A brand without motion is like a person frozen in place, technically present, but lacking the vitality that makes real connection possible. Motion brings a brand to life. It makes it feel human. And that humanity is what unlocks emotion, that lasting connection that brings brands closer to the people they serve.
This isn’t about replacing traditional identity elements. It’s about deepening them. Motion adds a sensory layer to identity, one that taps into rhythm, energy and personality. It enriches how a brand is perceived, remembered, and felt.
The question of whether motion belongs in a brand identity is already behind us. Today, we’re asking a better one:
‘How can motion be embedded into the heart of a brand’s identity to make it not just seen, but felt and remembered?’
And it couldn’t be more timely. We live in a world made for movement.
For Sydney-based brand agency Tiny Hunter, we built a motion language rooted in the idea of continuous transformation. Through foundational research, we surfaced three themes — Rise, Rhythm, and Transformation — which became the pillars of a motion system built to evolve.
A moving world needs moving brands
Screens are everywhere. At home. At work. In our pockets. On the street. In shops, at festivals, on buses, subways, trams, even on our glasses. Digital surfaces have become the main interface between people and brands. And they’re made for motion.
Static identities, once built for print and signage, now exist in dynamic environments. And in these environments, it’s the brands that move, with intention, with personality, with consistency that make a lasting impression.
Motion is a brand’s ‘body language’
Humans are never still. We express ourselves through gestures, posture, and rhythm. Our movement gives away how we feel — nervous, confident, relaxed, shy, uncertain. It reveals who we are, even when we’re not speaking.
And it’s what makes us recognizable. Think of that one person you can spot from across the room just by the way they walk. That’s the power of unique movement. It becomes part of our identity.
Brands are no different. When a brand moves with intention, with a rhythm that feels true to its character, it feels alive. It feels human. And human brands are easier to connect with.
The motion identity for Hello Kuopio celebrates social connection and joyful everyday moments. Drawing from the language of social media, it combines fresh perspectives, imperfect human movement, and a sense of play, making the city feel approachable, real, and alive.
Motion deepens emotional association
People now expect brands to behave more like people: responsive, expressive, interactive. The traditional brand elements — logo, colour, typography, tone — still matter. But they no longer work alone.
Motion enriches static components. It creates a new layer of recognition, one you feel in your body, not just your eyes.
Importantly, motion isn’t just aesthetic. Done right, it expresses values. Personality. Attitude. It communicates on a deeper level and that’s where our ability to recall and remember brands lives.
Strong brand systems are built to move from day one
The most effective brand motion isn’t added later, it’s designed in from the beginning. When motion is integrated into the identity from the start, it becomes part of the system, not just an accessory. A true expression of the brand’s DNA.
If you’re designing motion as part of your brand’s foundation, consider these principles:
Start with strategy, not just animation. Motion should reflect your brand’s values and character, not just add polish.
Establish clear motion principles. With the right foundations, your motion language can scale across channels and formats.
Think in touchpoints. Motion should work everywhere your brand shows up, from product UI to campaigns to onboarding flows.
Motion makes us feel something
Digital environments will only become more immersive. And as they do, the need for motion (expressive, strategic, emotionally intelligent motion) will only grow.
But in the end, this isn’t just about motion on a screen. It’s about motion that moves us, the kind that deepens meaning, invites connection, and gives brands a more human pulse.
Written by Ville Lappeteläinen, Motion Graphic Designer at Ahooy and passionate builder of brand movement systems that connect.
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This question sparked the development of Osuma’s brand. Behind this is a deep understanding of the significant transformation in the working world. Increasingly, especially among the younger generation, job seekers do not want to see their workplace as a final destination. At first glance, it might seem that the trend is to idolize rootlessness and complete freedom. However, that is not the case.
Good brand building always starts with understanding a human problem. That means understanding a human-sized and human-shaped dream, fear, aspiration, problem, or need. Osuma particularly appeals to those who seek both individual recognition and respect in their careers and stability in their professional and daily lives. They want assurance that work will continue to be available. Today’s professionals also look for security and credibility.
According to Osuma, old-fashioned personnel leasing is a thing of the past. While companies still need flexibility in their workforce to meet demand and seasonal fluctuations, every employer wishes that employees feel they belong to the community and feel capable and important. HR expertise and employer image are more important to employers today than ever. The ultimate goal for everyone is a win-win situation, where the employee finds the right career and the employer finds the right person – a true match.
From these foundations, a deeper understanding emerged of why the job market needs to evolve. Changes in values are key drivers towards better work and working life. Osuma has decided to be part of this positive change and it needs to be communicated to the world. The company’s growth strategy created a need to deepen Osuma’s brand message. We started writing the brand strategy together – Osuma’s Red Playbook. The result was the promise: “So that no good job is left undone.”
