In 2007, Emily Heyward, JB Osborne, and Simon Endres began their own entrepreneurial journey and left their corporate jobs to start a brand design agency called Red Antler. They not only believed in the power of branding to drive growth and scale, but they also wanted to work exclusively with startups. Since then, Red Antler has become an industry powerhouse designing and launching brand identities for companies, like Casper and Brandless, into the world. We spoke with Emily, Red Antler’s Chief Brand Officer, to learn more about why they love collaborating with founders, what entrepreneurs can expect from partnering with them, and more.
Plus: Read Emily’s guest post about how branding drives success for early-stage companies.
Why Emily and her co-founders started Red Antler:
“We saw that there was an incredible opportunity to add value by thinking about brand from the very start. We started Red Antler with the vision, from day one, that brand could be a driver of business growth and that the earlier you think about brand, the better positioned you are to launch, compete, and scale.
“Red Antler was like our 6th co-founder. They helped us name & do the visual identity for Casper early on and have always been useful since as thought partners.” Philip Krim, NYC, Co-founder & CEO, Casper
On collaborating with entrepreneurs:
“My favorite thing about our clients is their passion. These are people who are starting companies because they believe that this company needs to be in the world and that it’s going to add value to people’s lives. We work with people who see a problem that they cannot help but devote their life to solving. To me, that energy is so infectious, and it’s what makes our jobs so rewarding. We’re able to put our creative power behind pursuits that are worthwhile.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Interview with Red Antler’s Chief Brand Officer Emily Heyward
Yvonne Leow: Let’s talk about your path to design. Could tell us a bit about your backstory?
Emily Heyward: I started my career in advertising right out of college as an account planner at a big, global agency, working on massive global brands like General Mills, Procter & Gamble and De Beers. While I learned an incredible amount and met some of the smartest, most creative people I know, I ultimately grew frustrated with solving the wrong problems. We were responsible for coming up with communications about a business, but we weren’t able to affect the business itself in any meaningful way.
With Red Antler, my co-founders and I wanted to make sure that we were actually helping to create things that the world needs, not just trying to come up with new stories about old, broken stuff.
Yvonne Leow: Right, and what inspired the creation of Red Antler?
Emily Heyward: My co-founder JB and I were leading the New York office for a New Zealand ad agency that was looking to expand to the States. The startup scene in New York was just getting going, and because we were small, we started getting introduced to other small teams of entrepreneurs. We’d sit down with these founders, and what we realized is the last thing they should be thinking about at that stage was big ad campaigns.
What they did need was the rigor around how to think about target audience, core insights, and the problem they were solving for the consumer. And then, how can that thinking influence the way they were communicating, and all the ways people experience their offering.
We were able to have these strategic brand-led conversations with people before their businesses even launched. We saw that there was an incredible opportunity to add value by thinking about brand from the very start. We started Red Antler with the vision, from day one, that brand could be a driver of business growth and that the earlier you think about brand, the better positioned you are to launch, compete, and scale.
Yvonne Leow: How did you and JB decide on Red Antler’s brand and what you agency stands for?
Emily Heyward: We knew we wanted to work with startups, and because of that, we saw our core equity as growth. We believed that with brand as the engine, we could help propel founders to grow faster.
I was browsing Wikipedia, which is where I often go for naming inspiration, and somehow I dug up the fact that antlers have the fastest growing cells in the animal kingdom. We loved the symbolism, and we brought in “red” to create more visual memorability. It also turns out that antlers are slightly red when they’re in their growing stage.
Yvonne Leow: From your perspective, what’s the difference working with startups versus some of the major corporations you were collaborating with before early on?
Emily Heyward: I wouldn’t trade working with startups for anything. It’s my favorite thing about going to work every day. One key difference is that when we’re working with startups, the decision makers are in the room throughout the entire process. We’re not making a bunch of choices with a small working team and then showing it to the CEO at the end of a six-month process and hoping that he or she likes it.
They are helping craft the identity at every single stage, so they’re much more invested in the end result and it’s reflective of their vision. This approach enables everyone to move much faster and it leads to a much less watered down, less compromised result.
Also, founders by nature are very risk tolerant. They’re doing something that’s pretty crazy in leaving behind steady corporate jobs to start a company. Because of that, they’re also willing to take risks creatively. They understand that the most dangerous thing we could do is play it too safe. So we’re not consumer testing our creative. We’re not putting three logos in front of a focus group and asking them which ones they like the best. It’s really about gut, and taking a leap, and trying to do something that hasn’t been done before.
