Walmart with Tosh Hall and David Hartman

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: It's nice to reflect on it some of the challenges and wins that we had, um, with, with those behind us and think about, you know, what the future holds in terms of how the brand is going to continue to evolve and change and grow. And that's very exciting to me is like, this is just the start.

Speaker A: Hey everyone. 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, what's up?

Speaker D: How are you?

Speaker A: I'm doing good. I'm excited about today's story. Um, this one is squarely on the nose of debate with the word rebrand, which has become a loaded word, especially in the wake of Cracker Barrel, which is active and happening. It's sort of this, this month's logo, lightning rod, you could say, which I'm sure Jaguar is very thankful for. Maybe Cracker Barrel rebrand sponsored by Jaguar, Jaguar PR team. Yeah, and, and it, you know, it makes me think, um, anytime a company changes its logo, is that a rebrand or, or is it only when they do some massive overhaul? And there's certainly a spectrum of an evolution or a revolution. And today we're definitely more on the revel, the evolution side. We're definitely more in like the refresh aisle. But how do you think about a rebrand versus refresh?

Speaker D: I think a little bit of that, actually. You know, and you're right, language matters. I mean, more of the populations paying attention to brand as practice, you know, it's not just being on the receiving end of the outcomes. Like, as a consumer, people actually care about brand a lot. And so language matters. And I think, you know, when I think of rebrand, it's when you're, you know, intentionally signaling that something significant is new about you. It's very intentional. Big new strategy, we're going into new markets, new verticals, maybe additional audiences or offerings, and also being willing and good to shed some of the things that are no longer serving you. Right. So being pretty honest and pragmatic. Right. And whereas, like a refresh to me is like that material, meticulous adapting and fine tuning. So it's signaling that, hey, we, we know we've got something good. We know what We've got, and it's really interesting because in some ways you would think a rebrand, a full rebrand, would be a lot harder because of everything that has to change. And it is. However, a refresh can be really challenging because when you think of the precision on that side, it's so fascinating and so hard. It can sometimes feel easier to just go whole hog rebrand rather than fine tune something that you have and know what to, what to extract, what to add to that kind of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. And there's, there's tensions on both sides with a refresh and a meticulous, um, fine tuning as you said, which I think is perfect. People sometimes will say, well, why did you even change at all? This doesn't make any sense. I don't even notice the change which we're going to talk about some today. And then on the other side, if you change too much, people, you know, overreact to how much is being signaled to the market or lost equity or lost distinction or lost story or nostalgia or whatever, whatever it might be. There's, there's, there's cons on both sides of it. Um, and today's story is unique because we're talking about scale. And this is really the, the start of a two part series where we're going to talk more about design and rebrands at scale. Uh, we have two of the biggest retail brands in the world to talk about first, starting with Walmart, which has thousands of stores and is in 19 countries. And you could make the argument that designing for a startup is much easier at a small scale than it is doing some sort of a light refresh at a big scale like this with Walmart. So how do you think about helping brands at uh, scale like this?

Speaker D: Yeah, you know, a lot of it has to do with prioritized risk rollout plans. Right. And think of it as like a phased approach. We talk about that a lot. Clients get really intimidated early on in thinking that it has to be like this light switch moment where everything switches, you know, and there's no other brand, old brand relics out in the world. Um, but zero brands can pull that off, big or small. So it's really about launching those key assets like main website pages, think social digital billboards, um, you know, and, and other very visible and visited channels. So, and then you follow with things like, you know, in Walmart's case like name badges and shopping bags. I don't think they did the shopping bags until the very end in terms of the uh, their brand Refresh and you know, and like maybe that one vinyl billboard in that teeny tiny small town on a no name road, maybe that waits a little while to get updated. So yeah, total phased approach.

Speaker A: Yeah, with a phased approach like that, there's a lot of tension to manage. There's, there's old branding that's going to coexist with new branding. But there's other tensions for Walmart to manage in this whole process. What do you think that they're going to have to really focus to, to handle?

Speaker D: Well, yeah, I think, I think brand control is, is, could be really tough.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: When it's an evolution, not a revolution. You do have those old versions or files that, that still sneak in sort of undetected and um, and maybe buy in too. Like people not feeling invested, you know, resource wise because some of it might not feel like you said, like a big enough change for that money and effort and resources put into it. But in the case of Walmart, there were really sound reasons like accessibility and relevancy to their audiences. You know, feeling connected with younger buyers is really important to move their brand forward and it's worth every penny regardless of the range of change that they needed to, to have.

Speaker A: Right, yeah, you mentioned every, every penny. And that makes me think of another challenge that Walmart has where their value proposition is around everyday low prices. So they have a position that is about price and often that sort of suggests cheapness or lower quality. And a lot of times the value in a strong brand or investing in brand is actually pricing premiums. You know, people love your brand so much, they're willing to pay more for it. Um, so I'm curious to see how they will navigate that. And we have seen some competitors in their space do this like Target where they have designer collections, more premium offerings, store redesigns, updated visual language, um, and of course pricing rows associated with all of that. And I just wonder, can Walmart pull all of that off? Like can Walmart really become a more design centric type of a brand? All right, Tracy, enough of us talking. Are you ready to give us the backstory?

Speaker D: Yeah, let's uh, let's get briefed in. Here we go.

Speaker B: Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those prices rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Roll back.

Speaker D: Pull them back.

Speaker E: Pull them out. Pull them out. Pull them back.

Speaker D: Roll them back.

Speaker E: Pull them out. Roll back.

Speaker A: We're rolling back prices all over the.

Speaker D: It's hard to imagine Sam Walton in any other role than Walmart founder. But his love of retail actually started back in 1940 when he worked as a Management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa for James cash penny. Yep, JCPenney. After a few years serving in the military and gaining additional retail leadership experience, he founded Walmart in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. This single discount store would then grow into the Wall world's largest retailer. A company that reshaped American shopping with its promise of low prices and wide accessibility. So what is it that made Sam Walton's business model for Walmart so game changing? Well, first off, instead of chasing big margins per item like the traditional retail model, Walton focused on tiny margins with massive sales volume in rural areas that competitors foolishly ignored. And while competing retailers were creating a nonstop barrage of ever changing sales and marketing gimmicks, Walton branded Walmart with efficiency. A simple, consistent promise of always having the lowest prices. Now, I could give you an extended history of all the actions and moments that led to Walmart's success, but President George Bush Sr. Captures that quite well in his Medal of Freedom award speech to Sam Walton in 2005.

