Crafting a droolworthy brand identity.

In 1956, A&W opened Canada's first fast-food restaurant and people quickly fell in love with their delicious burgers and iconic Root Beer. Since then, they’ve grown into Canada’s second-largest hamburger chain, with more than 1,000 franchises.

Over the past decade, A&W shifted their brand strategy to focus on "natural ingredients" and rational claims of quality. Competitors were quick to follow suit, causing A&W to lose any and all distinctiveness. Another challenge that emerged was brand inconsistency, as various partnerships, subrands, and organizational silos had introduced a disjointed collection of colours, illustration styles, and brand assets.

A&W needed to re-establish themselves as the iconic brand they once were, with an incredibly distinct and consistent brand identity.

Rather than abandoning A&W’s roots, we crafted a droolworthy brand identity inspired by why people fell in love with them in the first place: their irresistibly delicious food.

The system consisted of a droolworthy colour palette that put A&W’s iconic orange back in the spotlight, a modular shape system inspired by their burgers and ingredients that would allow us to playfully communicate ingredient messaging, and a bespoke type family crafted for every craving. We re-imagined brand icons and harmonized the hodgepodge of different illustration styles introduced over multiple eras of the brand under a single style, which we then used to redraw the Burger Family and the Great Root Bear. Finally, we turned up the dial on craveable food photography.

This vast system now shows up seamlessly at every touchpoint of the A&W brand, from paid media to in-store signage, packaging and even the digital/mobile experience.

With this brand refresh A&W was able to re-establish its iconicity, boosting campaign recall, and was ranked as Canada's Strongest Brand by Brand Finance. Now that is delicious.