THE INTRO
Displate built a strong business around premium metal posters and licensed pop culture art. But as the company scaled, the brand began to drift.
Different teams interpreted it in their own ways. Visuals became inconsistent. Voice fragmented. The gap between what Displate was and what it needed to become kept growing.
For a company rooted in fandom, this wasn’t just a design issue. It was an identity problem.
The brand hadn’t been meaningfully updated in over a decade.
As the business expanded, there was no system holding it together, no clear hierarchy, no shared understanding, and inconsistent execution across teams and markets.
Internally, confidence eroded. Externally, the brand drifted. Partnerships began to stall.
MY ROLE
Displate had engaged Koto to lead the refresh, but when the first strategic direction came back, leadership knew it wasn’t right. They just couldn’t agree on why.
The CMO brought me in to get the project back on track. I paused the agency engagement, reviewed the original brief alongside the work they’d delivered, identified the strategic disconnect, and rebuilt the foundation around a customer-centered brand truth. Within two weeks I had aligned the executive team on new positioning, brand pillars, messaging, and a revised creative brief before restarting the agency engagement. From that point forward, I led the work through rollout and adoption across the organization.
THE BRAND IDEA
At the center of the refresh was a simple truth:
Your collection reflects who you are.
The brand was built around reflection and shine. The metal surface reflects light, but more importantly, the art reflects identity, taste, and the stories fans connect with.
This moved Displate from a product-led brand to one grounded in self-expression and fandom.
THE SYSTEM
The refresh wasn’t designed as a visual identity. It was designed as a decision-making system.
It defined how Displate makes choices across product, marketing, and partnerships, from hierarchy and fandom framing to scalable creative principles. The goal wasn’t consistency for its own sake. It was giving teams a shared framework they could use with confidence.
THE ACTIVATION
To drive adoption, I directed an internal launch video designed to build excitement and alignment.
We paired it with a full suite of assets, decks, templates, and real examples so teams could immediately apply the system.
THE RESULTS
The refresh achieved full organizational adoption and became the foundation for how Displate creates and evaluates marketing.
I expanded the agency’s initial guidelines into a practical 99-page brand system, giving teams the tools, templates, and examples needed to apply the brand consistently across campaigns representing more than $30M in annual media and marketing investment.
Holiday campaigns transitioned to the new system, improving creative consistency and strengthening storytelling across every channel. The refreshed brand also helped unlock new partnerships with PlayStation, Fortnite, and others.
The accompanying About Displate campaign increased unaided awareness from 6% to 22% in U.S. test markets.
The refresh didn’t just modernize the brand. It gave the organization a shared language for making brand decisions.