Speaker E: But I think it's important that all Americans understand that some things are going very, very well in the United States of America. And one of those things is Walmart. And who would have thought that when Sam Walton bought that first Ben Franklin store that his little venture would grow into a top rated stock on Wall street? Backing up 44 billion in sales last year, Walmart is the largest and the most profitable retailer in America now with over 1700 stores, enhancing the lives of millions. When he's asked about the secret of success, he credits his people and he says, the attitude of our employees are associated.

Speaker D: Not only had Walmart become the retail powerhouse, flipping the entire entire category on its head, it was also becoming a brand heavyweight. From the plain and simple first wordmark to the Western style frontier font of the 1960s to the boxy bold 90s logo. You know the one, the no frills, all caps mark with a star in the center. Walmart's brand had always been about dependability, function and scale. Then Lippincott branding consultancy Wit especially Bark introducing a softer, more modern image of Walmart with a brilliantly simple, friendly sunburst graphic and other elements such as a softer, more welcoming blue and yellow in their color palette. And the hyphen was removed to further enhance the accessibility and consistency of the brand in all channels.

Speaker A: Going down, down. Working on the rollbacks,

Speaker C: the new look

Speaker D: and feel helped to shepherd Walmart into a new era of retail and audience connection. But around 2023, 2024, with new leadership on board, Walmart has taken a new leap and began refreshing its visual identity to feel more modern, flexible and digitally native. No easy task when you think about updating a brand that's already everywhere. I mean, you don't want to risk losing what people know and love about it, right? Walmart was willing to test that metal and better reflect the future that they were building. Did all that risk taking just spark criticism, or did that move actually pay off? Stay tuned to find out.

Speaker A: The work we're talking about today was led by global brand agency jkr. And yes, they are repeat guests from this season. We've already heard from Lisa Smith on the Manischewitz episode and we've heard from them a lot in previous seasons covering the Duncan Rebrand, Burger King, M&M's and Kraft Mac and Cheese. But hey, I don't decide who gets these massive projects. I just report them. The new Walmart brand identity features a refined Spark symbol symbol with thicker lines and an evolved wordmark with bolder letterforms, all inspired by Sam Walton's classic 1970s trucker hat. Beyond these subtle changes, the new design system introduces a custom typeface called Everyday Sans. Designed by commercial type. It also showcases some nice motion treatments, new illustration iconography, and some really sweet swag. Another thing that's new, noteworthy or worth mentioning is how they're using the word mark independently from the spark symbol. After looking at the work, you get the sense that they want the spark to be as iconic as the Nike swoosh, the Starbucks mermaid, or dare I say, the Target Bullseye. Be sure to see the work for yourself@achangeofbrand.com I'm, um, gonna quote the Eames here.

Speaker C: The best for the most, for the least, um, was a. Was something that always kind of stuck with me as a designer.

Speaker A: That's David Hartman, lead creative for Walmart. I had the chance to sit down with him and Tosh hall, the chief Creative officer at jkr. They were both in charge of leading this gigantic effort for David. Prior to Walmart, he spent the majority of his career in retail design, both on the agency and in house side. He's always admired Walmart's value, value proposition, everyday low prices and the role the brand plays serving people all across the country.

Speaker C: Walmart for me was like, um, looking at it from the outside was sort of this tremendous untapped potential because coming from, as a design professional, someone who had worked to create brands both inside and outside companies really felt like a tremendous opportunity, unleveraged opportunity for Walmart to bring to life its purpose in a way that maybe it hadn't before. So I was very excited um, before I joined Walmart about the potential of the brand as well as the scale and reach it has, um, for many, many Americans across the country.

Speaker B: I have kind of two perceptions of Walmart. One as a kid growing up in

Speaker A: North Carolina, that's Tosh. You might recognize his voice from season one on the Duncan episode in the

Speaker B: woods in North Carolina, there's nothing, you know, there's not much. And we, I grew up outside of Asheville and so the Walmart was, was the place to go now to go to a large retailer that was you know a 13 mile drive. So I had the experience growing up in the country, in the United States and going to a Walmart which I'm sure lots of people had. Then flash forward, you're doing design work in New York City and there's obviously not a Walmart in New York. So then you observe Walmart not from the consumer side of things, you see it from the professional branding side of things and you look at it from the outside looking in.

Speaker A: At what point did you start thinking I think we need a refresh.

Speaker C: Different moments in time. From 2008 to um, when we started this project and the impetus behind it, the business was doing well. There was a lot of momentum behind the business, a lot of growth in areas like E commerce. Uh, for Walmart really the impetus became the reveal or sort of launch of a new um, positioning statement which is rooted in this idea of people led, tech powered. If you think back to 2008 a very different time predates the Internet, predates, um the expansion of Walmart into a lot of different services and sub brands and the system that was built, although I think it solved a lot of the issues, um, by introducing the spark and changing the wordmark to a um, title case, more rounded typeface. Introducing Bogle, um, was really a dramatic shift. It just wasn't built to scale to what Walmart is today. And so with this introduction of the new positioning statement, um, it was a great time to step back and think about how we can build a system that is both reflective of where we are today and how we can build it for the future. Um, knowing that our customer, you know, is evolving the way they shop with Walmart is evolving. Uh, and we want to be able to meet them where they are. And so um, the experience in the stores has changed. So there were a number of things that kind of came together um, that led us to hey, I think it's time for us to step back and think More holistically about, you know, the identity system. And really William White, who's uh, who's our cmo, is a big champion for this work and understood the value that um, having a refreshed identity could bring to the business and also be a, um, you know, a sort of um. As much as the external audience and the customer are important, the associates uh, are tremendous, uh, stakeholders in this work and they were a key audience that we were thinking about and designing for as we created this work.

