Nerf Zombies (released as Zombie Strike) was one of the first branding exercises I did at Hasbro. Working with the graphic design team, I wrote the concepts you can see below. We pitched to our marketing clients together — tone of voice first, then graphic concepts — and discovered something incredible: By having a conversation about verbal identity with the brand marketing before anything else, we were able to come to an agreement on a tone and lexicon. That agreement made every other conversations simpler. The usual churn around graphic direction was gone, because the entire team had a common language. Not only did the tone of voice discussion help us communicate with our consumers — it helped us communicate with each other! That is a lesson I’ve taken to every brand development project I’ve led since.
