. All that more after the break. What if your brand guidelines were as easy to edit as a doc, or as precise as your design files and you didn't need a single line of code? That can't be true. You're saying it's not possible.

Speaker B: Well, guess what?

Speaker A: It is. And that's where standards comes in. The no code platform made just for brand guidelines. From pre built outlines and asset hosting to advanced permissions and automations, it gives you total control and zero development headaches. Whether you're a nimble studio or a massive in house team, Standards scales with you. Check it out@www.uhstands.site. that's s I T E. And finally, bring some order to the brand chaos. Again, that's Standards site.

Speaker D: Hey everyone.

Speaker E: I want to take a quick minute and give a hat tip to Matchstick. It's where I work and our producing partner for this show. We specialize in helping growing brands take their identity to the next level. If you need help clarifying your message or standing out in the market, be sure to Visit us@matchstick.com. that's M A T C-H-S-T-I C.com. and if you're enjoying this and other episodes, be sure to tell a friend or leave us a review. Okay, back to the show.

Speaker A: When we left off, Arthur was giving himself a pep talk as he and his team were headed into this big, uh, creative presentation. And suddenly it started to feel very real. His prime days were flashing before his eyes. Would that adrenaline get the best of him? No, not Arthur.

Speaker C: I knew the presentation by heart. You know, I had been working so much on this with the rest of the team at Amazon. And like I said, we don't leave anything to chance. Uh, everything has a reason, and we know exactly why we're suggesting something. And we get into the room and you'll be like, all right, all right, let's just do this. And we had 90 minutes. And I remember Joyce just a little bit late, and she comes in, and I think we just heard that we only have 60 minutes anymore. In a way, you'll be like, oh, my God. But also, okay, I'm going to go efficient. We had two big vision here, and the first one was very much more in line with the stuff that they had today. And we didn't want to change so many things. We wanted just to work with what they have, all the assets. And, you know, she likes it. She's excited. But she falls in love with the second one, which was more around this idea of, like, worlds within worlds. I think a good analogy of Amazon is a bit like Disney, where you go to the pirate one, you go to the futuristic, you go to Mario, but the whole thing still feels like Disney. And in some ways, I feel like when you have prime, or you have grocery or you have pharmacy, you have retail in general, it's a very different world. It still feels like Amazon. And she really falls in love with that because we said, each cohort, they're going to have their own personality, they're going to have their own color, but we're going to have some fixed points that you're going to have everywhere. So if you see the grocery, if you see prime, if you see aws, if you see all of that, you know, it's Amazon. But of course, when you talk about music, you talk about your favorite podcast or your favorite show, you want that to feel a lot more immersive, a lot bigger, a lot more emotional than if you're talking about Prescription, for example. They can still be focused on people, but there's something a little bit more serious here. And she loved that. And we leave the team, and everyone's been like, oh, m. My God. Oh, my God. And, you know, we leave Seattle being like, okay, uh, something is happening. She loved the idea of updating the type. She loved the idea of building and bringing this logo system to. To bring clarity around the mess and everything that we hoped for. Yeah. Ah. And then we kept going.

Speaker B: I would imagine Joe saw it, gave you some direction, said, this is exciting, and then it probably permeated to some other leadership. At that point, were you sort of holding your breath, like, I hope I don't get an email that pops in or a phone call that says, hey, actually, we can't unify all the type. That's just not gonna work.

