MISSION ZERO ACADEMY

A BRAND WITH A MISSION

The quest

Our mission was to create a brand level 100, whose mission is 0 waste. The client is Zero Waste Europe (ZWE), a network of “change agents” working towards the same vision: eliminating waste in our society, and wanting to build a strong brand for their social business brain-child: Mission Zero Academy a.k.a. MiZA.

MiZA is the capacity-building hub for municipalities, SMEs, and other organisations wanting to take a step forward in their zero waste strategies and circular economy implementation. It’s the go-to-place for tried-and-tested solutions, qualified-expert training and useful tools on resource management and circular economy topics, in order to accelerate your zero waste transition.

The goal was to reflect the mission, values and promises of this brand into a Visual Identity that will appeal to its target audience. And guess who goes crazy for “green” brands? That’s us!

The magic formula

Our winning methodology a.k.a. magic formula includes a series of exercises we walk the clients through that aim to unlock the deepest secrets of their brand.

The first step is to understand the brand inside out. The information we need to gather includes the brand’s purpose, vision, mission, values and promise(s). In addition, we need to determine its positioning regarding its competitors, and therefore its unique selling point. Finally, we need to discover its target audience – the whole target audience – which usually is much bigger than the client thinks it is.

How do we find that out? We begin with an anonymous Brand Discovery Questionnaire – to get an idea of what the brand is about and the level of the team’s understanding of Communications. Then, we met everyone during an interactive (and fun) 2-3 hour Brand Strategy Workshop with the ZWE/MiZA team to fully understand the intentions of the brand and the complexity of the project. And finally, we conclude this process by sending some homework exercises to the client team, so we can get all the details right.

From all these insights we create a meaningful Brand Strategy and an accurate Brand Persona. In MiZA’s case, it’s Alex. Alex is gonna do great things, you’ll see that for yourself!

The final steps of the process are:

Brainstorming… Brainstorming… Brainstorming…

Experimenting… Experimenting… Experimenting…

We play around with graphic elements, shapes, letters, colour combos, animations and come up with a bunch of ideas.

Then we narrow down these ideas and present two creative concepts to the client.

The client chooses one option and we develop it further, into a concrete Visual Identity!

The happy ending

The concept we based the Visual Identity of MiZA on, is reflected in the logo. The logo combines three layers of symbolism.

The basis includes a hint of the first letter of the brand name “m”. The second layer adds “a bridge” in order to show the strong foundation, the supportive nature and the transfer of knowledge that characterise MiZA. The final layer, “the connecting dot” represents the exchange of information and the constructive interactions between multiple players throughout the journey to reach a zero waste mentality.

The colour palette also adds to the sense of ambition, inclusivity, honesty, and credibility that characterise MiZA. The primary colours of the logo are Magenta and Royal Blue. When optimism and openness are mixed with trustworthiness and reliability, this is the result. One side of the image is lively, warm and elegant; and the other is calm, stable and strong. Despite the contrast in sentiment, this image does not hit the two extremes, it instead remains balanced and easy on the eye. At the same time, it manages to be powerful and impactful. Like two partners that bring out the best in each other, this combo creates a sense of enduring intensity and is loud enough to be a showstopper.