Dan Ratner established uberbrand in 2011 to address a gap between what organisations wanted to achieve and how they communicate it in the market.
Ratner spoke to Mediaweek about uberbrand’s philosophy, the branding agency’s stand-out pieces of work and resolving ignorance in the industry.
Upon starting the agency, Ratner said he was always fascinated by how people interact. He said: “Having studied industrial design and communications at university, it evolved towards looking at social behaviour and insight.
“Early on, I applied this as a creative working in the new field of multimedia, but found myself asking ‘Why,’ which led me into traditional market research and ultimately to brand strategy,” he said.
Ratner highlighted that the common factor he saw was the disconnect between the strategy developed and what was executed in the market, which led to the start of uberbrand.
Ratner on being a conscious leader and the uberbrand philosophy
In addition to founding branding agency, Ratner is uberbrand’s managing director. On a day-to-day basis, oversees the designing processes, ideating, directing, refining, and interrogating the team and their work.
“More than ten years after founding uberbrand, I am much more conscious of using my experience to see our team (currently 12) grow,” he said.
“I’m enjoying watching them build and grow their careers from my strategy-led philosophy.”
Ratner explained that the agency’s philosophy emphasises aligning and deeply integrating strategic thought and critical insight with execution. “We’ve developed processes to connect strategic thinking to tangible outcomes like creating brand identities, big ideas, advertising campaigns, and communications,” he said.
uberbrand’s performance and its stand-out work
Reflecting on the performance of 2022, Ratner said uberbrand was in line with was in line with expectations, delivering stable and consistent, sustainable growth. He explained that the team sit down at the end of every year to assess performance, lessons, and areas of expertise.
“For example, there’s a real opportunity around building brand systems, which we have focused on this year. I think it’s important that we’re not just designing logos but systems that can help brands build at scale,” he said.
“It’s really important to me that we’re producing stuff that is not only beautiful but also executional and useful,” Ratner added.
Ratner highlighted the agency’s work with fintech MoneyMe to refresh the brand as a highlight. He explained that they worked hard to understand emerging consumer attitudes in this space and to position the brand to meet these attitudes to expand at the scale it wanted to.
“We implemented a new logo featuring the full brand name in bold and capitalised text and a colour palette of bright lime green and dark green, which hadn’t been used in the finance category at that time,” Ratner shared.
“We then established this new identity through a campaign consisting of out-of-home, radio, TV, and owned channels,” he added.
Ratner on resolving ignorance in the industry and the outlook ahead for uberbrand
In April, Ratner penned an opinion piece titled ‘Diversity helps ignorance come out in the (green)wash’. He noted that “diversity is a fundamental answer to resolving ignorance – and by extension, greenwashing – within advertising and the media.”
When looking at why ignorance has been the catalyst for diversity issues, he said: “We need to address the inherent biases that exist within us all, and the best way to counter those biases is by introducing people with different backgrounds and life experiences.”
“The only concern here is that you don’t want to find yourself regressing to a lower average. You want to achieve a higher waterline.”
Ratner noted practical ways the industry can end its ignorance is: “To purposefully construct communication that combats ignorance, not do it unconsciously.”
Regarding the outlook for uberbrand, Ratner said that while growth is an important factor for many agencies, great branding agencies need to balance this with quality thinking and outputs.
“What I have found is that great work drives great relationships, and great relationships drive great work. It’s the circle of agency life.”
Ratner said the agency will continue working on interesting projects and noted: “Much of what we do takes time to emerge and turn up in market.”
“So, it’s not a case of announcing who we win or what we do because really, what we start with is essentially strategy, which is confidential.
“A mere appointment of a branding agency can communicate to a market certain intent. So, this year, our goal is to keep it tight, focus on quality and deliver high performance,” Ratner concluded.
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Top image: Dan Ratner