Speaker C: You know, it was always a risk for sure. But what we tried to do before we went out to the other teams was make sure it's as bulletproof as. And it comes next with the second creative presentation, which was still with, you know, Joe and Walter and, uh, you know, people that are really senior there. I honestly think that the second creative presentation is the hardest one on every single project, because the first one is really about vision and energy.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: Uh, you come in hard and you say, we're doing this and we're changing that, and we really believe in this, and you show something that is bold and that people can really feel, and it's great. This is exactly how you should tackle the first round of creative. It should always be based around the vision, but it will obviously open up questions and clients might just get. I love that, but what about this? And. And I feel like the second round of creative is where things get real. Like, that's the moment that either try it and you're rolling because you know, this is it. And now it's about the details and figuring this out as a team, or they don't. And then you suddenly, in a bit of a shaky ground a little bit. You know, it's a bit of a make or break kind of kind of vibe, because you don't want them to question it. Because if they start to question it, you could go back to the drawing board a little bit, right? And be like, okay, well, it's actually not working. This this idea of worlds within worlds and that each cohort is going to have those very interesting flex points with fixed points. And after this incredible first round of creative honesty, we were just mind blown. I actually kept the celebration to a minimum because I remember reminded the team that this is just the beginning and we gotta lend it properly. And so we, I'll do it short but we do the second round and it goes really great, that wonderful second round of presentation. And I think at this point it went so well that even the Amazon team almost didn't expect us to be in this place of the process in some ways that actually they thought maybe it would take a bit longer. And we had worked tirelessly as you probably imagine, that we decide that we were going to start building this VP SVP sort of exec, sorry, uh, deck, so we could go to the teams at grocery, at Music etc to sell this and say, are you behind us? You know, what else do you want to change? But this is happening and so let's just try to make it uh, happen. And so we did that for like a month and a half or two months of like just building that thing together. And they know their business more than you know, know we knew. So a lot of learning curves and again just doing it together in Figma all the time. We're building this, they are building that. We're jumping on a call for half an hour. What do you think about this? And let's just make sure we show this when we go to prime, you know. So long story short, we worked on that after until the big presentation for sure where we got everything confirmed, the new logo, the logo system, the type of and everything. And trust me, we didn't join this presentation. I was the only one we didn't join because that was obviously a very small team, but we were having pizza with the team just thinking, okay, let's just go out and think about something else. And I just got a slack from uh, someone that we work with really closely called Alexa from the XCM team. And she said type check mark. Logo, check. Marked overall system, check mark, Colors, check mark. And I remember vividly just screaming at the pizza like oh my fucking God. And uh, literally two hours later they were like, all right, so we want to roll that out as quickly as possible now, which I love from Amazon. They were like, no, this is it, we got the answer, let's just do it. Can you send us the artwork of the new logo? Okay, I mean, give me a second, just need to take my breath and we're Going to do it. And that's the incredible thing. And that's why Amazon is in a great place right now with the system is they were ready to roll and go with it.

Speaker B: I love that story. Of course, they wanted to ship it really quick. They're like, give it, give me, you know, free today. Or like, same day. I need it, I need it. Exactly, yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, it's the prime expectation.

Speaker A: I love this segment from our conversation so much. It underscores the importance of patience and a little corporate thing called socialization. You can't just publish guidelines and force hundreds of creatives to use them. You have to put in the time to meet with those teams, share the thinking, gather their feedback and answer their questions. This is the glue that helps a, uh, change like this stick. But also, if the work isn't really thoughtful and sound, it will never survive

Speaker B: the gauntlet of team meetings across an enterprise like this.

Speaker A: So it's not just about socializing, it's also about getting the work right, especially the color. Coto was bringing structure and restraint to the chaos that had existed at Amazon for decades. One major element in that restraint was the color. I was curious, where did they even start with minimizing the combined palette of 50 sub brands down to one umbrella color system?

Speaker C: So with the color, it started with prime, actually prime, like the blue of prime. And it started with the. Our visuals. But what we had before was a little bit more tame, uh, like desaturated. And it is what it is. Prime, as you know, is the best of the best of Amazon. Really. Uh, it's really about access. Like I said, access to your favorite show, to great food, to prescription, etc. And we always said, what is special about Prime? People always said access, but the previous identity color didn't feel very celebratory. This should feel like the most exciting, special moment of the Amazon experience. When you think about it. Uh, it is really what you're trying users to get into is to become prime members. And the other issue that we had here was blue in general, as you probably expect, was overused. They had variants of blue for sure, shades of blue. We were thinking, you can't do that when you think about association or you see a van and you see a box. Blue should mean prime and Alexa had the Scion. And in a way we didn't want to touch it so much because it was what it was and people, like, had good recall on this color. But prime needed something. So what we decided was to keep Cyan for Alexa and then move prime into a slightly bluer space, more saturated, like a little bit more visible. Right. More modern, fresher altogether. Needed a bit of that and really define the rest because we didn't want to do that in silos once again. And so when we think about this idea of cohort, which is this group of sub brands, when you talk about food or you talk about tech or you talk about something, you kind of want the color to be immediate. And I'd say the biggest thing with Amazon is really, in some ways, as a user, the header of the website or the app. And if everything is blue, it takes you just a split second to understand if you click on that header, you're going to go somewhere different. Um, so we did that. So we started to figure out the other colors of the cohorts, and the big one also was the orange. Because it was really important that Amazon and Prime felt like a duo in some ways, that they were built together, they work in tandem. So try to match the same saturation, same brightness, the same sort of attitude of the blue into the orange, and then apply that thinking into everything else. It's a lot more complex than it seems. And you and me don't have enough time to talk about that. Because when you think about the retail experience, there's seasonal campaigns and colors, there are colors that need to change based on, um, the country as well, like celebration of new year, lunar year and all of that stuff. But it was really still at the beginning just trying to fix, you know, like an issue of inconsistency, like a bit of a mess as well, and trying to really apply something that felt a lot more unified throughout. I'm quite nerdy about this color story. When we talk to other clients and other talents, I get really excited. And I think it's one of the things that summarizes well what we did for Amazon is we're not here to break everything. There's absolutely no point. We were here to make meaningful changes with actual challenges. And like I said in the background and trying to understand and make things better.

