What 180 launches taught us

We launched our first brand in 2012, for a bakery two streets from our old office. Last month we launched number 180. Somewhere in between, we stopped relying on talent and started relying on habits.

Launches fail on the boring parts

The mark is rarely the problem. Launches go wrong when the new business cards arrive a week after the event, or when nobody told the support team that the app icon changed. Since 2019 every project gets a launch checklist of 60 items, from email signatures to the favicon. It is the least exciting file we make and the one clients thank us for.

The checklist grew out of mistakes. Item 14, check that the old logo is gone from the payment page, exists because a client of ours took card payments under their old name for three months after launch. Nobody noticed until a customer asked if the company had been sold.

Small teams make better brands

Our best work came from teams of four or five people who stayed from the first interview to the last file. When we split strategy and design between groups, the idea got lost in the handover. Today the person who interviews your clients also sits in the design reviews.

Numbers settle arguments

Early on, projects stalled for weeks over colour and taste. Now we agree on the numbers we will track before the first workshop, and we check them after launch. When a founder and a designer disagree, we ask which option moves those numbers. That ends most debates in minutes.

The last lesson is about patience. A brand needs about a year to show what it can do, so we book a review with every client twelve months after launch. Most of what we know today came out of those meetings. We still keep the notes from every one of them in a single shared folder.