You can almost see Jonathan Wegner and Josh Buesseler trying to elbow past each other to answer the question first. They're like middle-school students at a spelling bee, each 100-percent confident they have the correct answer and they're just bursting to drop their knowledge. In the end, it's Wegner, the Vice President of Brand at Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who speaks first, but he immediately deflects to Buesseler. It's almost as if they've rehearsed this.
"If Josh and I don't agree on this," Wegner says with a laugh, "we're going to have a fistfight."
The question is relatively simple: What comes first, product or brand?
"Brand always precedes product," says Buesseler as Wegner nods his head and grins in agreement. "It's is a top-down hierarchy. Product is the ultimate expression of brand. It's not your logo or your letterhead. If all the wording is scratched off your product do you still know what brand that represents? If you just start with product it doesn't produce enough guidelines, enough direction, enough of a sustainable way forward. Brand must always come first."
MAKING THE BRAND SHINE THROUGH
Buesseler, a Seattle-based industrial designer and product consultant and Wegner used the brand-first philosophy as the foundation of more than two years of work in a thorough reconfiguration of the brand position. In mid-April, the fruits of their labor were fully revealed to the public as SOG began selling complete redesigns of three of their most popular assisted-opening knives: Flash AT, Aegis AT and Trident AT. The new knives reflect a new, forward-thinking design direction for SOG, a 34-year-old company that has undergone a number of significant changes in focus and mission in recent years.
Wegner, Buesseler and a host of in-house SOG engineers, designers and product managers decided to start with those three knives for a reason: They were each SOG mainstays for more than a decade, exceedingly popular in the three distinct subsets of end-users the company had identified as its core target audiences. Flash for everyday carry, Aegis for outdoor enthusiasts and Trident for the professional, or uniformed, user.
"One of the primary goals was to develop a strong visual brand language that carries into everything that comes next," says Buesseler. "We're creating a new direction – a brand legacy. We did that by creating a visual signature for each set of end-users so you can pick up a knife and know exactly by the look and feel who that knife is designed for and what it's designed for."
Achieving that goal was made easier by consensus within the entire SOG team to utilize higher end materials and technologies in new products to support a newly established brand ambition of increased quality and workmanship. The three new introductions, for instance, all use cryogenically treated D2 steel and SOG's incredibly strong XR locking mechanism as the foundation of the assisted-open version of each knife.
"With Flash, Aegis and Trident we have deliberately moved away from making lower-end products that compete on price alone," says Wegner. "It was distracting us. I don't think we were proud of those kinds of products, certainly not in the way we are of the designs coming out of our refreshed product strategy. These three new knives are the first to break rank from the old ways. They're technical. They’re considered. They use better materials. They were made with love and care and we studied user insights to steer the direction, rather than just trying to make something to fill a gap on the shelf."
Aegis AT is one the complete redesigns that went through SOG’s Study, Observe, Understand, Apply, Repeat design process to deliver a more focused and user-insights led expression of the brand.
LOOKING FORWARD
SOG's refocus is already garnering attention. After the industry-only SHOT Show was held in January in Las Vegas, Everyday Carry.com wrote "This year we're seeing SOG really redefine itself with a new brand direction that's leaner, simpler, and user-focused." KnifeNews said "These knives represent the company’s drive to take a more nuanced, user-driven approach going forward."
Wegner and Buesseler are pleased to know their efforts are being recognized, but each admit there's plenty more work to do to firmly ensconce SOG in the brand position they envision.
"I'm quite proud to show these products off," says Buesseler, who has extensive experience in design work in the outdoor industry. "We’re probably pushing the integration of design and brand as far as I’ve ever taken it. But we're not done. Not even close."
At that, Wegner grins again. But this time he has one more thing to say.
"We've been incredibly relentless in our approach to this," Wegner says. "That relentlessness and accountability is the core of everything we've been doing. We have been through the wringer to get here, but from here, well, we have to continue to challenge and push."