“I like Ahooy Creative’s style. When there is trust in the collaboration, we can genuinely discuss and exchange opinions. I particularly appreciate the willingness and ability to listen. The task of a marketing partner is not to push various projects or ideas to order. I felt that Ahooy started from completely different premises. Here, the long shared history was a huge advantage,” describes the collaboration Osuma’s founder Ville Auvinen.
Unknowingly, we chose the color of that playbook already in 2016 when Osuma Henkilöstöpalvelut saw the light of day and the new entrepreneur needed a high-quality and distinctive look and website. The investment in a carefully designed appearance and website has since paid off many times over. Today, Osuma is one of the largest employers in Eastern Finland. The same look created in 2016 is still fresh, strong, and recognizable. Even though the brand now wanted to evolve, it was easy for all parties to state that Osuma had built so much value around the brand over the years that new efforts should be built on the existing foundation.
“The company’s marketing strategy and brand were created several years ago. Small updates had been made along the way, but now it was time to bring them to the present,” says Osuma’s COO Erkka Sarnola.
“Previously, Osuma’s brand was built more locally. With the brand renewal, Osuma is now suitable everywhere, allowing us to implement our strategy to expand to other locations. The brand look, communication themes, and tone of voice also needed to be updated.”
Messages, Visuals, and Web Renewed
Osuma’s strongest message was selected as the compelling and emotionally engaging slogan “Straight to the Heart.” Perhaps the brand has quietly spoken those words all along. Why not say them out loud? Besides, the right job should always be a direct hit to the heart.
In addition to emotion, the brand needed to be brought to life. Osuma is a highly visible company, and since the majority of its visibility occurs on digital platforms, it was justified to create a visual language for the brand. Now Osuma stands out in a high-quality and recognizable way at all times. And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every video production. The company now has a ready template and a large animation library at its disposal.
It was also time to renew Osuma’s online presence. The website was revamped with user experience and accessibility in mind. The pages needed to serve both job seekers and employers better. At the same time, digital marketing was updated. While search engine advertising can nowadays be considered part of a company’s basic accessibility, it achieves significant competitive advantage when done correctly. We decided to delve deeper into analytics and conversion data and revamped the continuous advertising model.
“In a short time, the number of applications has increased, the quality of traffic is better, and the amount of money spent on advertising has become much more productive,” says Erkka.
The number of applicants through the website immediately began to grow, and the conversion rate has increased by over 16%. Along with growth, quality has also improved significantly. When measuring how much successful conversion, i.e., an application submitted from the site, has cost in digital marketing, the price has decreased by 27%. The quality metric is known in digital marketing as CPL (cost per lead).
“Osuma’s brand and message now resonate with our target groups in the right way. Traffic and the number of applicants have increased with the updates. Overall, we can now clearly differentiate ourselves from our competitors,” Erkka describes the impact of the work.
“Good marketing is always both strategic and operational. Short and long game. We want our marketing partner to know us and be able to serve across the entire scope of marketing responsibilities. Therefore, the collaboration must be close,” Ville Auvinen summarizes his views.
Erkka sums up working with Ahooy: “The collaboration with Ahooy’s teams (creative team, digital and web team, sales) has worked well. We can trust their professional expertise and get good development ideas and concrete actions as the basis for business development.”
“I dare to promise that we will deepen our collaboration with Ahooy Creative even further,” promises Ville.
Osuma is a pioneer in personnel services in Finland. As a strategic partner in the management and development of human capital, the company offers extensive expert services for personnel acquisition and development, as well as recruitment and work-life training, direct recruitment, and various assessment services. Osuma employs about 750 professionals monthly, and since its founding in 2016, the company has grown continuously, now being the largest operator in the field in Eastern Finland.
Shall We Work Together?
Often, a company’s operations, expertise, and products have outpaced its visible brand and communication. From the outside, one can get a completely wrong picture of the activities and their level. There is much more potential, but it remains untapped. Or the company is undergoing a strategic change that needs to be communicated both internally and externally. These are common situations where a brand builder’s toolkit is an invaluable help. Contact us. You will gain access to a brand and marketing communications team with extensive skills and experience.
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During World War II, Allied military strategists were eager to reinforce their aircraft for better resilience during combat missions. An extensive examination of the returning planes revealed that they were most frequently hit in the wings, tail, and fuselage. The initial reaction? Strengthen these parts.
