Merrell Brand Toolkit

A brand toolkit designed to tell

consistent global stories.

In partnership with Camp4 Collective, I designed and delivered an advertising toolkit for one of the largest shoe brands in the outdoor industry. The brand toolkit served as a visual guide and design resource for Merrell’s Fall / Winter campaign. This 185 page brand guide included all the consumer facing ads across print, web, digital and social platforms while spanning to cover five different product territories. The toolkit along with all the assets was distributed to Merrell’s retailers, agencies and internal partners to make sure that the brand was telling consistent global stories.

Design Challenge

Historically speaking, the outdoor industry has emphasized the most extreme athletes, rugged environments, and impressive physical feats. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, it has become somewhat expected and unrelatable for the average joe who might not have the luxury to travel halfway across the globe. Our challenge was to pull away from the status quo and send a message to the outdoor industry, shifting the focus away from the most extreme athletes to the most passionate ones. With exactly one month to turn around the project, I was tasked with designing over a 200 ads and packaging them into a cohesive toolkit for delivery.

The Solution

Our solution was to create a relatable, grassroots style campaign that would celebrate the passion of the weekend warrior and serve as an ode to Merrell’s heritage as a Michigan based company. We documented the lives of real people from Michigan’s upper peninsula and built a campaign around their stories and passion for the outdoors. We utilized journalistic style storytelling techniques to share some of the more intimate details about our characters and their unique lifestyles. Instead of capturing staged action shots, we focused on authentic portraits, silly moments and genuine behavior. The designs that we created reflected this idea by including personal information such as their hometown, favorite activity, shoe size, short bio and signature. Some of our characters included an inland lake surfer, a talented outdoor artist, and a team of winter trail builders. Theses stories allowed us to pull the focus away from the product and pay closer attention to the people who are actually using the products.