Then lastly, my favorite thing about our clients is their passion. These are people who are starting companies because they believe that this company needs to be in the world and that it’s going to add value to people’s lives. We work with people who see a problem that they cannot help but devote their life to solving. To me, that energy is so infectious, and it’s what makes our jobs so rewarding. We’re able to put our creative power behind pursuits that are worthwhile.
Yvonne Leow: Definitely. Can you walk me through a branding project between you and a startup client and what made it successful?
Emily Heyward: There are so many I could point to, but let’s look at Keeps, which was launched by Thirty Madison, a company that is tackling different chronic health conditions with specific, direct-to-consumer solutions. We started with Keeps, which offers solutions for men’s hair loss. We then launched a migraine brand this fall called Cove, and there’s more to come.
Keeps addresses men who are at risk of losing their hair, and gives them access to solutions that are personalized to them and that truly do work. What made the collaboration so successful is that the founders really believed in the importance of brand from day one. They understood that they were tackling a category that was pretty stigmatized, incredibly stale, the opposite of aspirational. We started by talking to our target consumer, younger guys who started to notice hair loss but hadn’t yet taken action. We soon realized that a lot of men have a very passive approach to their own self-care. Even though they saw symptoms of hair loss, they were waiting until it became a real problem before doing anything about it. However, the secret to preventing hair loss is that you can’t actually grow hair back. You can only keep the hair you have. Men end up screwing themselves over because if they wait until they’re bald, it’s too late. We built a whole brand identity around the strategy that taking action is a sign of strength and not a sign of weakness. Our strategic idea was for the man of action, and turning it into a point of pride.
We were able to build a badge brand in a space that had traditionally been associated with embarrassment, shame, and a lot of like snake oil too. It was a category rife with misinformation and fear tactics, and we built Keeps to break it down for people and make it really easy to do something.
Yvonne Leow: Absolutely, and what can entrepreneurs expect when they collaborate with Red Antler?
Emily Heyward: Our process always starts with strategy and aligning on a vision before we start to create anything. Making sure that we’re really clear on the idea we want to own and the emotional territory the brand will occupy.
As I mentioned before, the founders are heavily involved. We make sure that every step of the way, we’re checking in together to agree about the direction that we’re taking. Of course, within that, we’re going to push them. The reason to work with an outside partner like us is that we’re always going to take you outside your comfort zone in a way that you could never do internally.
The first major milestone is sharing a first pass at brand identity. That includes things that people traditionally think of when they think of brand, like logo, fonts, color palettes. It also includes messaging, which is a really important, but often overlooked part of a brand identity. With startups especially, the functional language that explains how the business works is critical. In many cases, we’re introducing a brand new business model to the world and we need to do so in a way that’s both simple and compelling.
Yvonne Leow: Definitely, and what is your ideal client-Red Antler relationship?
Emily Heyward: We want to work with founders who have an incredibly strong belief in what they’re doing and why, and then also believe in the power of brand to help them get there. We want our clients to push us. Our clients are brilliant and they understand their business better than we ever could, but we want them to be seeking a push from us as well.
That kind of healthy debate needs to be part of the relationship, and the understanding that we each come to the table with our expertise, and that we’re going to be better together than we would be apart.
Yvonne Leow: What’s the most common mistake you see founders making when it comes to branding?
Emily Heyward: Half of our business is pre-launch, so they haven’t had the opportunity to make mistakes. But a common mistake is thinking that a brand is something where you can check a box and then it’s done. It’s like, “Oh I have my name, I have my logo, I have a brand.” That, to me, is a very shallow, granular way to look at branding. You really need to think about how a brand influences your internal organization, and then the entire customer experience.
That means you need to continue to evolve your brand toolkit, while staying true to the vision and the purpose. These days, a brand needs to appear so many places. Thinking that you’re going to show up in the exact same way in all those channels is a big mistake, because that’s not what consumers are expecting and that’s not what’s going to continue to surprise them and engage them
Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about your creative process? How do you and Red Antler stay up to date with ideas that are relevant to new companies?
