MacBid
Services:
✹ Brand Strategy
✹ Naming Strategy
✹ Brand Identity Design
Gameifying Recommerce
Little did you know, the items you buy and send back to Amazon (and other major retailers) hardly ever make it back to shelves. Products with minor scratches or opened packaging are often cast aside or sent to off to landfills. Enter MacBid. An online auctioneer transforming the world of ecommerce returns. Buying items in bulk from major outlets, MacBid catalogues, restocks, and sells a bit of everything, ranging from refrigerators to headphones to opened boxes of bathroom tile. This platform, with its smorgasbord of offerings, has enjoyed amazing success; however, over the course of its development there was one challenge that became abundantly clear...In a market dictated by bargain prices and one-off purchases, how do you inspire loyalty and keep customers engaged? We at Flyweight came up with a unique strategic approach. To “gameify” the bidding process and create the exhilarating feeling of “winning.” This seemingly simple idea inspired a dramatic, yet tactful evolution of the original brand name and visual identity.
The original brand name “M@C Discounts” (which stood for “merchandise at cost”) created widespread confusion and difficult recall for consumers, inspiring a subtle, but meaningful change to the name “MacBid.” This short, easy-to-spell term (stemming from one the company’s primary web domains) maintains the equity of the original brand, while eliminating the associations with cheap, low quality products triggered by the word “discounts.”
The logo, comprised of three-dimensional letterforms, evokes a playful gaming motif, while creating the shape of an auction tag (a way to pay homage to the original mark).
A simple, pared back application interface.Iconography uses simple, recognizable symbols resembling those of a slot machine.Web and mobile applications use small, sparing hits of color to grab the user’s attention and quickly convey the most important information.An app loading screen mimics the rotating wheels of a classic slot machine.A monochromatic color palette punctuated by bold, bright secondary colors.Rubik Mono, a robust font pairs well with the thick strokes of the brand iconography. Rubik echoes the similar letter forms while providing more variation for text in graphic applications. open source fonts to make for easy application and ensures that all branded assets from web to Google slides maintain the same look and feel.