However, statistician Abraham Wald challenged this conclusion. He pointed out a critical flaw in their reasoning: the analysis was based only on the planes that had returned from missions. Wald suggested that attention should instead be focused on the areas that were hit on the planes that didn’t make it back – the cockpit, engines, and fuel tanks. These, he argued, were the truly vulnerable parts. This perspective completely transformed their approach.
Survivor bias, the phenomenon of making decisions based on an incomplete set of data, like those planes that survived, is still prevalent in decision-making today. It sheds light on why sales and marketing often seem to be at odds.
Sales teams typically focus on customers who have “made it through” the sales funnel. Their world revolves around the consideration stage of this funnel, celebrating victories to the executive team. While sales are crucial, there’s a common misconception that the customer’s decision is solely based on the facts and expertise presented by the salesperson. In reality, customers often have already made a subconscious decision before even meeting the salesperson, having navigated their way through the funnel to that point. By focusing only on the conversion or the final purchase, a distorted view of what truly attracts and engages customers can emerge.
Today’s trend in performance marketing – digital marketing focused on optimizing for results – creates a similar illusion. It’s all about conversion: did the customer leave a lead, make a purchase, download something? Digital metrics show the hits, but not the misses. Corner offices obsess over short-term ROI, pushing marketers to pour all their efforts into reaching those ready to buy. Logical, yes, but myopic.
A study by LinkedIn and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute compared the long-term effectiveness of brand marketing versus performance marketing. The hypothesis? That well-optimized, conversion-focused digital marketing would trump the seemingly whimsical world of brand marketing. The long-term results, however, surprised many. Brand marketing proved more effective than performance marketing in terms of efficiency.
A deeper understanding emerges when considering the potential audience of a brand, along with the time window. This gave rise to the 95-5 rule, particularly relevant in the B2B world. It suggests that the vast majority of potential customers – 95% – are not looking to purchase your services right now. But later, they likely will, as businesses infrequently acquire new products or services. By focusing solely on the immediate 5% ready to buy, companies miss the opportunity to impact a broader audience – those not currently in the buying cycle.
This leads to a somewhat paradoxical conclusion: target your marketing broadly at those who aren’t buying right now. Invest in branding so that when the window of opportunity opens, your brand is top of mind. Market share is captured by companies that are remembered, as the most crucial search engine still lies within the human mind. The same study reveals that even with a smaller media budget, but with creative execution, you can outshine the tactical ad spreads of giants.
This finding doesn’t mean we should entirely shift gears and stop tactical marketing or stop optimizing for conversion. Both are needed. Customers still require credible prompts at the moment of consideration, but the focus of marketing communication can be safely shifted from short-term sales to brand marketing. It turns out, this approach not only builds long-term brand value but can also drive immediate sales.
Let’s think broader than the obvious, like Abraham did. To sell more, hire the best, and market more effectively, strengthen the most critical part: the perception of your brand. A lesson well researched and worth learning.
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What I love so much about working with family business is their genuine unfleeting passion, even amongst non-family members. There is just a different energy, something that runs far deeper than just making money. For this reason it’s both incredibly fulfilling and also challenging to even consider changing or building a family-run brand. Particularly if it’s a second or third generation brand.
The main and most important factor when working through the brand building process is to acknowledge the relationships between the people and the vision they are living into. Unlike non-family businesses the people you are working with are likely to be working in the business for their entire career, they are all-in so to speak and far more committed to the long term vision.
As a brand strategist, this makes my heart very happy as I know that a brand is not built on fleeting moments and clever campaigns but rather the consistent story you tell over time, that is built over years not days, weeks or even months. True brand building infiltrates every facet of the business from sales to finance to operations. It’s intertwined with the business strategy and lives out on the office floor not hidden in a drawer collecting dust.
When a group is united to a greater vision with strength and consistency, individual desires and short-term agendas become less important. This is crucial when making long-term decisions and is one of the factors that can be a huge advantage for family businesses over their non-family business counterparts who often have to answer to bosses, head office, or shareholders.
A key driver when building a family-run brand is that individual family members have to learn to work together, especially when it comes to the changing of the guard, and the older generation handing over the reins to their sons and daughters. Each individual family member has to understand that they alone are not the brand.
The brand is a separate living entity, and there are things that a brand would and wouldn’t do, that individuals might do differently.
This is where a clear brand strategy can help. It creates clarity and aligns individual personalities. And this is about more than just ‘business’, it’s about connection and relationships. Without this clarity, conflict between individuals in the business is likely to come up.
The brand building process has to take into account the nuances and complexities of family members working together. The steps are the same as they would be for any business but the approach, communication and expectation management is completely different. It is incredibly important to bring the right partner onboard, who understands this wholeheartedly and is willing to dive right in and do the work.