Speaker A: You had kind of buy in it sounds like with the CMO to invest in a project like this, which is huge. You know, it's not easy to push an initiative like that uphill. So you had that, that um, that buy in, that alignment and you probably had a decision at some point to give it a go with your in house creative staff. I'm sure you have some incredibly talented people. Um, but you decided to bring in an outside agency. Tell us more about that.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I think from the get go we viewed this as a collaboration between JKR and my team in house and we both have roles to play. I think what's helpful about JKR bringing on JKR is the expertise they have at developing design systems at this scale for large companies. Um, I think they've been excellent partners in collaborating with our in house team and um, they brought a perspective I think on the brand that allowed us to think differently about, you know, how we might evolve it going forward. So it really wasn't um, really from the beginning it felt much more like an extended part of our team, uh, versus kind of this notion of outside versus inside. And that's one of the, I think the great things about having worked with JKR on this project.

Speaker B: Yeah, all the, all the days of

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: client sends rfp, client sends brief, you respond to brief, you arrive back a month later with the answer and unveil it in some sort of dramatic fashion. Those days are long gone. It is much more collaborative. You know, one of David's jobs I think was to come in and build uh, a creative environment. And what Walmart has been excellent at is focused on the customer and focused on saving money and living better. And that has been inherent in the brand. But I think before William and David and their teams arrived it was more of a sales organization and bringing marketing and bringing design and bringing creativity to the center was important. So part of it was just building a team inside and then collaborating with people outside and making one big team. Over the course of, I don't remember, two years, three years, and we continue to work together, but building a culture internally and collaborating with people externally to make that happen as a big collective. So it wasn't the olden days of corporation hires agency. Agency arrives at the answer. It was much more collaborative the whole way through. And I don't even think there were big reveals, like round one, round two, round three. Yeah, I remember being explorative together, and it's like, all right, let's, uh, analyze the current brand. Let's talk about it. Let's all get in the room in the design studio or the creative department or whatever Dave's world is. We'd go to. We had one room that we'd fill up all the time and just go down and be together and talk it out.

Speaker A: Tosh, where did the work really start for jkr? You had a positioning statement. You had started collaborating closely. Um, but where did you go from there?

Speaker B: Believe it or not, the first thing we, we did was not start getting down to redrawing the spark that happened much later. The first thing we did was talk about the ambition and what the challenges were and how we could address them strategically. So, you know, David talked about the Eames quote in the very beginning. We, of course, read Sam Walton's book. We went down immediately and went through the archives, walked the stores, met with people. And so a lot of the beginning was just understanding and talking and finding out what the challenges were. Uh, David and his team wrote a great brief, so we completely understood the strategy of where we needed to go. And it was clear from the CEO down about people that tech powered.

Speaker C: One of the things that I love about Walmart is the legacy, the history, the origin of the company and the role that Sam Walton plays. Not just the book, reading the book and understanding that, but also just the, the, the, the way his quotes, his, um, point of view really permeates the culture. And so one of the first things to your point, Tosh, we, We did is go down to the archives and look through a lot of the historical references. Early days of Walmart, when Mr. Sam started the company in 1962. And what did it look like and what was the identity and how did it, you know, change over time? And that became a real inspiration for, um, for a lot of the work that we did did together, particularly the Sam Walton trucker hat. I mean, if you did research on, on Sam Walton, a lot of the photos that you'd find on the Internet would be pictures of him wearing this kind of iconic trucker hat. And in fact, the COVID of Made in America is a portrait of him wearing one of those trucker hats. And that became a symbol not for. Not just for sort of the inspiration behind the evolution of the Wardmark, but also an internal symbol to the associates and the. The company that. That, um, signaled like that this was, um, related to the history of the company, the origin of the company, and it became an artifact that they could wear and sort of, um, really get behind. So that discovery, though, really only came through the research, um, that Tasha's talking about. There wasn't just a. We didn't just. To your point, they didn't just jump into a design exercise in the Spark. What I appreciated was the homework they did to really allow us to. To find those artifacts that could help us tell a really meaningful story about why we're redesigning the brand.

Speaker B: Yeah. One of the things that we like to do as an agency is try to figure out what makes you you and make it only more so. And so part of that is just understanding the company, understanding the history, understanding the heritage. And the Walmart Museum is excellent. And the archives are great. We've seen archives from some of the best brands, and the Walmart archives are right up there because you can go through and leaf through all kinds of things back in the day to see circulars, to see old ads, to see original signage, uh, Sam Walton's original office, his Ford F150 truck, you know, all kinds of detail. And that is just a beautiful journey that any designer can go on. But if you're trying to find the heart and soul of a brand, you kind of have to go back. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I love that it was less big milestone presentations, more. More collaboration. Is this the point where you're filling out the room and you're putting up found artifacts, like the photo of Mr. Walton with the hat and other, you know, ephemera. And then you're starting to say, as a collective team, oh, what if we get inspired by this typeface on the hat? Or what if we look at this is you sort of like, collaborating in that sense at this. At this point in the story, as

Speaker C: designers and type nerds. After we went through the. We collectively took a trip through the archives and documented so many different things that we saw. And, um, the hat being one of them. But, um, I think the process of Then discovery kind of going through these things and understanding what of the past do we collectively want to bring forward and make new. Um, I learned a lot about the, um, origin of the typeface. Antique olive, which is what that, uh, font that Tosh was alluding to on Mr. Sam's hat was typeset in. Interesting. I love telling this story and I've, I've told it a bunch to anyone that will listen at Walmart about antique olive. Because, um, it's not called antique olive because it's old. The, uh, it's a French typeface. And antique in this context means sans serif, alive being the font foundry. And, uh, that sort of anecdote of antique olive, which, which eventually became the sort of, um, inspiration behind Everyday San, which is our corporate typeface. Um, just I think people understanding that we took that history and took that amount of, um, care into, uh, all aspects of the redesign, whether or not they were, um, in marketing, outside of marketing, the associates, across the company, that, that little anecdote carried us a long way. Um, it's just one of those funny things that came out of the conversations and working sessions that we had together.