Emily Heyward: To me, all the work that we do starts with human truths. It’s less about being up on design trends and more being up on, “What makes people tick? What are they looking for? What are they missing? How are they shopping? What kind of solutions are appealing to them.” I spend a lot of time reading novels just to connect with the human spirit and not be stuck in our little business bubble.
New York City is a great place to live if you want to stay connected to human beings. You leave the house and you’re in the thick of it, up against humanity in all its glory. So I also love just walking around the city. My best ideas come to me when I’m not trying to think of them.
Yvonne Leow: And last question: how would you describe like Red Antler’s rate and fee structure, particularly for early-stage companies?
Emily Heyward: When we work with a company, there can be as many as 18 or 20 people from our team touching their business across different areas of expertise. That leads to a different fee structure than working with an individual, but it also means you have experts in copywriting, experts in industrial design, experts in building best-in-class digital experiences, who are all helping bring together a cohesive brand experience. I think that’s essential for a business that wants to launch in a differentiated way.
If we’re really excited about a business and a team, we’ll try to figure out what we can do to work with their budget and how we can be flexible. While we’re probably not the cheapest option, we’re willing to get creative to figure out a scenario that works for both parties. Sometimes a conversation involving equity is part of that.
Founder recommendations
“Red Antler was like our 6th co-founder. They helped us name & do the visual identity for Casper early on and have always been useful since as thought partners.” – Philip Krim, Co-founder & CEO, Casper
“Red Antler’s offering is robust and multidisciplinary — for us that was a big factor in choosing to partner with them both prior to launch and for ongoing work/other projects even a few years post-launch. Their strategic approach to branding helped our team bring our vision to life as a brand prior to launch, and seeing our UX/UI experience / brand voice as 2 key elements of our brand that set us apart in our category really allowed us to put our best foot forward for the initial launch. But I think what makes them really unique is the strategic insights they bring to continue to help push the envelope for brands and the brand strategy/storytelling strength they’re also equipped to help with post-launch. Most recently, we worked with their brand strategy team to assess the work we did for the initial branding and understand how our brand voice has and could continue to evolve now that we had a few years of data and customer feedback. The result that came out of it reinforced to us the expertise they have in their team to help our company at our many stages of growth from conception to well beyond. Truly think they’re best in class and have sustained that competitive advantage for many years.” – A co-founder & co-CEO in NYC
“We’ve worked with Red Antler on multiple branding projects and I can confidently say that their work is second to none when it comes to creating and building a brand’s story and identity. Their team excels several areas — from brand strategy to industrial design to innovative ad campaigns — and I trust them to turn an idea into a memorable experience that achieves its goals. They were essential in helping us bring Keeps and Cove to life and continue to be invaluable partners as we scale our company and introduce new, unique brands to the healthcare market.” – Demetri Karagas, NYC, Co-founder, Thirty Madison
“We used red Antler for everything from renaming to branding, industrial design, digital experience/web design, art direction, and beyond. As a founder, it was an enormous help (and time saver) for me to have all of those services under one roof and aligned under one strategic brand direction.
For example, our custom “topper” lids–the industrial design team created the form factor (stacked paperboard fitted with silicone seal). The graphic design lead created a signature artwork system that fit with the overall branding language. The brand strategist crafted the “scent poem” copy embossed in gold, and front-end web designer incorporated the scent poems into the web design. Designers and strategists were working in tandem to understand the full customer experience. Will the finished toppers be recognizable on instagram? Will customers read the poems as they create their unboxing videos?
All of these discussions and ideations happen at Red Antler before the client even gets in the room. Branding is a relationship with your customer, and Red Antler’s unique multi-disciplinary approach means they understand all of those different touchpoints. They can collaborate in a much more meaningful way to understand how the brand and product will live and exist in the real world, not just in one siloed area.” – Abigail Cook Stone, NYC, Founder and CEO, Otherland
“We’ve worked with Red Antler on all our healthcare brand launches and I couldn’t imagine a better partner. They’ve been instrumental in helping us craft our brand narratives and strategy, visual identity, packaging, as well as UX+UI design. They’re not only incredibly talented at bringing a brand to life, but they consistently go above and beyond by thinking through the end-to-end user experience. It’s that dedication to detail that helps us launch brands that don’t just look good, but also create a lasting impression, transforming first-time site visitors into long-time customers.” – Steve Gutentag, NYC, Co-founder, Thirty Madison