Dentsu’s production agency, Tag, has introduced a new global positioning, “Make it Land,” along with a new visual identity.
The business has been performing well, with Tag Americas on track to grow revenues 11% this year, said Stephen Kiely, who was named CEO of Tag Americas last fall.
That growth, in part, reflects marketers’ increased demand for high-quality content. Dentsu research showed that 89% of CMOs agreed that “It is important for their content to be produced at scale, seamlessly, across multiple channels and territories.” That shift for marketers is why Dentsu acquired the more than 50-year-old Tag just over two years ago, said Kiely. It officially brought the creative content production agency to Canada last year.
But the leadership team wanted new branding now to clarify its position in the market, while introducing a more modern look and feel and signalling to clients, staff and the market that Tag is ready for the future—adding new technology, including AI, to deliver more agile production processes combined with data.
“We needed to clarify [who we are],” said Kiely. “We needed to take a step back. I think Tag does a lot of different things. And sometimes when you do a lot of different things, the core, the essence, gets lost.”
Client needs have changed significantly, he said, with Tag now being used more as an upstream strategic partner while retaining its core expertise of taking a brand’s creative platform and delivering it anywhere along the consumer journey—from a mass campaign to an in-store activation—with the same craft and care.
“Make it land,” came out of conversations with key clients in which Kiely asked what they appreciate most about Tag.
“We are this channel-first company that takes established ideas and then figures out how to make them resonate in today's marketplace across every channel,” he said. “And we do it from creative production all the way to channel activation.”
“‘Make it land’ is literally, ‘Hand [your campaign] over to us, and then we'll figure out how to land the plane and make sure your message resonates and gets out there in the most effective manner.’”
“Our clients are clear about what they need: intelligent production that combines craft, insight, and scale to drive real business outcomes,” added Toby Codrington, global brand president at Tag.
The new brand promise is backed up with a new look and feel. “I think we needed to modernise the way the brand was living in the world,” said Kiely. So much of Tag’s work is shaped by technology, but the old brand felt “a little analogue,” he said. “We wanted to give it more of a tech bent, more modern and a little more vibrant.”
The new identity updates the brand’s main colour with an additional design element that signals the brand's mission. “Historically, Tag used yellow, but we made it a more vibrant, bolder yellow… bring it into today's modern conversation with a little more vibrancy,” said Kiely.
The winding column in the logo also runs through the website. It represents the continuous demand for content that acts as the connective backbone at the centre of the entire modern marketing process.
The new look and brand promise are a statement to the industry, but also for the 2,500 Tag employees across more than 125 markets.
“We're being quite declarative about who we are, what we offer, how we want to operate and how we want to live in the world,” said Kiely. “And we want talent that is attracted to that promise.”
Tag’s new brand debuted this week and will roll out globally this month, accompanied by updated platforms, partner communications, and internal activations to reinforce the Tag purpose: making content land with impact, everywhere.
“This rebrand sets the stage for another 50 years of delivering work that resonates in culture and delivers measurable impact,” said Codrington. "It’s a reflection of our promise always to evolve—so that every idea not only takes off, but lands exactly where it needs to.”