Speaker B: Another piece that's really complex is the type. And once you start to unify color and unify type, those are some heavy hitters for the system overall. And you guys, uh, updated their proprietary typeface Ember to Ember Modern. Tell me why, like, what were the significant changes there? Or, like, why the thought to update the typeface?

Speaker C: It's an interesting story when you don't know about it, but the old typeface was originally made for Kindle screens, so in its sort of Structure in DNA. The whole thing is just about legibility and two things happen. Some people try to stick with it for consistency sake, and that's great. But a, uh, typeface that is not made to be a headline is not going to look really good as a headline. And it was also done years and years and years ago. And again, no diss, like it made a lot of sense and was really successful for one, uh, thing and one thing only and didn't really represent what Amazon was today, uh, versus when they did it. The second thing would happen is people would just either drop, drop it all together, swap it, just do crazy things with it. Um, and the issue, once again, is that when you do the audit of the type, it was a brand that had dozens and dozens of type faces. And it's another example of why it was important to look at the whole thing together. Because if you don't do it, you're going to make decisions in silos in some ways and not for the overall global business. And that is an issue. We needed something that had a lot more range, a lot more purpose. What we did, we developed Ember Modern right away. We just go to the first creative presentation with a few letters and we say, this could be that. We think it is the way. And once again, if you actually compare those two tap faces together, you can see that Amber Modern kind of a uses moment of umbrella. We didn't want something completely different. We wanted something that felt Amazon had a bit of that quirk in some ways to it. It felt quite friendly but serious and really something, a type family that could work incredibly well when you needed to be big and bold on a poster, but subtle and legible enough for everyday digital use. The headline was obviously, in a way, a little bit simpler to tackle because the testing is a little bit more minimal in some ways. Uh, and you need to make sure, obviously kerning and leading, and there's a lot of things that need to be taken, uh, into account. Amazon does a lot of automation, so you want to make sure the leading doesn't break and things are still legible. I think the second part that was the hardest was the text font. You know, the one that is being updated right now on the website and everything else that obviously requires a lot more, more like testing to make sure things are, uh, eligible in any kind of language. But the goal really to go back to your main question was to create something that feels a lot more cohesive, you know, and that was almost the thread in every corner of Amazon. And the thing that would Just make you think, oh, yeah, I know that. You know, I know this typeface. I've seen it from a new prime video series launch, uh, of that. And we see it every other day here in New York, or refiling your prescription or making a retail purchase. So that felt really great. And if you think about it, it is beyond looking beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful type, actually. I think it's really gorgeous. Now, we're putting a lot of limits, at least right now, on how we should use this type, because you don't want to see a billboard tomorrow, something else that you use, like the thin weight, and then tomorrow there's the bold weight, and that's going to be a bit broken. So we really work extremely hard together with the team on layout and sizes and letting all together to make sure that you could bring this flexibility with that less weight.

Speaker B: And what about the process to translate it to. I saw online 364 languages.

Speaker C: Yeah. So Nan and his team nearly did everything. Um, there was other partnerships with the Arabic and Japanese, like local sort of foundries, but Noun Foundry, led by Luke, did everything because they did also Cyrillic and they did Latin and they did all of this. And that actually has. Yeah. Above like 360 languages included. So the. The boy has been busy with his team. I think. One thing I absolutely love, and we're chatting to other teams here at Coto and other clients, is when you think about Japanese, for example, there's a completely, obviously different Alphabet. Or Arabic, of course, it's, uh, it needs to be a bit different. Right. But you need to figure out what is the thing that makes your type face in the first place unique?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Is it the roundness of it? Is it a bit of that, like I said, friendly, ish sort of aesthetic? Is it the quirk that you bring into some characters in some ways, is defining some type of graphic principles that you can bring into, like I said, like Japanese and Arabic. And so that's why when you look at the work that we have, the work out there, or case study, and you look these complete different characters, they still feel like Amazon. And that is really important. And good learnings, for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting looking at characters in a language you don't understand, because it becomes just shape and form. There's no real, like, meaning or communication embedded in that shape. You're just looking at the art forms.