Nothing is more rewarding than articulating the stories of a family owned business through their strategy and identity, the DNA.
Seeing the success that brings to the business over time is worth more than its weight in gold.
I have had the privilege of working with many family run brands over the years in Australia and in Finland. If you would like to know more about how we work contact me.
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As a brand strategist working at a creative agency, I have had the privilege of working with many brands over the years and have learnt a lot along the way, mainly that there is always more to learn. I feel like I’m on a never ending path of discovery.
Every brand I work with teaches me something else about the value of branding. I like to dig into every facet of brand and how it’s intertwined with business strategy as well as the day-to-day operations of a business. There is no denying the value of being clear on your story, why you do what you do and how you contribute to society. But also, being able to decide where you place effort as a business, what tasks you choose to invest in, what you and your team actually do with your time, everyday. Lately I have been thinking a lot about how defining a clear brand hierarchy can help marketing and brand professionals make better decisions about where to place effort.
The older I get the more I realise the value of spending your time wisely. As Seth Godin says, ‘You don’t need more time in your day. You need to decide.’
It’s crucial that we make effective decisions day-to-day. Every single piece of work we invest in doing should be building our brand and our business over time.
A brand hierarchy shows how brands, sub-brands and other offerings of a company are organized and how they relate to each other.
When we understand our brand hierarchy, we can use it as a tool to make better decisions about where, what and how to focus our efforts. It allows us to take a step back from the day-to-day tasks and analyse each request through the lense of building brand salience over time.
Below are three different brand hierarchy models, understanding these models creates a really solid foundation for defining your own brand hierarchy. In practice you might create your own model different to the below. As long as it is simple and understood by all, that’s really all that matters.
As Byron Sharp states in his book How Brands Grow, ‘The real challenge of growing a brand is down to one thing: availability.’ When we talk about availability, think about mental and physical availability. The more you ask your audience to remember, the less they actually will. With this in mind, it’s really important to understand that the house of brands hierarchy is the most expensive to maintain and therefore there has to be serious strategic benefit for creating a house of individual brands.
To define your own brand hierarchy, I recommend starting with the below.
List the projects / sub-brands / content you have in your hands currently.
Define and understand your key audience groups and their needs as well as your strategic focus for the next 12 months. You could have many audience groups but deciding which ones to focus your efforts on will enable you to make better decisions as a business across not only marketing but also product or service development.
Define and understand the depth of your offering (products and services), with a vision for the future state of the business.
Start to categorise and label your ideas, these labels could include a product or service, a content piece, a sub-brand, a project, a collaboration or cooperation or an audience.
Once you have gone through the above four exercises, start to organise these into levels of importance. The sub brands and offering will feed into your brand hierarchy, but keep in mind that if you don’t have control over the look and feel then it probably shouldn’t form part of your model. The audience insights and content should support the brand hierarchy model you develop. The main question to ask yourself is: how is this supporting and building my brand long term?
Use the above knowledge to define a clear set of questions and guiding principles for decision making.
Once you have a draft, review it with the intention to simplify as much as you can. There is so much power in keeping things simple, especially when expecting people to use and remember it.
Some guiding principles I have used in the past include:
If it’s a project, what happens once the project ends? And what is the ongoing resource demand on my team and how does it build our brand over time?
What are the components we own?
Does this bring us more organic reach?
Will it compound over time?
If an opportunity fits within the brand hierarchy then the leadership team needs to be informed and involved in deciding whether it’s worth investing in.
What other priorities do we have and what are we sacrificing to take this on?
If I can leave you with one thought it’s this. Strategy is useless if left in a drawer. The work is only done once your strategy is understood and followed by all. Your brand hierarchy is no different. But remember, buy-in takes time so be patient, be kind and be resilient.
–Megan Järvinen, Brand Strategist, Ahooy Creative
Header photo credits: Photo by Cesar Carlevarino Aragon on Unsplash
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Building family-run brands
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For years now I have seen firsthand and been impressed with the level of guidance and support that Business Finland offers to Finnish startups and SMEs. The group’s strong presence in Finland and abroad covers all aspects of international business development, from connecting entrepreneurs with expert consultants in foreign target markets to venture funding and legal guidance. Not to mention their focus on meaningful innovation.
The last time Business Finland and the United States Embassy toured Kuopio I raised my hand and asked a question that had been on my mind: When companies seek growth opportunities in the States, why is so much attention, and funding, given to business strategy, networking, research and product development and so little given to honing or adapting their existing communications for their new “local” markets? Clearly I was straying from the expected question-answer script. The Business Finland rep tried to get me back on track and offered, “Branding and marketing are the company’s responsibility”.
