BRAND EXTENSION: BAR & SHIELD GROOMING LINE BY HARLEY DAVIDSON
THE BACKGROUND: For this portfolio school project, we were tasked to create a sub-brand for an existing, iconic brand. My group decided to give ourselves a challenge: take a brand that celebrates wild, carefree abandon, and translate it into a tamer of men’s facial hair.
THE GOAL: Create a full suite of brand guidelines for our new, imagined product line: Bar & Shield.
BRAND NAME
Bar & Shield is Harley Davidson’s line of men’s hair grooming products. The name derives from the brand’s iconic logo, known as the “bar and shield,” and was chosen for how these words also hint at our sub-brand’s purpose: “bar” reminds the ear of “barbershop” and “raising the bar,” while “shield” indicates that our products will protect the hair. It’s an unfussy, masculine name whose simplicity suggests the confidence we aimed for in our brand voice.
THE BRAND BOOK
This was, once upon a time, an actual, steel-cased behemoth of a book. Now it lives on only in our memories – as well as in .pngs and .pdfs.
SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS:
BRAND PROMISE
BRAND VOICE
TAGLINE
It’s simple, it’s confident, and it’s a little bit cheeky. This is a brand that curses when it’s witty to do so. After all, the Harley man doesn’t censor himself – and the Bar & Shield man wants in on that swagger.
PRODUCT GUIDE
These were all written in a manner that gently ribs our audience, but that also shows that we believe they’re fully capable of amping up to our level – with Bar & Shield’s help, naturally.
Many of them take common phrases (such as, here, “only you can define yourself” or “middle of the road”) and treat them with the same irreverent spirit that Bar & Shield treats, well, everything that doesn’t fall under “the art of looking good.”
SOCIAL MEDIA: EXAMPLE POSTS
Social posts demonstrate our brand personality with mild acts of humorous rebellion. Captions are short, sweet, and supportive of the action. Some will nod to internet slang, but we take care to mix them up with others that stick to language as strong and classic as Harley Davidson itself.
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