iS Clinical

BOOSTING THE BRAND

When iS Clinical came to us, they were already among the most elite brands in the luxury cosmeceuticals category. They boasted a collection of acclaimed products, were a go-to for leading dermatologists and aestheticians worldwide, earned regular accolades in the press and had a cast of A-list celebrities promoting their offerings on social and beyond.

What they didn’t have was a brand that consistently met the high bar set by their products. The opportunity for us was to elevate the overall brand experience, helping them create a consistent, compelling visual and verbal identity, selling customers on a luxury lifestyle promise and engaging them on a deeper, more emotional level.

THE FORMULA FOR TRANSFORMATION

We started with an in-depth strategy phase, examining the competitive landscape, creating a comprehensive SWOT analysis and identifying the white space where we could carve out a uniquely ownable — and actionable — position for iS Clinical. What we found was a rich opportunity to differentiate the brand by leaning even more heavily into their luxury stance while emphasizing the purity of their ingredients.

We also developed a roadmap detailing our recommended steps in the all-up brand refresh, from reimagining iS Clinical’s look and feel to crafting a new product launch campaign and reimagining the photo art direction. With this robust foundation to build on, we moved into creative territory development, creating a range of strategically rooted directions that explored promising themes like “Self-care elevated,” “Pure chemistry” and “A fresh start.” Each territory included directional verbal and visual stimuli for the iS Clinical team to respond to and which would act our first steps in conceiving their refreshed brand.

REVEALING A REFRESHED INDENTITY

With alignment on our creative territory explorations, we launched into their brand story, the cornerstone for successive creative work. We refreshed their mission, elevating the ideas of luxury and self-care, then fleshed it out with a new customer-empowering promise, characteristics to better define and differentiate the brand and values to guide and inspire them for years to come. We also developed messaging to cover everything from their Founders’ Story to Skincare Philosophy and Sustainability Statement.

Next, we reimagined their visual identity, evolving elements to both elevate and bring a greater sense of humanity to the previously science-centric brand. We recommended shifts in scale to the logo and identity, broadened and warmed up the color palette and brought a heightened sense of luxe to typography. We reconsidered their photography art direction, boosting the brightness and optimism while emphasizing moments of transformation, and introduced textural contours that artfully mimic the human form to their graphic language. And we brought it all to life across a range of touchpoints, from sell sheets and a social content to an iS Clinical Amazon store page.

Having completed this foundational work, we moved on to a launch campaign for the brand’s much-anticipated Retinol products. This was our first opportunity to leverage the brand-level updates and we crafted a campaign that captured both these overarching shifts along with the unique product story. We developed the campaign look, feel and messaging — rooted in the idea of “boosted by botanicals” — oversaw the product and model photo shoots, created packaging and collateral, designed and produced influencer and PR boxes and brought it all together in a campaign toolkit. We then refreshed collateral for iS Clinical’s Illuminating Eyes collection as well as other products, all aligning with and building on the heightened humanity and luxury of the reimagined iS Clinical brand.