Speaker C: You know, the Japanese is so beautiful.

Speaker B: It's so different. Yeah. To translate the negative space or, you know, certain design details into something that just becomes for all intents and purposes, artwork or forms, I think that is fascinating in a really tall order, really hard.

Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. Very incredible. When you think about 360 something languages, they actually didn't have that before. Again, it's a small improvement that will make such a difference. When you think about brand consistency and unifying, you know, Amazon as a whole,

Speaker B: as you continue to finalize and apply this whole design system, did you get any resistance, you know, as you had to, like socialize it and share with other teams? Because I've been in projects like this, not to this scale, but at decent scale. I've worked with a really large nonprofit that had probably 50 sub brands that we were really trying to rein in. And we were doing similar thinking of cohorts and groups with consistent kind of color and type application across the board. But what happens is the owners of those sub brands or those programs say, like, no, no, no, my thing's got to be different. Like, it really, it really connects. People really love it. Like, it works individually on its own and they don't want to get on board with the larger brand vision of unification. Did you guys have any rub like that, any resistance around those particular areas?

Speaker E: Of course.

Speaker C: I, uh, think you have to be honest here. You're asking some teams to let go of something they've built and it becomes a bit personal. But actually, this is the first time I'm going to say, but in a nice way, when we walk them through the logic and show them how they can still stand out within the system, people come around. As soon as you show the logic and you show that you can have flexibility in the system, people really come around. And we were actually generally impressed with how much people love that, you know, love the new thing. And the trick was really showing them, like I said, this cohesion. Cohesion doesn't mean sameness. Right? You can be distinct and still feel part of something bigger. Which was also an interesting challenge that some people said, I still want to be part of Amazon. I still want to be the same. Before, they don't have the logo, they used to have a logo and don't have a logo anymore. They're like, but that's the only thing that, you know, made me feel part of Amazon. I said, yes, because that's what you were feeling before, but not anymore. You've got the color and you've got the type and you've got the iconography, the sort of system. Everything is really consistent. Of course, before when you had 20 different typefaces, it felt like the logo was the only thing. But like I said, with that said, the implementation, the sort of acceptance of it has been largely incredible, really exceptional. It's uh, rare. There's always going to be people but it's rare that we care that people. And of course we're the maker here at Kodo and we've done like so much in you know, 18 months, nearly two years with a big up to the XCM team that have been really resilient. They went out there and us, you know, like presenting the work to teams and they work really closely with them M and we work really uh, hard on the guidelines as well, trying to inspire teams all over.

Speaker B: So yeah, that makes me think of the governance that must be required for this. How does the XCM or maybe other groups within Amazon start to govern this new system and to, you know, send friendly little emails that say, hey, brand police or just wanted to let you know, you know, like how do they govern that? Do you know?

Speaker C: I think at this level you can't really control everything you try. I think the best way you can do is inspire your teams and it means that every time XCM comes out with something that they're doing, it's gotta be the most exciting, great on brand thing ever. Because really there's what, millions, two, millions of people working on Amazon, I think globally, not all of them are designers for sure, but you can't do that. And we always said to xcm like everything, because we were really close sister with them. Everything that we make needs to be the best of the best. People always want to leave their own mark where they'll try something new, like they'll try to spend some time with them. But uh, Amazon is a really democratic company and if you believe something and someone really doesn't believe in that, then that's okay. Why don't we just talk to the boss, the next person in line and then try to figure it out together?

Speaker A: This entire endeavor seems to have been pretty surreal for Arthur.

Speaker B: Up to this point.

Speaker A: They've been able to make significant updates to the visual language for the world's largest retailer and somehow prevail through a gauntlet of reviews and approvals with minimal curveballs. Next up, they needed to prepare for a launch. And we all know that launch can

Speaker B: be tough, uh, for these big public brands.

Speaker A: Walmart was ridiculed because of the minimal change. Jaguar and Cracker Barrel made headlines for too much change. It's hard to win in the court of public opinion and the way the PR team frames up the Change is everything.