Speaker B: Yeah. Also imagine it's the 70s and there's two corporate typefaces you can get to advertise for your retailer. One typeface is Antique olive, which has a little bit of flavor to it, feels a little bit more American, even though it's French, strangely feels human, has a little bit of texture to it. The other typeface you could get is Helvetica. Uber modern, international style. SPEAKS IN a DIFFERENT LANGUAGE So the idea that the choices were taken at the time to have a more American, a more flavorful and more authentic typeface was always part of Walmart. So for all the type nerds inside of us, we spent a lot of time figuring out what that was and how to bring that to bear for the whole system and create a new custom typeface in Everyday Sans that's accessible and has all of the details and builds on the success of that choice, I guess would have been the late 60s. They probably made that everyone else was choosing a Vetica. And that's very boring. Uh, but it's not all type. Sometimes you got to talk about the spark. And what's interesting with the spark is we did research in the very beginning. The Spark, introduced in 2008, a brand new symbol is one of the most recognized. I think it's something like 99% recognition up there with the apple, with the swoosh. So very early on, David and I talked about how do we elevate the spark, how do we make the spark more than just a symbol from 2008, which is a corporate symbol at the time, putting it in corners, putting it on signs, putting it next to A wordmark? How does it speak in a modern language? How does it create motion? How does it move? How does it become 3D? Has it inspired different architecture? How do we use it in small use for, you know, everything has to work in a 60 by 60 pixel square all the way up to the top of a building. And so the use case for it, whatever it is, almost 20 years later, is completely different. But it is one of the most recognized symbols. How do we detach it from the corporate word mark? How do we make it do more things? How we have it give more meaning to what it is? And we spend a lot of time talking about that idea and then bringing that to life.

Speaker A: Okay, if you're a skeptic like I can be sometimes, you're probably thinking, wow, this is a lot of work just to make the Spark a little bit bolder. Why even go through the trouble if no one's going to even notice?

Speaker C: That difference really becomes noticeable. If you. Like I said, if you look at them side by side, I think the weight was one thing. And then making the sort of terminals geometrically perfect. So what was kind of an odd end to those, let's call them sparklets, has now become much more geometrically perfect. So they're perfect circles, small space, favicons, app icons, digital context that didn't exist in 2008 when the spark was created to the largest possible, you know, application being, you know, the facade of a supercenter store, for example. In all of those contexts, we wanted to preserve the integrity of, of the symbol and be able to make sure that it stood on its own. And so there was. There was both a practical sort of application, which is the small space and the extremely large, making sure it sort of held its own, but also an aesthetic one, which I think, you know, not that it was poorly designed, but I think just the attention to detail and refining it made it a much more pleasing, um, symbol. Would you agree with that, Tosh?

Speaker B: Oh, for sure. And it's also the best thing is, I would say the average person cannot tell the difference, but it just feels better, it works better, it feels better, it's more pleasing. And you don't know why. You just look at one and you're like, huh, that seems a bit off. It doesn't work small. This feels better. And if you, you know, the average person, you'd ask on the street, I don't think they would be as into the points and the curves and the sparklets that we're into. And looking at them, huge and small, and figuring out how it works in digital and physical and on the top of a building, etc. Etc. It just feels better. And part of that exercise is very specific and designery. The other one is it just, it's more Walmart y. It feels more of what it is. And we use it in places and do new things with it. I mean, created a spark generator. It can make, I don't know, thousands and thousands of sparks for all the associates. It creates its own language in motion and in digital, it becomes an organizing idea. But if you just look at the symbol, it just feels better.

Speaker C: The one thing I would add to that too, this, just for context, this is not a flip the switch. And everything in our ecosystem is going to become new overnight. We have 4700 stores in the U.S. we have Fleet vehicles. Um, we have a lot of hard assets that will take time for us to transition. And I think one of the great things about the evolution of the identity is that it doesn't create a strong fractured difference between, for the customer, between where we were and where we're going. So I think it's okay. And frankly, we have to be okay with this notion that the two identities kind of have to coexist for a period of time, maybe many, many years.

Speaker A: Here's why a small functional tweak makes Sense. They have 4,700 stores, thousands of fleet vehicles, countless assets online. This is not an overnight flip of the switch. It has to be an evolution. The new brand will coexist with the the old brand. Even to this day, every once in a while I still see the pre 2008 all caps, star blue, Walmart logo on semi trucks. There is a long tail on this type of change. There's just so much to cover. And the overlap of old branding and new branding can get confusing. So you have to acknowledge that the old brand and the new brand will coexist. Exist. Beyond small tweaks to the Spark, JKR and the Walmart team needed to explore some visual territories on how the design system, type, color, layout, imagery, illustration, icons, etc could come to life as well. Again, here's Tosh.

Speaker B: Before we even got there, there were, you know, things coalesced into directions. You know, we had, what if we were all spark all day? What if we were more wordmark? What if. What assets do we take and move forward? What, how do we build on the color palette we have? What is the right blue? How do those things exist? And they became distinctive roots. And I remember a meeting in New York where we had you Know, kind of rooms of this is what it could be if we stepped into this room, if we lived in this world. How would it feel if we went here? What would that feel like? You know, so there, there were, you know, traditional kind of presentations, uh, where we have what do we think with this direction? But we coalesced around the right one pretty quickly.

Speaker C: The important part of the approval process was, um, to be frank, was like staging a room. So we had a room in Bentonville that we used as um, that we had set up with again these large blackboards, posters, really about 15 or 16 boards that demonstrated not just the evolution to the core aspects of the identity, but how the identity comes to life, honestly. Store on a vehicle, um, you know, um, on sample, you know, advertising and mockups, how it works for um, sub brands and services like Walmart plus, um, so. And then how it might come to life in things like events and trade shows. And I think that really that seems pretty obvious to, to kind of approach it that way. But it took us a little while, I think, to, to get there. Um, and there were several sort of uh, interim presentations to kind of get us to that point obviously. But um, the theater of the experience, the kind of notion that you walk in the room and you immediately have a reaction. Um, you immediately kind of see. Anyone can immediately see like oh, wow, this is different. This is powerful. This is something that is really exciting. Having that space, that room really made a big difference.