Of course Business Finland and other consultants and start-up accelerators can put you in touch with able communications professionals in foreign markets. But too often I’ve seen businesses, and even communications agencies, overlook this crucial step. Even after thorough market research many entrepreneurs and businesses don’t seem to bring the plane in close enough to see and hear how locals in foreign markets speak to and interact with each other. Thus their branding and messaging often falls short, tries too hard or just feels foreign – because it is. And just like people everywhere, locals detect it immediately. I think we found my pet peeve.
How can a company spend so much on developing their business overseas but not put more effort into retooling their branding and communications to better connect with their new foreign target audience? Because from experience I can tell you that “local” requires more than translation, it requires adaptation.
“Local” requires more than translation, it requires adaptation.
As I said, Business Finland and Expert Search do amazing work in foreign markets. And I guess I should note that helping Finnish businesses communicate better locally and abroad is a big part of what I do every day. Still, I’m sure we’ve all heard an experienced business professional say, “And then we’ll get our messaging translated.” as if it’s a final small task to check off their to-do list.
So I’ll offer the business community this. I’ll try to stop disrupting international business events with my off-topic questions, but only if you promise to tell all the entrepreneurs and marketing managers you know what the kind rep from Business Finland told me, “Branding and marketing are the company’s responsibility”. If you’re going to go global, don’t forget to think, speak and behave like a local.
– Ricardo Patiño is a Partner and Creative Director with Ahooy Creative, an independent creative agency who believe that creating a good brand is good for business.
Header photo credits: Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash
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Just like everyone else in the world, we are adapting to this new reality where face to face meetings and workshops are no longer an option, well at least for the next few months. Online collaboration is now critical to driving business forward.
During a time when there is so much uncertainty we felt compelled to keep moving, one day at a time. And that means figuring out new ways of working.
Facilitating workshops is an absolutely core part of our process. We simply cannot deliver the same value without gathering the wealth of knowledge and insights from our clients, it’s this knowledge combined with our depth of experience that enables us to deliver successful outcomes.
Last week we held our very first remote workshop and to be honest we weren’t entirely sure how it was going to go so firstly we have to acknowledge and thank our client, Mediateko for taking this leap of faith with us. While there were definitely challenges we left feeling positive and confident that we can in fact facilitate workshops online – winning. The workshop followed our creative collaboration working model, but instead of being in the same physical space we used Google Meets, Slides and Jamboards.
Outlined below are the tools we used followed by a few communication tips for holding successful activity-driven workshops online. Here is a video where I share the best tips for organizing a successful remote workshop.
Google meets
As a business we love Google meets, it’s how we host all our meetings, internally and also with clients. The video and sound quality is pretty consistent and it’s so easy to use. The workshop included eight participants and four key activities. Two of which required the participants to divide into teams to collaborate on tasks.
To do this, we created these two teams ahead of the workshop and set up three Google meeting ‘rooms’:
The master room where all participants joined
Team one labelled the Happy Hermits
Team two labelled the Lonely Wolves
Participants could easily switch back over to the main meet once the team activities were completed. As the facilitator I had links to all online meeting spaces so that I could check in on how activities were going and provide updates on time.
Google slides
We prepared our master presentation in Google slides which included very clear instructions for all activities and some rules for online collaboration. I controlled the presentation by sharing my screen with all participants.
Google Jamboards
Before this session I had never used Jamboards before and I have to say this tool worked really well. It was basically like having a big wall with sticky notes but virtually. Jamboard is not sophisticated or complicated to use. We create three Jamboard spaces; one for each team and one master board. Participants could add little sticky notes to their board when ideating individually and then easily copy and paste to the group board once done. The best part is that we didn’t have to decipher handwritten notes and felt confident that all ideas were captured online.
General tips
It is crucial to assign one person the role of planning and running the technical side during the workshop. Without this person I have no doubt that the online workshop model would be a complete disaster.
Next time I would allow more time for activities and more time for breaks. It was an intense three hours and towards the end our focus faded a little.
Create all needed links and boards ahead of time and make sure to include very clear instructions.
We went through the below creative collaboration rules before starting. This is part of our usual process however we added a few extra rules for collaborating in a remote environment.
Collaborate.
Have fun.
Postpone critical thinking.
Quantity equals quality.
Build on each other’s ideas: “Yes, and”.
Be open.
Remote rules.
Be positive and assume positive intentions.
Mute microphone while not speaking.
Listen out for instructions from the facilitator.
That’s it! Hopefully this provided you with some confidence to run your own remote workshop but if you have any questions, please reach out. And if there is one thought to leave you with, it’s don’t stop moving.