Speaker C: Amazon is such a huge brand that, uh, it's impossible to go live all together. That's crazy. So we staged it, we started with the system, so internal rollout was a big thing. So like I said, the brand portal, the guidelines, presenting that in their global. I forgot exactly the name. It's not a global off site, but they sometimes join like calls and presentation every other month where they present like big things. They're really strong on culture, like making sure that people know what's up, uh, testing and feedback and all of that stuff. And then external moments where campaigns and packaging and digital touch points and updating the logo on the website, for example, which was insane in the app. The Amazon team, so xcm, they led that, I mean, again, big up to them. It's incredible. I would say a very smart phased approach, which was, okay, Prime Day is coming up. We're going to just update everything. And it went live in Singapore, in Sydney and all over, like in London with the new assets. And prime is definitely also part of xcm, so that really, really helped with that. And then the homepage banner, like I said, is still ongoing. Of course. There's still obviously, right, some boxes that we get that didn't get updated. The thing that they really did well is you're not going to throw away all the boxes, right? They're here, they've been made for a long time, sometimes maybe years, but we're going to update every single tape that we have with the new colors. The tape used to be black and it's said prime. But now each of the cohort, they get like, they get blue, they get the teal, they get all of that. So you know exactly what this is about. Incredible resilience here and vision as well, that we're going to keep going and it's not just on paper that we have this thing and everyone is going to adopt it. Like I said, it takes, uh, a lot of courage and a lot of patience for sure.

Speaker A: Interestingly, with Amazon, the big press release and announcement about the new logo cohorts and a more unified approach for all of Amazon's brands was met with praise. From industry insiders to mainstream media outlets, there was little to no criticism. In fact, here are some of the headlines from the articles. Amazon creates more empathetic smile for first logo update in 20 years. Why Amazon's subtle rebrand is a triumph or Coto gives Amazon's brand a global refresh without losing its smile. It was praised as a success from every angle and I was curious why the difference between this positive response and some of the negativity with the Walmart refresh. Both are world class brilliant updates with loads of craft and care. At first I thought maybe Walmart was announced first and then Amazon just sort of snuck in behind it and maybe that's why Walmart called caught some of the negativity. But Amazon soft launched in April 2024 and then officially announced the change in November 2024, whereas the Walmart story broke in January of 2025. However, there was one key difference. Amazon softly started testing the new logo and didn't really make a big splash, whereas Walmart they did. They really went for it with a big press release and coordinated launch effort. Is one strategy better than another? Who's to say? Of course any press is good press sometimes. And in Walmart's case the jokes probably resulted in some free pr. In Amazon's case, the quiet approach worked out pretty well. According to Coto's case study, six months after the new brand identity rolled out. So uh, May And June of 2025, Amazon had the strongest brand sentiment scores to date, with accelerated recognition and recall and claimed record levels of prime membership. For me, the highlights of this project aren't necessarily in the process or relationship dynamics, but in the good old fashioned design details. Every move they made was so smart. From color to type, the system truly un unifies billions of customer touchpoints across 15 global markets. To feel like it's all coming from one source. The small decisions all add up to one impressive case study. This leads back around to the unique challenges when designing for a brand system at this scale, every little move has to be just right. It's like the butterfly effect. Design the system with a font made for Kindle screen like Ember and the results become thousands of touch points where designers didn't like how that font felt, so they unilaterally decided to change it. And that one small decision of using Ember as your main brand font creates a tornado of chaos downstream across thousands of touch points. However, changing that typeface to be more successful at all sizes and those thousands of touchpoints feel connected and unified, resulting in tangible business outcomes. For Amazon to pull off a project at this size and scale requires a unique set of skills, and for Arthur, those were pretty clear.

Speaker B: Now that you've gone through it in the last 18 plus months, what do you think is required from an agency to be able to pull this off?

Speaker C: Patience. A lot of stamina. And when I say stamina is resilience or a bit of that and envision you need to think in months, not weeks, and definitely not days. You need to care about the very, very little stuff. And we're obviously really nerdy here at coto, but, like, the really tiny, tiny stuff, as much as that, the big picture, and sometimes also stepping back a, uh, little bit and thinking, okay, it's maybe not perfect, but so much better than what it was, that this is a win. Uh, and again, you need to think in months and years and things will get, you know, naturally sort of better.

Speaker B: Something like this, you can get real frustrated when it doesn't get implemented perfectly. And what I have found, too, in, in larger architecture projects is I feel like I have this, uh, idealism. I really like the satisfaction of architecture and the cleanliness that it brings. But then there's all these, like, caveats. You know, there's always someone that has a situation that's not exactly right. And I've learned that you do have to just sort of, like, make concessions and try to make it as optimal as possible. And it's not always going to be 100. There's a little give and take in it, but the implementation of anything is an improvement than what it was before that.

