Here’s the thing. The e-commerce checkout industry has never been so crowded. It’s an ever-growing universe of blues, purples, and the occasional green. And 99% of these brands are doing and saying the exact same thing. It is what we like to call the sea of sameness. Bolt’s difference is simple, one-click checkout. So we wanted to build a brand that communicated this in every aspect, while freeing merchants and their shoppers from the confines of the e-commerce status quo. All this came together through the concept of “Shockingly Simple.” This idea became the blueprint for the Bolt brand.

Press:
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FastCompany   UnderConsideration   itsnicethat   CreativeBloq  Front&Center  ZacharyWinterton   CreativeBoom  CreativeReview

Accolades:
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Fast Company best branding of 2023

The logo

Our new logo is the cornerstone of the rebrand. We paid attention to every detail. First, it had to stand out as unique, ownable, and bold. The color palette must live in a space that is untouched in our industry. Our logo must be scalable to any size and be able to fit into the product. It was important within the logo was a shorthand version, an icon if you will. But, on the other side of the spectrum it had to convey security and trust to our merchants and their shoppers. And lastly, it had to be able to flex from expressive to recessive, because often we are the ingredient brand to our merchants.

Electric Dynamism

We created a distinct art direction style to be used in our photography and illustrations. We call this style “Electric Dynamism.” It conveys the excitement of One-Click Checkout through dramatic wide angle forced perspective, energetic movement, and a slight surreality that plays off of metaphors of Bolt value props. It’s built out of our color palette, and meant to mimic the momentum and instantaneity of our product experience in a shockingly refreshing way.

We also teamed up with the talented Jack Fletcher as our sole adjunct illustrator.

Boltify everything

No detail is too small. We created a dynamic design system that uses expressive and recessive lightning shapes. We also created our own font built from Agrandir. Among this typeface were customized special character. Because of all this we are able to instill the Bolt brand in everything touch point no matter the placement.

Where it all comes together

All the details finally come together on a complete refresh of Bolt.com. We started from scratch, designing and writing it from the ground up.

The design community noticed

We absolutely loved that all the small details didn’t go unnoticed. 

It was also an honor to be asked by Arthur Foliard, Creative Director at Koto Studios, to join The Follow-up podcast. It was a humbling experience to be part of a podcast I’ve followed for years.

Listen here

Our goal on Adobe is to inspire young people to get out there and make stuff. But making stuff is really hard when you’re just starting out. In this campaign, we encourage people to look within themselves and their emotions to create whatever is true to them. In doing so, we refocus the first step of the creative process away from having amazing ideas or Photoshop skills and instead remind our audience that the first step to making is feeling. Because whatever you are feeling get it out and create what’s true to you.

Companies everywhere are sitting on enormous amounts of untapped data. In fact, only 1% of the world’s data is actually being put to use. So to show businesses what Google Cloud can do with data, we used it to make the world’s first live in-game predictions in front of 44 million people during March Madness.

Press:
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AdWeek (Ad of the Day)   Creativity  
TechCrunch   Engadget   ZDNet   Egotist

Accolades:
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Cannes Gold Lion for Creative Data
Cannes Silver Lion for Digital Craft
Effie Silver for Software and Apps
Ad Age B2B Campaign of the Year Gold
D&AD Wood Pencil for Use of TV
One Show Merit for Real-Time Data
One Show Merit for Film Innovation
LIA Finalist for Creative Data

The first real-time TV spots.

During the Final Four and Championship games we aired the most contextual, real-time commerials ever made, featuring six insanely accurate predictions.

How did we pull it off?

We built an app that enabled us to change copy and visuals in real-time—allowing us to show the logos of the teams playing, their colors, names, our live prediction, and even the current score. With our app we were able to be as live and contextual as possible. So no matter where the data took us, we were prepared.

Dynamic historical footage.

We worked with the talented folks at Gentleman Scholar to make more than 250 unique assets. Our assets were designed to fit with any game situation Google Cloud might predict. This included rebounds, assists, three-pointers, shot attempts, pace of game, bench strength, free throws, and more. Among these assets were our animation overlays—where we took historical footage relevant to these themes and replaced the athletes with delightful animations. This allowed us to show the uniform colors of the two teams the spot was about. 

The tool kit.

When game time came we had the ability to produce more than 100,000 unique spots. Below are some of my favorite. Enjoy.

What is a Shopperganger? From the Discount Diva, who stops at nothing to save, to the Ghoster, who has some checkout commitment issues, your Shopperganger is the version of you that reflects your unique shopping personality. We all have one. With this campaign, we wanted to explore the millions of different shoppergangers out there, because Bolt can help you turn any kind of shopper into a lifetime customer.

Press:
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AdAge   Techcrunch   MediaPost   Hypeworld   LittleBlackBook

The #Shopperganger series

We sent an army of influencers their very own action figure to represent their unique Shopperganger. Each mini-me doll arrived in a personalized box designed to capture their unique personality. They then shared their Shopperganger with their community, all while delivering the message of our campaign. They also invited their followers to make their own with the help of our Shopperganger generator.

PR Outreach

To grab the attention of Journalists we took a different approach. We first created a targeted list of people in the industry, like Maghan McDowell from Vogue Business and Morgan Sung from NBC News. To get their attention we sent them a press kit including a digital version of their Shopperganger. 

Down the funnel

We used the concept of Shoppergangers down the funnel with content focused on our value props, such as display ads, social videos, a campaign landing page, and even a thought-leadership report centered around building lifetime value of your customers.

We wanted to remind young people that creative inspiration can truly come from anywhere—you just need to make the leap and put your creativity out into the world. And, when you do, there is no limits to where your creativity can take you. Who better to help us spread this message than GRAMMY-winning cultural pioneer, Lil Nas X. He’s a creator who carves his own path, and draws his inspiration from everything around him, including 2000s cartoons, cowboys, vampires, and his own experiences being a proud, black gay man.

Press:
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Complex   Out   AdAge (Editor’s Pick) 

Making it with young artists

We wanted to use the creative process for these videos to practice the exact idea they convey. By working with young artists who could benefit from getting their voice out there we were able to highlight some amazing undiscovered talent within the black community. Working with Calmatic and Mathematic we identified different artists and asked them to create style frames that would become the worlds Lil Nas X found himself in our videos.

The Cover Art Song

We also invited young people to put their creativity out there in an epic collaboration with Lil Nas X. We asked them to design the cover art to a song Lil Nas X has not yet written. Nas will pick his favorite submission and use it as inpsiration for that song. This part of the campaign is ongoing. We patiently wait for Lil Nas X to pick the winning art and turn it into his next song. 

Some of the best submissions

Fan’s of Lil Nas X and Adobe went nuts. We received over 5,000 submissions.