Speaker A: And did you present the work at that point or is it more of a walk into the room, see it, feel it, discuss?

Speaker C: There was, I would say, light presentation. My uh, point of view on design is uh. I think these things are better handled as a conversation versus a presentation. I think generally if you have to sell it so hard to someone, there's probably, probably something about it isn't working. This really wasn't a hard sell. It was much more of a. Which I think is a testament to how much work and research and exploration that the team did. But it really more of a conversation than a presentation. And um, again I think that speaks to William's also trust in the team, the confidence that he had, um, in JKR and the work that we were producing. And also um, the ability for him to influence across the organization.

Speaker B: What David had to do was the much harder one, which was to create an entire store to implement everything on the test store and have to take all the leaders through that in real life to make sure that it worked. And we spent a lot of time making, making that come to life. And David and his team had to bring that, uh, from the theoretical physical. You know, we're in the. In the boards, we're making films, we're doing digital applications, we're making mockup packaging in the, you know, the Creative center in Bentonville to actually bring it to life pretty quickly. I don't remember what the time frame was, but it was pretty quick.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: And what the most hilarious part of that whole thing was. I don't know. You told me if I can't say this, but David actually painted the wall of the Walmart with blues and would send photos and would take William and team over there to look at it. Because we were so particular about getting the right blue. And not just a pantone blue, a hex code. You know, we mix blue and painted it on walls because that's too dark, that's too gray, that's too purple, that's not right. This one's right. So even though it feels like we're in the, you know, 2025, and everything's on Zoom and everything's digital, uh, and AI is taking over. David, literally, the head of design, or whatever your fancy chief creative officer title is over at the biggest company on earth, was literally painting the wall of the test store himself.

Speaker A: No, that.

Speaker C: That is true. That is true. On a Saturday, went to show Sherwin Williams and tried to spec a blue color because it's a. It's actually, uh. I thank you for bringing that up. I think the physical sort of application, particularly of the new blue, is something that we had to test and get right. And before you press play on a. A massive change like that, I think seeing it in a physical context on different substrates, you know, on different surfaces. Metal, aluminum, plastic, brick. Um, obviously it has to. We want it to be as consistent as possible. And so that.

Speaker A: That's true.

Speaker C: I did go to Sherwin Williams and have them, uh, test out several blues and then painted it on the back of a store and brought people to see it.

Speaker B: We were very worried about this.

Speaker C: Is it daylight, evening, sunset, like, just. It's amazing how color changes in different lighting conditions. The store that Tasha is referring to is. We call it 4108. It's a sort of test and innovation store that's. That's in, um. Um, that's close to Bentonville in Arkansas. And it's a. It's a place where we can do things like this, where we can, you know, uh, change the facade, look at the branding, both the external look at the wayfinding, the signage, Print prototypes. And it's a great opportunity for us to take um, our senior leaders through and really see how both um, it comes to life in a physical space but also what the reaction is from the customers, from the store managers. One of the things we did from a physical experience was the vestibule. When you first walk into a store it was kind of a dead zone. There really wasn't a lot of um, wasn't really sort of a welcoming entry point. And so we came up with this notion of having a local um, mural that kind of spoke to Walmart in the community. And we were able to witness in real time just standing in the lobby, the vestibule, kind of the reaction from customers as they walked in the store, store. And it was really powerful to see how they responded as something that at one point was just an idea or a design, uh, on screen sort of come to life and watch the customers react to it. It's a careful analysis because the decisions that we make in this prototype store have a massive impact across the rest of uh, the fleet. So it really started from the exterior and aligning on the branding, the size and stuff, scale of the spark, the relationship to the wordmark, the color blue and it's, I think these are, these, this is, these are long conversations. This is a lot of leaders time, you know an hour, hour and a half to kind of walk through this and really understand how the system works. So tremendous investment on behalf of Walmart's leadership, uh, both in terms of their time and then also the resources to get this store prototyped.

Speaker A: Not only did this test store activate innovation, get senior leaders excited, it helped David learn what was working and what could be improved before rolling out system wide. For example, over the years they've worked hard to modernize and clean up the store wayfinding signage. But it had turned a little sterile and cold. So they tested out new icons and pictograms which were nicely designed and connected to the new visual language. And it turns out it made a big, big difference with bilingual and non English speakers. It helped them know where to go in the store and just to feel a little bit more comfortable as they shop.

Speaker B: Walmart, although is a very large organization, it is led by each individual store. The manager of the store has a lot of power to create the space that feels localized to that community and it feels like people love their local Walmart. How to bring that to life, how to make it feel more people led. We're tech powered and we have lots of amazing abilities but the idea to Bring the people, the associates and the local communities forward was really part of it. And so doing that through illustration, bringing that to bear through the wayfinding and having it feel, I mean, without a better term, more human, I think was one of the objectives. And to see that come to life in the store and see it work outside of just a design presentation or an intention to have the kind of, I don't know, it felt less like hear your guidelines, good luck, more like collaboration and testing and learning. And the ability to do it on of that scale, to see it work was excellent.

Speaker A: Okay, when we come back, we get into launch and learn how this refresh rolled back a spectrum of Internet commentary, from industry praise to memes galore, and even a bit on the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon. All that 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? Well, guess what? 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 automation, it gives you total control in 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, uh, site.

Speaker D: Hey everyone, 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@, ah, matchstick.com. that's M A T C H S T I C dot 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: David had been working hard to roll out the new visual identity system in a real life working test store, almost like the world's largest prototype. He was sweating the details, making sure everything was just right for a big C senior leadership walkthrough.

