A Less Than Perfect Union

About

(Est. 2018) “Superunion is a next-generation brand agency. We use upstream creativity to build brands that unite people and organisations. Founded in response to the nature of clients’ needs today, Superunion is the convergence of five WPP brand consultancies and design agencies—Brand Union, The Partners, Lambie-Nairn, Addison Group and VBAT. It comprises 750 people across 23 offices in 18 countries, and works with clients including Aetna, Airbus, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Deloitte, Diageo, FIFA, Ford, HEINEKEN, IAG, Land Rover, Nestle, Pfizer, Prudential, Tesco and Vodafone.”

Design by

In-house most likely (but which of the sub-houses?)

Related links

Superunion press release

Images (opinion after)

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Opinion

I have written this paragraph a few times over, trying to write a respectful, constructive criticism as I usually aim to do and not let myself dive deep into ridiculing mode but, man, this is making my job difficult this morning. Starting with the name — Superunion — which sounds like Hanna Barbera’s Super Friends and DC Comics’ Justice League had a corporate baby. It’s such an unappealing, smarmy name that isn’t helped by self-assigned adjectives like “next-generation” or made-up stuff like “upstream creativity”. The logo itself is, I guess, okay. The serif chosen is elegant and crisp and the “un” semi-ligature works well but then things take a turn for the laughably worse with the promo images (and painfully animated on their website’s section headers) that show unexpected “unions”, like a balloon with cactus spikes or a hand grenade made of flowers. These are so, so, so bad in both concept and execution — I rarely use this as a way to describe work but these really look like a student project. Given the, literally, I guess, super union of five significantly creative and well regarded firms I would have expected something a lot more interesting, memorable, and well executed. Instead, and unfortunately, what came out is pretentious, cheesy, and, sure, memorable (but not for the right reasons).

Thanks to Verity Wheatley for the tip.