Speaker C: Yeah, we got to a place with a client where we were that close that we could be a bit like, come on. Well, I know. Come on, it's. Or something. And as the, uh, baker, you know, Amazon was always my big baby. Like, and it's, uh, we were joking here at, uh, Croto, because my partner was expecting our first son. And then I was also making this, and it was like, I'm gonna have two babies at the end. It was good learnings in some ways for me also from Amazon, where some people would just see, it would be like, oh, my God. And they were like, arthur, honestly, with Amazon, just the fact that we just got this is exceptional. Like, really exceptional. So it's okay. We're doing incredible. People love it. Uh, yeah, you want this to be perfect, but it's never perfect. And it really also taught me that. It sounds really cheesy, for sure, but, yeah, perfection doesn't happen. There'll always be something. Right? But as long as people follow this vision and you tell yourself that you shouldn't think in weeks or days, and you're thinking in months and years and things are going to get better, right? They're going to get better. And you've done a great job. Has been a great lesson.

Speaker B: Well, I really do think that this will become sort of a new benchmark or best in class example. Of brand architecture and how the power of design can unify just about anything. Like if you can put a system together for Amazon, other organizations don't have an excuse. You know, like, I'm going to use your case study, your work as evidence. The next time I'm getting resistance, I'm going to be like, I hear you. I know that your nonprofit program is important, but let's talk about Amazon.

Speaker C: I think for me, the best of the best is when people say I can't change the logo. I'm like, I mean, if Amazon can change the logo, okay, I'm, uh, m sure you can do it. Now, big brands in general, they don't need big reinvention. You know, if you think about it, uh, they just need what we call like meaningful evolution. And that evolutions in general, they work best when you do it with empathy. You and me just talked about this. It's not going to be perfect. But you know, we're in this together and it needs to be done with strategy for sure. In partnership, which we've done so well with Amazon and xcm, it was honestly, I feel like a fanboy. It was so fresh and it made us feel really great about this. And that is something I'm going to remember. Uh, we never came into this thing thinking, I'm going to change the logo, I'm going to change the type. You know, we just saw an opportunity from a business and a strategy point of view and everything had a reason and that's how you can sell it. Right. Nothing was just done to look different for the sake of it. When a system works, the brands just gets out of its own way. And I find that really powerful and something that we've achieved, you know, with, with Amazon, like I said, arguably the biggest brand in the world, really embraced that and is using something that impacts billions of people every proves that you can do it with everyone. Trust me, I'm living the dream.

Speaker B: So you are living the tree. I love it. Especially with a, uh, with a young kid, you know. Now you have two children. You have two.

Speaker C: Two.

Speaker B: The Amazon brand system and your son.

Speaker C: Yeah. And you know, you and me have been chatting for a bit more than an hour and that's lovely. And I'm saying a lot of things, but as you know. Right. I don't even need to say it, but, uh, still going to do it is. That is not possible without incredible care from our team here at Coto. There's been so many people in New York, dozens and dozens and dozens of people that have put so much care and so much resilience into it. And it's not just here. Like people in London, in la and all of these were rooting behind us and always being available when he had a challenge that was hard or just, you know, wanted an advice. And when we went live with it, it felt like a celebration of Kodo as a whole. And that's great. And like I said multiple times with this podcast, it doesn't happen without a client that is exceptional. And really Amazon, oh my God. And it's not just the XCM team that were fabulous during the whole thing, but every single team that we worked with since then. I don't know what they do with their hiring process, but, uh, bloody hell, it's incredible. People are so cool and great to work with.

Speaker A: All right, that's a wrap on today's Amazon Change story. Special thanks to Arthur Follard from Coto for giving us the behind the scenes story. And that's a wrap for season six. It has been an absolute blast and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as we have. Stay tuned for some special bonus episodes coming out in between seasons where we have a new idea to go inside the studio of some amazing brand agencies. First up, smithndiction. To see more on today's episode or to sign up for our email, go to a ChangeOfBrand.com or always follow us on Instagram. A big shout out to our incredible team. Today's episode was edited and scored by Adam Audio, produced by Brianna Belcher. Michael Martino and Stephanie Kim designed this season's artwork. Special thanks to Tracy Clark for our briefing and I'm your host, Blake Hot deals on Prime Day. Howard signing off.