Speaker C: It wasn't just a change in the visual identity and the core assets and all of the kind of expression that the customer is going to see, but also the way the brand was brought to life internally. Uh, this is not a criticism, um, of anyone at Walmart, but I think Walmart, we were just so focused on driving the business that um, we didn't do a great job of managing our assets. And so we, what we wanted to do is move from um, you know, the spark is a great example. I think, you know, there's a slide in one of the presentation decks that we put together that sort of represents the current state of the brand expression and how the spark is used. And we were doing things that may have been fine 10, 15, 20 years ago, May uh, have even been trendy to do it, uh, where you're repeating the spark or creating patterns or breaking the spark into sparklets and using it as different shapes. But really, um, those kind of behaviors and that execution didn't align to the strategy that we were putting forward. So to your point, I think the guidelines are part of it, which we established very quickly and published so that we had a resource for anyone internally to use. But there's also uh, a long tail socialization program and evangelization program that happens internally to really make this successful. Because my team, me, my team, my brand marketing partners are not the only people creating, you know, assets or marketing or um, experiences for the customer. And so that's really a lot of the, you know, just to mix metaphors a little bit, the iceberg we, you sort of see the tip of the iceberg, which is the things that we have been talking about and the things the customer sees. But then below the water is all of the stuff that, that my team continues to do and much of it partnership with jkr. Some of it is the making of the work, but a lot of it is also the socialization and evangelization of the new identity. Why, why we want to use the new identity, how we bring it to life. And none of that happens without the partnership of lots of different people across, uh, the enterprise.

Speaker A: And sometimes you get resistance in that, ah, socialization, you know, you get more creative people with more opinions like always. Um, but it does seem like if this, you know, at this point you guys have put in such thorough work as you rolled it out, where people like, cool, this is great. Got it. Or as you socialize it, or were there questions of like, well, how does it work for my department or how does it work here in this application? Like, did you continue that conversation, make any adjustments or was it like, no, this, this is sort of, this is it. And everyone was just sort of learning how to apply it A bit, A

Speaker C: bit of both, um, a bit of both. The, some of it, you know, migrating A typeface across an enterprise, the scale of Walmart, um, and then watching how people implement it has been fun

Speaker A: and

Speaker C: it takes a while. People, uh, you know, associates, I think we're used to, you know, think about all the things that might, you might need to create over the course of a given day that uses, uh, proprietary font, PowerPoint decks, emails, Word, uh, documents, all these things, uh, those are as important as any other marketing asset that we produce. They might even be more important because that's the stuff that associates are sharing most of the time internally. And so those things that maybe are on the bottom of a punch list when it comes to like the overall scheme of an identity, we need to create a template for PowerPoint, which we need a consistent email signature. We need to make sure that everyone has the right version of the right typeface. That stuff actually becomes really, really important. Um, and that's where I think things can kind of go sideways and lead us back down a path of, hey, why is the brand appear so fragmented? Why aren't people sort of adhering to the rules? Those things became a really important part of uh, the system that we created. So we try to give folks, uh, internally as many tools as possible to ensure that they're set up to be able to sort of do their daily jobs with the new system. But it's a big place and sometimes more often than not things come through. But I guess my point there is an important consideration as we were going through this work is can we execute this as an enterprise? Can we do it consistently? Is the system going to be easy for folks to understand who are not designers? So that was one of those things that, you know, uh, in addition to all the other stuff that we were talking about, became a really important part of, uh, evaluating if this was the right thing to do.

Speaker A: Was there any reaction to some non designers when they saw it that said in the inside internal within Walmart, that said, uh, I don't know, it looks kind of old. Are we sure, are we sure it's like this is the right tone or are we sure this is right? Because sometimes when you find something from the past that has like a lot of meaning to it, but has a sensibility from an era or a decade, you get a little bit of fear of like, but we don't want to be perceived as like, old. You know, we need to be somewhat relevant, modern today. Was there any feedback around that sort of tension with the type, with the

Speaker C: exercise that Tosh and I and the team went on when we went into the Archives. I think if you compare the historical references versus where we are today, it's a very different, um, expression. It is. And I think the types specifically, I think the team Christian did a great job kind of creating a custom version of antique olive that retains the characteristics that we all loved, but I think also makes it look much, much more modern than the, um, sort of standard issue antique olive. And I think we have the flexibility, just from a practical standpoint of, of deploying it in different weights. And the thin weight, I think looks incredibly elegant, like super modern, very clean. So I think it was just knowing your audience, you know, uh, how you're presenting the work and how, how it's going to land with them and making sure you can tell the right story. And so if that's a watch out, hey, we gotta be careful. We don't want the system to look too dated or too much from the past. Are we doing the right things from a design standpoint to, um, make sure it feels modern and are we showing it in a way that, um, the audience is going to understand? This is a modern, dynamic, flexible system that's inspired by the past, but shouldn't look like it's dated?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, for sure, you have to find your inspiration and then make it relevant today. And it's much harder than this analogy. But I will give it to you anyway. It is the Goldilocks effect. This porridge is too hot. This porridge is too cold. This porridge is just right. We did things that were way too retro. We did things that were way too modern. And sometimes you have to see the edges of the envelope to understand that this is unique to us. This has a historical touchstone. But if we did it too, with too much retro flair, it feels dated. If we take all of the characteristics, uh, out of it, it feels bland. Know, you can experience this. A lot of brands that have been put through the digital wind tunnel and all edges have been shaved off, but then you can look at brands that do it and it feels like a pastiche. So how do you do it in a way that's authentic to a place and a time and a unique heritage of the brand, but then make it fit for today, make it timeless, and make it usable for the future. That is the kind of Goldilocks effect of finding the right tone. And we spent a lot of time exploring that internally with David's team and then of course we with our typographers and making sure that it was right. And part of it is it used to be letters that you poked out of a piece of paper. And now it has to be accessible at every size, at every cut in signage, in digital and work in Today's World.

Speaker A: On January 13, 2025, the Big Box brand officially announced the change with a really nice press release and an article on their website. It housed mockups, animated UI interactions and this launch video.

Speaker C: This is the next chapter of Walmart. One that's bolder, brighter and has more spark. An evolution beyond typography or colors. A signal, a signature, a commitment designed to reflect our history, our human advantage and our constant innovation.

Speaker A: The work was quickly picked up by industry publications like Brand New, where it was appreciated for the care and craft mainstream media in general. Consumers, however, started to throw some everyday Internet shade. Memes popped up like Spider man staring at another Spider Man. Jim from the office looking confused with the caption, but really. Or Toby Maguire doing a, uh, double take. It even made Jimmy Fallon's opening monologue on the Tonight Show.

