DNCO on Vermont: 79% like it, 15% will visit, so they stopped selling escape

Brand work got a bad rap for years. Too much of it was a new logo, a fresh color, and a deck that promised feelings. This week's crop shows something sharper. These teams started with a real behavior problem, then designed to move it. Let me catch you up.

The deep cut

• Fix the behavior, not the logo. DNCO found Vermont was overlooked, not disliked, so it sold gain instead of escape.
• Let the crowd write the brand. Stadtmuseum Berlin asked locals first, then built its wordmark from real Berlin type.
• Access buys work no cold pitch can. andstudio trades a rebrand for a week inside the winery.

The gap between liking you and booking you

Vermont had a flattering problem. Ask Americans about Vermont and 79% call it appealing. Ask if they plan to go, and it drops to 15%. DNCO managing director Luis Mendoza read that fast: "Vermont isn't being rejected, it's being overlooked."

So the fix was not more charm. The obvious play was selling escape, switch off and get away. DNCO went the other way. Escape reminded people of the stress they wanted to flee, and it "didn't do anything new to the brain." They sold gain instead: try skiing, learn butter making, level up. The data backed it, with 56% rating Vermont highly for exploration.

For your team, the lesson is plain. A warm brand survey means nothing if intent stays flat. Find the behavior you want, then design the reason to act now.

When the audience builds the mark

Stadtmuseum Berlin had 4.5 million objects and a city that could not find the door. The blunt feedback, "Stadtmuseum Berlin? Where is that?", kicked off the whole rebrand by Stan Hema.

They ran an open call and let Berliners pick the brand apart. Then they built the wordmark from real street type, pulled from U-Bahn stations, buildings, and the local currywurst stand. The letters never quite match, and that mismatch is the point. Designer André van Rueth said the wordmark stays "directly connected to the reality of our city."

The tradeoff is control. A flexible, shifting mark is harder to police than one tidy logo. But a brand built on dialogue lands as an invitation, not a decree. If your institution feels dusty, ask the people who ignore you why before you touch the typeface.

Turning a nuisance into free airtime

The men's Tour de France pulls a global TV audience above 3.5 billion. The women's race gets around 23 million. Illustrator Erin Aniker and her team closed that gap by hijacking the men's route.

Organizers already pay a crew, the Erasermen, to paint over the penis graffiti scrawled along the road before cameras roll. #WatchTheFemmes turned that cleanup into distribution. Balls became eyeballs. Crude scrawl became an ad for the women's peloton, painted in the minutes before the cyclists and TV cameras arrived.

No new media budget, just a smart read on where the attention already was. When you cannot buy the audience, find the moment your message can ride the one that exists.

Paid in wine, not money

Lithuanian studio andstudio topped the 2025 ADCE Design Firm rankings, then gave its best service away. Its Wine Design Exchange offers a full rebrand for a winery in return for travel, a bed, and good meals. No fee.

It reads naive until you see the math. Creative director Augustinas Paukštė put it plainly: "We know the chances of an Italian winery discovering a branding studio from Lithuania are pretty small." The free work is really an investment in access. A week embedded in the harvest produces a case study, a sticky relationship, and press coverage no cold email earns.

The real find sits underneath: immersion beats briefing documents. A week among the vines surfaces positioning no stakeholder interview will. That holds for a fintech client too, if you can absorb the unpaid time.

The clearest read of the room

The sharpest brand story here is about the industry itself. Victoria Montgomery and Tamira Hamden built Women in Brand after Hamden sat at an awards table of eight women and two men on their phones. "I felt like I was in an episode of Mad Men," she said.

They named the behavior problem and built for it: over 5,000 members, events from Birmingham to Sydney, a platform that finally broke even. The line on the site, "Brand isn't a boys' club anymore," is aspiration, and they say so. The design carries the strategy too. Designer Shauni Lane chose a cheetah, named Beyoncé, because cheetahs form no hierarchies and the females self-govern.

The through line across all five: strong brand work starts with a behavior you want to change, not a look you want to update.

Three questions for your team

• What behavior are we actually trying to move, and can we name the gap in numbers like DNCO's 79% versus 15%?
• Have we asked the people who ignore us why, before we spent a dollar on the redesign?
• Where is the attention already gathered, and can our message ride it instead of buying its own?