16 years of Willow & Blake

01.10.26 | By Willow & Blake | blogs

16 years of Willow & Blake

Willow & Blake has been around for 16 years, which means there are a lot of brands lurking in these walls. So, we thought it was time to open the archives.

A lot of people know Willow & Blake for building frank body.

Some know us for Bouf. Or for the work we’ve done repositioning brands like VRG GRL, Betts and DISSH.

But Willow & Blake has been around for 16 years, which means there are a lot of brands lurking in these walls.

Brands we named. Brands we designed. Brands we launched. Brands whose social strategies we built when “social strategy” was barely a job description. Brands we helped find their voice, change their voice, enter new markets and, in a few cases, eventually sell for hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, we thought it was time to open the archives.

Bondi Sands

Before Bondi Sands became one of Australia's great beauty export stories, we helped define how it sounded.

In 2016, Bondi Sands came to us ahead of its expansion into the UK. The job was to articulate a distinctive tone of voice that could export more than tanning products; it needed to export the Australian lifestyle the brand had built itself around.

We developed the tone of voice that helped Bondi Sands speak consistently as it expanded internationally.

Fast-forward a few years and Bondi Sands was being sold in more than 40,000 stores globally, had generated $105.8 million in FY22 sales and was acquired by Japanese beauty group Kao in a deal reported to be worth $450 million.

We can't take credit for all of that. Obviously.

But we can take a little pride in helping it find its voice before it found the world.

Briogeo

Another beauty brand. Another big growth story. Another acquisition.

Founder Nancy Twine brought us in to refine Briogeo's brand strategy, tone of voice as the US haircare company entered its next stage of growth in 2018.

Tackling the task head on, we proudly split hairs to create the tag line; clean care, healthy hair. And lathered their copy in a vibrant tone of voice before it hit their hair-loving followers. This was a big project working directly with Nancy to ensure consistency across all touchpoints from online to in-store.

We built a voice around it that was warm, energetic, thoughtful and full of life, then carried it through brand guidelines, web copy, campaigns and an ongoing social media retainer.

Briogeo went on to become one of the fastest-growing haircare brands in the world, stocked by major beauty retailers including Sephora and MECCA. In 2022, Wella acquired the business as its first portfolio acquisition since becoming an independent company. At the time, Briogeo's sales had exceeded $100 million.

Turns out a good hair day can become a very good business.

WHITEFOX

Here's the deal.

Yes - That was us.

When WHITEFOX was building a very different kind of real estate business, Willow & Blake was creating a very different type of real estate brand; we developed the tagline, tone of voice and social strategy that helped give the brand its unmistakable personality that bucked all the trends of the category. It worked.

Today, WHITEFOX has grown from its original Melbourne office into a privately owned network of 21 locations across Australia, New Zealand and the UAE, transacting around $2.5 billion annually.

Founder Marty Fox also went from selling houses to becoming a permanent judge on The Block.

And that wonderfully blunt, matter-of-fact language remains part of the brand today.

A brand doesn't need to sound like its category. Sometimes the entire opportunity is in sounding nothing like it.

BMW Australia

Not everything we do involves inventing a brand voice from scratch.

Sometimes the challenge is taking one of the world's most recognisable brands and creating at scale without diluting what makes it recognisable in the first place.

For two years, Willow & Blake worked across content, copy and video production for BMW Australia.

The final tally? 2,000+ pieces of content.

Different formats. Different platforms. Different products. One of the world's most carefully managed automotive brands.

This work taught us something we've carried into pretty much every large content engagement since: consistency shouldn't mean sameness.

You can make a lot of things without making a lot of boring things.

Polished Man

Some projects stay with you because of the commercial result.

Others stay with you because of what they're trying to change.

In 2015, we helped launch Polished Man, an initiative that encouraged people to paint one fingernail to start conversations and raise funds to help end violence against children.

Willow & Blake developed the launch campaign concept and execution, helping the initiative find its early audience, generate its first 10,000 followers and grow awareness around what would become a nationally recognised fundraising campaign.

It was an early lesson in something we still believe: attention is only valuable if you know what you want to do with it.

Sometimes it's selling a product.

Sometimes it's changing a conversation.

Vitable

Personalised vitamins could have looked very… vitamin-y.

We didn't want that.

Our work with Vitable spanned packaging, design and social strategy, helping translate a personalised wellness proposition into a consumer brand people actually wanted in their bathrooms, feeds and daily routines.

The company subsequently attracted significant investor backing, raising more than $10 million across multiple funding rounds as it scaled the personalised supplements model.

Good design isn't decoration. Particularly in categories built around trust, efficacy and habit, it's part of the commercial proposition.

Bras N Things

Bras N Things is one of Australia's most recognisable lingerie retailers.

Our work - in collaboration with them for over 2 years - spanned tone of voice, copywriting and social media, helping bring greater personality and consistency to the way the brand communicated with women.

It was also a good reminder that scale doesn't remove the need for distinctiveness.

It makes distinctiveness harder.

The more channels, campaigns, stores, products and people touching a brand, the more important a clear voice becomes.

Otherwise everyone starts writing differently and, eventually, nobody sounds like you.

And that's still only part of it.

Sixteen years is a long time in brand years.

We've watched Instagram arrive, Facebook become uncool, TikTok become a search engine, DTC explode, performance marketing become everyone's favourite child and then - thankfully - brand marketing make its inevitable comeback.

We've worked with founders at the beginning of an idea and established businesses trying to rediscover theirs.

We've created brands from nothing, repositioned brands that had lost their way, developed campaigns designed to make people pay attention and written more words for the internet than is probably medically advisable.

Some of those businesses went on to become category leaders.

Some expanded internationally.

Some raised millions.

Some were acquired for hundreds of millions.

And some simply became much better versions of themselves.

There is a tendency in our industry to talk about branding as the pretty bit. The logo. The campaign. The tone of voice. The packaging.

We don't see it that way. The best brand work creates commercial distinction.

It gives a customer a reason to remember you. A reason to choose you. A reason to pay more for you. A reason to tell someone else about you.

A great brand makes every dollar you spend on growth work harder.

We've spent 16 years proving it.

And there are still plenty more brands hiding in the walls.