Speaker C: Uh, Walmart is making waves after changing

Speaker A: its logo for the first time in 20 years. Here's Walmart's old logo and now here's

Speaker C: the brand new look.

Speaker A: Jimmy wasn't the only one getting in on the action. It also made the late night show with Seth Meyers. Walmart this week unveiled its new logo

Speaker C: and is facing criticism online because it's similar to the old design. It's a subtle difference, but I guess the new one looks like a different cat walking away from you.

Speaker A: Even Aldia, uh, grocery competitor got in on the joke. They posted their current logo under a caption that said before and that same logo under a caption that said after. Clearly making fun of the minimal change. But here's my favorite part. The Walmart social team just had fun with it, not taking themselves too seriously. Talk about launch externally. You know, the, the thing that was interesting to me about this story as it published and was announced was that specific feedback around, you know, did they like, did anything even change? You know, why is this? They didn't even need to do this. Or you sort of get criticism around the evolutionary approach.

Speaker C: I feel like we set a trend, an Internet meme trend with the evolution of our, our spark that has now been picked up by several other Airbnb kind bars, um, several other brands.

Speaker A: I saw some funny memes that I wasn't, I wasn't going to bring them to, to the, you know, to the recording. But David, you spoke it. So there, there were some, there were some really funny ones. How do you process critical feedback after a launch like this tosh and you've been a part of many big launches at a scale similar.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: What's your, what's your take on it?

Speaker B: Well, the first thing that happened was my, uh, Walmart app changed on my phone and I texted David. I was like, it's all happening. Because you really could tell the difference. And as much as the Internet makes like, memes and, you know, can be harsh out there, the before and after just on the app tile was incredible. Uh, and then you clicked on that and the digital team and all the work they did and the broader agency, network and everyone that started to roll it out. The first thing that I saw was, was on my phone and I was like, it's happening. And then of course we do launches and do things and talk about it in the world. And it's funny because the Internet is sometimes a negative space, but it is also a place of conversation. So some other brands had come out recently and there was, oh, my God, they changed too much. Some brands come out, they didn't change enough. What I thought was super exciting is the Walmart's ability to engage in the conversation. And my favorite thing was the, the. I don't know if it's on Twitter or X or on threads or whatever you guys put it on, but it's like the, uh, we're making it bolder. And by 2050 it'll be so bold you can't even see it. It was just hilarious. And it's like the ability to engage in conversation in a, In a, In a world where people are talking about this, like whether it's on the late night shows or Saturday Night Live, it's. The fact is it is a cultural conversation that's happening. When you really think about it in Zoom out, it's obviously more than redrawing a sport. It's more than changing the typeface. It's everything and it's, it goes all the way deep into the organization of the enterprise. It goes through, in the entire store, it goes through the digital experience and it goes through all the different places that people interact with Walmart. So at, at the Internet meme of it all, there were, you know, conversations that went on and on and on, some saying that this is the genius, best evolution of an iconic brand. It's Walmart, only more Walmart. And on the other hand, uh, hilarious. Like memes of like, uh, Homer on the Simpsons going back into the, into the hedge. Or like, uh, you know, Amanda Priestley from, uh, uh, Del Wars, Prada. It's so hard to choose the Blue. So it's. It. The fact that it's in the conversation I think is interesting. Uh, you know, David can speak to the corporate side of how they responded, but from an agency perspective, we have a lot of clients that engage in large brand evolutions, and the best thing is to be with your client and weather the storm, whether it be positive or negative. David, uh, how was it for yourself?

Speaker C: I think a lot of it was positive. Um, a lot of the press, especially the design press, I think Armen wrote a great article on Brand New under consideration about the redesign. And, uh, I was very. That's, that's a tough forum because, um, you get a lot of design critics and they're very unvarnished in their opinions. And I think the survey results of the voting were enormously positive. So I think, I think many, many people understood what we were trying to do and applauded the redesign. I was personally very excited to see us make the opening monologue of Jimmy Fallon. I thought that was incredible. We did not pay for that to be a, A bit.

Speaker A: That he did.

Speaker C: Uh, I thought, I thought it was hilarious. And I think our social team did a wonderful job, to your point, of responding to being in the conversation and really, uh, having a more tongue in cheek approach to, um, any of the memes that we were seeing across the Internet.

Speaker A: You know, there's a lot to celebrate here with all of this work. Small, um, subtle evolutions, new custom type illustration, animation, months of your life pouring into these details. Of all of that. What do you feel like you're most proud of?

Speaker C: Um, I get really excited seeing associates wearing Walmart merch. Um, particularly we, we released the trucker hat with the new word mark. Uh, it looks fantastic. Uh, we just had this thing called shareholders week, also known as associates week, last week in Bentonville, and we gave all the associates that were there one of the trucker hats. And so that's pretty awesome to see thousands and thousands of people across the campus wearing something that you designed and super meaningful as well. So that's something that I think I'll always remember about this. Having gone through this experience.

Speaker B: Yes. What was I most proud of? Uh, I mean, the scale is important. So part of it is you go back to the, you know, the boy who likes to draw in North Carolina and goes to the Walmart to get sketch pads. Right. You have no idea that in the future of your career you could impact that level of America. Right. So the scale of it all is the most exciting part to me. The idea that you're Able to impact the lives of so many Americans. And that you can raise the aesthetic expectation of what they see and feel and look at every day is a huge responsibility. And that wasn't just a desire, I think of agency or of creative team at Walmart. It was a collective desire. And so the idea that the collaboration and getting together with the original intention, the very first conversation was how do we use design to elevate people's lives and how can we make their environments and the things that they touch and feel, Whether that be the trucker hat of the associate, whether that be the digital experience of the app, whether it be the physical experience of the store, whether it be just enjoying the name tag and uniform invest that you wear, or what the delivery drivers wear, or all of it. It's like every physical and digital touch point that the consumers, the associates, the partners touch and feel, the idea of having that level of impact is the most exciting thing.

Speaker A: Designing for a brand at this scale is a massive effort. I think the play on the company's history and specifically Sam Walton's hat was clutch in organizations where the founder was a larger than life figurehead who even though they've passed away, their values and mindset are still gospel in the hallways. And the more you can tap into that, the better. Anchoring this work in a token of affection towards Sam Walton was genius and it helped associates embrace it. And a good design system like this is only good if people actually use it. I also appreciated the close knit work between the brand and the agency. Tosh and David's respective teams didn't compete for authorship over the work, but worked closely together to critique and challenge what was working and what wasn't. By the time they got to the full scale test run in the store, it was well received by leadership. After going through this long engagement, Tosh and David, they had a few lessons to share.

Speaker B: You have to go on the journey and what we went through was a collaboration where you're working slowly to find the answer, which is hard often. Sometimes you arrive at the answer and you say, well, let's sell this route through. You've already come to it and it is hard to unplug yourself from that thinking. You pitch the work, you sell the work, you have three routes, the client picks one. You refine it like there is a well trodden path to try to upend that and experience it as collaboration and work work on it together. Also, our first idea wasn't right and we had to refine it. And even though we were all happy with it, we got pushed harder by David's team and by our collaborators and by senior leadership to move it further. And a lot of times you experience this on the agency side is your first idea is the best, your second idea is your second best. And by the third idea, you don't have it. And the more client interaction, the more the edges get shaved off of it. And then you, you turn. Too many hands are in the clay to mix all our metaphors, and by the end you don't have anything. This was the opposite experience, which it built slowly and even when we had difficult meetings. That's not right. We need to move that. This isn't getting it done. We all work together to push it forward. And so my advice would be, you have to kind of power through with outcome unknown, knowing you've done all your research, knowing you have good collaborators, knowing that there is a, at a scale of this level that is not certain that it will go out, because many, many giant rebrands either don't see the light of day or are never what they were intended to be. So the advice is to, is to collaborate and stay with a great team, even though you might not know the outcome, to continue to make the work better over time.

Speaker C: I agree with everything that Tash said. I think there's, uh, real value in having, um, internal teams that can help you, uh, help external partners make the work better. Um, I think it's, uh, I guess what I would say from a design standpoint, it's very easy to fall in. There's a lot of redesigns happening right now. Um, I think there's always this tension between wanting to become part of a, um, part of a cultural conversation that might exist as design trends versus staying true to yourself. I think what we did with this work is, um, really, to Tasha's point, make Walmart more Walmart. We weren't trying to make a typeface that looked like another typeface that was trendy right now. In fact, we're trying to do the opposite. We're trying to really search for the most authentic way to make Walmart live up to its purpose, to really evangelize its role for the customer. And, and you know, it could have gone in a lot of different ways and we could have easily fallen into a trap, I think of, um, leaning into some design Trend that in five or 10 years is going to make us look very dated. And I think one of the sort of amazing things about the system, um, is that I think in five or 10 years, it's still going to stand the test of time, because the origins of the story are rooted in the origins of the company. Um, and not that we're going to set it and forget it. I think that's another thing is like you really can't just set it and forget it. To make a system like this work requires, like anything else, constant attention, discipline, focus, um, prioritization. And it's very easy to get distracted and not, you know, keep, keep your focus on um, maintaining this, this um, standard for the brand. So I think, I think, I guess to recap my own comments, I think the trend piece is a dangerous thing and I think you want to stay true to yourself. And then I think from an internal standpoint, um, how you have the right teams or the right discipline or the right focus, um, to be able to continue to keep the brand top of mind so that we don't fall back into a position where we were after the relaunch in 2008, where things just kind of went sideways.

Speaker B: The level of impact and the amount that we can affect the average person's interaction with products, with brands, with the experience. That is what I'm most proud of. And that's not going to be just a logo and wordmark design system, identity refresh. It's everything. And the difference in what you experience today, tomorrow and the next day. I think that is the legacy that we continue to work on. And it's trying to do what we said in the beginning, the best for

Speaker C: the most, for the least.

Speaker A: Before we wrapped our time together, I was curious, did this whole thing hinge on the trucker hat? Like, what if Sam Walton never wore a hat? Would this work have ever happened?

Speaker B: The impact of a founder who is still in the business, quote, still on the wall. Mr. Sam's way of doing things is the way of doing things. It exists as a, uh, as a touchstone. So are there symbols that can and view his meaning, the trucker hat? Are there archives and other ephemera that you can find? Absolutely. The amount of details and uncovering we were able to use to tell the story, because really it is, it is not a story of of course there are things you have to do, which is if we did it in 2008, before the Social media, before there was uh, e commerce, before the world has changed much. We have a lot of things to address that are functional. But how do you create a feeling? How do you create a connection? How do you create what people love about Walmart and bring that to life? It is good to have touchstone symbols and put meaning in them, whether that be word marks, sparks, color palettes, illustration, you know, the internal and actual experience of the brand. Or if you can pour all of that into a hat, the idea that you have a physical touch on it, an object that you can pour meaning into is really important. And it all goes back to something that's authentic and real and existed. And he would always show up in a suit, always drive his F150, and he would kneel down and give speeches to all the associates. And he would always wear the trucker hat. It's, uh, it is a true thing that existed, and it's not just something he did photographed on a book he wrote. It is a thing that existed in. For years and years and years. And even if people had forgotten that and didn't realize it, it is an authentic touchstone that's worth, worth finding. But if you'd never worn the hat, there would have been something else. And the idea is to bring to life what is the essence of the brand. And I think as a team, uh, we did that.

Speaker A: Okay, that's a wrap on our Walmart change story. Thanks for listening. And a big smiley face sticker. Shout out to Tosh Hall, Laura Lyman and the JKR team for setting this up. And of course, to David Hartman for his time. We only have one full episode left for season seven, but we end with a prime example on designing at scale. Next up, we get to hear Cotto's take on their incredible work for the behemoth Amazon. To see more on today's episode or to sign up for our email, you can go to a ChangeOfBrand.com or follow up us on Instagram. A big shout out to our incredible team. Today's episode was edited and scored by Adam Audio, produced by Briana Belcher. Stephanie Kim and Michael Martino did this season's artwork. And special thanks to Tracy Clark for the briefing and the intro. I'm your host Blake Howard signing off.