Bookmark this: alt brand inspo (part one)

Archetypes, out. Witches, in.

This is a low-key selfish email. One for those moments someone asks ‘what’s a brand that does humour well?’ or ‘quick, I need world-building content’. And BAM: every reference you’ve ever heard of vanishes like your will to live in a 90-slide deck. Or when your client / boss turns around with: ‘We want to sound more like Oatly.’

Strategists. Copywriters. Heads of Brand. Creative. We’ve all been there.

A few weeks back, we shared some tried, tested and borrowed hacks for unblocking creativity. One of the biggest takeaways? If you’re looking at the same sources, from the same desk, surrounded by the same people, you’re never going to think differently.

So here’s a bumper load of brand inspo to refresh your references, shake out of brand archetypes and look beyond the LinkedIn echo chamber. We’re going for less recycled screenshots, more “oh damn, that’s cool”. A mix of smaller, newer, maybe older, less brand-y brands doing interesting brand things. Part one of… who knows.

Please share yours!

(Oh and apologies for the brief hiatus. We’ve been busy creating brands that will hopefully end up in your reference decks soon.)

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The Witches

The ‘magician’ archetype’s weird sibling. Step aside, Disney – we’re getting deeper, realer, stranger and more spellbinding.

• Love Loco – It’s all peace, love and ethical chocolate here. Also Christ consciousness. We often talk about brands having a purpose beyond product – Love Loco makes it a whole, high vibe. See also Bathing Culture.

• Travel Oregon – Specifically the Only Slightly Exaggerated campaigns. A Studio Ghibli fever dream that doesn’t just sell a tick-list destination – it invites you into a magical world, a mindset you could take anywhere.

• Dreamjams – The feelings-first Lovers collective asked: can clothes make you feel more creative? Their silk jammies say yes – soft enough to slip you into an imaginative state, with hypnotic copy and soundbaths embedded in the garment labels. Your bedtime routine, but with a David Lynch subplot.

• Alighieri – Heavy with symbolism, light seeping through the cracks. Rosh Mahtani forged Alighieri in fire and fable, carving Dante’s Divine Comedy into talismans for the lost and the searching. Strength, vulnerability, cat-like curiosity – each piece a fragment of a larger myth, its story unfinished until worn. See also: Stora Skuggan’s weeping-stalactite, thumb-sucking product descriptions.

• Rituel de Fille – ‘Make-up that wears like magic.’ Product creation is alchemy, names hit like lost incantations (‘Borealis’ ‘Bloodroot & Rose Pinch’ ‘Soft Sorcery’). Application is less about technique, more about ritual.

• Vyrao – Like its crystal-charged perfumes, Vyrao’s copy is pure energy. Less ‘hints of vanilla’ more ‘orris entwined with thorny rose to wake the alliance of your courage and creativity’. Word reiki.

The Wisecracks

Humour is a serious strategy, and you’ve got to be whipsmart to pull it off. Commit to the bit, know when to drop the one-liner and, please, create don’t copy

• Le Puzz – This weird-and-wonderful brand world (mis)aligns with its random-cut jigsaws. Seriously, go read smile at every one of the product descriptions.

• I am Nut Okay – This cheese is dairy-free and serves puns with a hint of mature cringe. Shout out to Italian herb G.O.A.T., American-style Meltdown and the Greek-inspired Fetamorphosis. Delicious.

• citizenM – This was one of the first brand voices we put into action. What a treat! For an ‘unbusiness-like hotel’ it’s unseriously playful and it’s everywhere – from doormats to shampoo packaging, in-room iPads and breakfast-buffet signs.

• Date Better – Promoting healthy relationships with food, this snack brand runs across categories with the love-life lingo. Ditch the one-night snacks. Benefits you can ‘brag to mom about’.

• Tushy – Toilet humour isn’t just for Who Gives a Crap. This bidet brand pulls off what should be pretty dire lines (‘ploptimal positions’ ‘cool sh*t to read on the toilet’) in a way that’s half parody, half… really persuasive.

• Naw! – These dog treats make off-cuts prime cuts. Same with words, too. ‘One animal’s trachea is another’s treasure.’ ‘Shop our gross-ery.’ We’re insanely jealous in awe of the copywriters who got this brief. Feels like something out of that Punslingers sketch on Portlandia.

