Brand Strategy // Brand Identity // Brand Design Systems // Advertising

PENN GAMING ASTUTELY CALLED ON US TO REIMAGINE the stolid identities of several of its properties while they were shuttered for Covid. The nature of their business was already changing rapidly pre-Covid into online play. What’s more, Penn had recently acquired Barstool Sports to headline the sports betting app Penn was developing. They needed brands ready for online marketing.

Our window to make this happen was extremely tight. Our approach started the same on each brand. We had to get the Penn marketing team comfortable with codes and cues necessary to retain their loyalists while attracting an entirely new audience of digitally-savvy young men and women.

We refined key equities that kept intact lit signage. We added an easy-to-replicate lexicon to each brand so in-house teams could administer quickly and easily. For each brand, we created visual interest with tools that applied in the simplest ways to make an overall big impact on the ground. Because of the shutdown, we had to rely on stock imagery which we manipulated to make more ownable. For each brand, we delivered a skein of templates, a cache of language and imagery, as well as personal instruction to the in-house team.

For mychoice — their industry-leading loyalty program — we made a simple revision to encase the logotype in a rounded-corner square akin to an app tile to denote the always-on, digital nature of the program. We also helped the in-house team design the mychoice app.

As head of design // Doner // Detroit // 2019-2021