The World Builders

Some brands sell products. Others immerse you in sun-parched Cretan olive groves, wind-burnt coastlines, an 80s beach club. They do it all for the plot: copy, colour, films, unboxing, customer service even. More myth-making than marketing.

• Botivo – ‘When was the last time we danced? Yesterday.’ We wrote about this bittersweet aperitivo back in our letter on wordy colour psychology – its brand world squeezes every drop out of ‘The Yellow Hour’. The warm lilt of a clocked-off, first-person voice. 0% ABV 100% pleasure.

• Yiayia and friends – A love letter to grandmothers who feed, teach and shape us. It’s hard to put into words how much we love Yiayia’s scrollytelling ‘about’ page. Please, please read it with the sound on. And if you like this, Arc’teryx does scrollytelling brilliantly too.

• DS&DURGA – They say ‘a great perfume is a keyhole into another realm’. And they mean it. Every scent comes with liner notes, playlists, short films – building worlds that linger somewhere between memory and myth.

• Kult Clothing – World-building isn’t just about taking people out of reality – it’s about knowing where you show up in theirs. Loved the Paynter label? Look at Kult’s existential, love-letter, affirmation-type microcopy. Tiny words. Huge impact.

• Salty Dagger – It’s not jewellery, it’s treasure. Unboxing is like finding a letter in a bottle – tea stained, hand-scrawled, glistening gold. Like its pieces, SD’s content is captivatingly human, all mish-mash voices and scrappy-cut videos.

• Manors – Golf is played between your ears; marked by experiences, not scorecards. And Manors goes deep on those experiences. Their YouTube feels less like marketing, more like a must-watch meditation on sport and self. Even if you’ve never watched a game.

• Finisterre – Obviously. Made for life where land ends. Less rugged adventurer, more windswept existentialist. Salt-sprayed copy makes braving the elements pure poetry.

The Scribes

Brand editorial is less and less a ‘nice-to-have’, and more a competitive edge. Less SEO-stuffed listicle, more considered, cultured storytelling. For some that means long-form (like Feeld or Gail’s magazines; Hinge’s No Ordinary Love stories), others it’s a single perfect sentence, a product description that makes you pause, packaging that reads like poetry… or a stream of consciousness.

• Kakimori – This downtown Tokyo stationery brand is dipped in ritual and reverence for the handwritten word. Inks are likened to the soft centre of an omelette, rosé poured in quiet company, puddles after rain. We need them all.

• Auralee – Mostly for its Material Matters series, tracing the threads of fabric to their place of origin. The films! The photography! But most of all, the copy – tactile, transportive, thick with detail.

  

• Diem – The social search engine inspired by how women have shared wisdom for centuries, through stories, recommendations and collective knowledge. Like the many brands-turned-publishers launching Substacks, Diem’s newsletter Hearsay carves a corner of the internet for its community, away from saturated social. See also: The RealReal with its recently launched, Gossip Girl-adjacent newsletter.

• Desmond & Dempsey – Leisure time = reading time. The Sunday Paper might have stopped the rounds, but whenever D&D do words, they really do words. Essays on sausage mcmuffins, long-read Studio Notes, deep meditations on Black Friday, and launches that read like pages from founder Molly’s journal.

• Juicy Marbles – It’s the chilled aisle’s answer to Dr Bronner’s. Wall-to-wall words, personality dialled up to 11, with wild-ride copy about distilling ‘the elixir of happy tears from the biggest cuddly teddy bear ever listening to ASMR of Keanu Reeves helping and old lady cross the street’. Bonkers quantity and quality. Even the functional details drip with personality. *Chef’s kiss.*

Alright, that’s a wrap for today. But let’s do this again soon? Because (1) it’s fun and (2) there’s a backlog of Ye Olde Worlde brands, Firebrands, Lo-Fi brands and Agents of Chaos bursting from our mental and virtual tabs.

Got a brand you like to shout about? Please share!

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The Vortex

Isn’t it a joy to be seen? On translucent bodies, prison tech and showing your guts.

Playing it safe is risky business. Beth Bentley on why it pays to say the weird thing (and borrow the MAYA innovation concept: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable).

Talking to real people > yet another survey. You need Just Enough Research to make your next move.

There are too! many! trends! And Gen Z’s growing out of it.

M&S raised the ingredient transparency game: