A Debrief of Briefs | Legacy Lessons From Global Icons
- Aug 5
- 7 min read
Hi hi!
Another month, another topic we can go on and on about! Now that FIFA is over (and the conspiracy theories are only just beginning), we’ve been back digging into brands and scanning trivia and marketing insights you’ve probably never heard of before or have long forgotten.
You know the drill—we spend some quality time, diving deep into the crux of global advertising, take a quick trivia break along the way, maybe play a little quiz, and take a look back at GAM’s Best of the Month.
Easy, let’s go?
Today, we take a look back at how iconic brands started off. You would be surprised to hear the stories and ideas some of the contemporary legacy brands actually began with—some began with unexpected encounters, some with simple accidental discoveries, and some just had sheer belief in what they stood for.
1. IKEA (Circa 1954)
The Realisation: It has to fit inside the customer’s car.
We all know IKEA popularised flat-pack furniture unlike anyone had done before—but there’s more to it. All it took was a happy accident and quick wit to recognise the brilliance they had been sleeping on.
IKEA lore has it that designer Gillis Lundgren—IKEA’s fourth employee (literally)—was just trying to fit a table into his car after a photoshoot. Without thinking much of it, he unscrewed the legs and put the pieces inside.
This was when a slight electric idea buzzed in the mind of Founder Ingvar Kamprad.
It wasn’t just a packing trick. It could be an entirely new business model.
Do you know what came after?
IKEA’s sui generis design philosophy that the brand has religiously lived by since:
Democratic Design, with a core that focuses on design, form, function, low price, sustainability and quality. IKEA stopped designing furniture for them to merely look good in homes, but rather started to focus, as well, on the ease of manufacture, transport, warehousing, and carrying home.
IKEA’s philosophy to “create a better everyday life for the many people” along with the Democratic Design really paved the way for revolutionary living in surprisingly the simplest of ways!
2. Coca-Cola (1915)
The Brief: A bottle so distinct it could be recognised by touch in the dark—or when lying broken on the ground.
A clear brief is every designer’s bravest dream. Lucky for Earl R. Dean, Coca-Cola knew exactly what they wanted.
So, Coca-Cola started selling in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia—first in pharmacies as a medicinal remedy for headaches and shortly after, as a soda fountain drink. It was already popular, so much so the competitors had already started emerging in conspicuous numbers, with names that were even more conspicuous!
Koka-Nola. Ma Coca-Co. Toka-Cola. Koke.
This is not a joke! Back in the day, soda bottles were simple straight-sides bottles, all similar in look and feel, and these knock-off brands did not do much to make themselves look any different from the real Coca-Cola. It was ambiguous enough to fool anyone.
Long story short, this was exactly when Coca-Cola’s now iconic and brilliantly specific brief for the bottle design came to life. It reached the Root Glass Company, and Earl Dean left for a nearby library for his research.
This is where it gets interesting.
The design was an absolute mistake. A very silly one at that. And a genius one too. What Dean was looking for was an illustration of a coca leaf, one of the key ingredients of the soft drink. What he ended up studying and basing his entire design on was the cocoa pod instead, something that essentially has nothing at all to do with the brand!
It wasn’t all for naught—the flowing curves and distinctive silhouette was patented in 1915, and in 1999, the Coca-Cola bottle was named among the greatest package designs of the century.
A mistaken design and a prototype that was created in just 22 hours became history. Salvador Dali painted it in Poetry in America, Andy Warhol used it as a synonym of mass culture, Volkswagen celebrated the shape of its Beetle with the bottle as a medium.
As Coca-Cola put it all those years ago,
"We are not building Coca-Cola alone for today. We are building Coca-Cola forever, and it is our hope that Coca-Cola will remain the National drink to the end of time."
3. Nike (1971)
The Dream: A billion dollar project on a $35 budget.
If you trace back iconic brands to their nascent stage, you will find that many a time, they do not have a grand vision, they might even just have been trying to survive against the market or competitors. Similar was the case with Nike, once known as Blue Ribbon Sports.
As BRS, the brand was primarily importing Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan for the first seven years since its founding in 1964. Co-founder Phil Knight wanted to change that for the better and launch his own brand of shoes, all he needed was a solid rebranding.
Fast forward to 1971, during his time at Portland State University as a professor, Knight—super low on budget—hired a graphic design student at the university, Carolyn Davidson, at a wage of $2 per hour. BRS couldn’t yet afford a big design agency.
The design brief was simple:
It had to represent motion.
After 17 hours and $35 earned, Davidson presented the now iconic “Swoosh” logo, inspired by the wing of the Greek goddess of victory, Nike herself.
To this, Knight’s initial response was, quote unquote,
"I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me."
Well, as of 2025, Nike is worth an astounding $90 billion!
Nike’s rebranding is a classic reminder that sometimes the smallest briefs create the biggest brands.
4. LEGO (1958)
The Rule: Every old brick must fit every new one.
This may be the most enduring AND the most endearing origin story.
Let’s go back to 1954. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of LEGO’s founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, was on his way on the North Sea ferry to visit a toy fair in England. There, he spoke with a purchasing agent who complained of the toy industry lacking a comprehensive “idea and system”.
This struck Godtfred. Indeed, why are toys treated as isolated, single-use items rather than parts of a grand, cohesive concept?
…And Godtfred really meant business. After spending a long time mulling over the fateful encounter and working towards his vision, a year later in 1955, LEGO officially launched its System of Play—the brand’s defining feature that continues to distinguish it from any competitor at all whatsoever. The world started to recognise LEGO.
System of Play ensures that any LEGO brick made today can connect and lock perfectly with any corresponding brick made decades ago—or after. Such is the precision of the dimensional and geometrical tolerances of each piece. In 1995, the LEGO brick was patented, marking an unparalleled legacy that was just beginning to breathe.
The universe is limitless. So is LEGO.
The System of Play wasn’t just an engineering decision, it was one that was deeply and emotionally felt with a purpose—and today, stands as arguably one of the greatest product ecosystems ever built.
In Godtfred’s words,
"Our idea has been to create a toy that has value for life—a toy which appeals to the child's imagination and develops the creative urge and joy of creation that are the driving force in every human being."
5. Volkswagen Beetle (1959)
The Legacy: People's car.
The brief that launched one of advertising’s greatest campaigns wasn’t about changing the product—it was about changing the people’s perception of it.
Before we begin, here’s an interesting trivia.
Did you know that the Beetle was Adolf Hitler’s idea? It was manufactured in Nazi Germany when Hitler proposed the idea to mass-produce a car which everyone could buy. The “people’s car”, he called it.
Naturally, it was so hard to advertise the Beetle in post-war America. To top it off, the American families were finally growing, which led to an inflated desire for enormous cars with chrome, fins and horsepower. Simply put, the bigger the car the higher the status. There was much to do apart from rebranding the entire model and strip it off its origin.
The small, oddly-shaped, inexpensive German Volkswagen Beetle was impossible to sell.
Here’s where it starts to get fun. In 1959, copywriter Julian Koenig and art director Helmut Krone at DDB did something radical. Instead of pretending the Beetle was big and glamorous and fit all luxury standards, they embraced its size and peculiarities.
Thus came to life Think Small—a campaign that would later be named the best advertising campaign of the 20th century by Advertising Age in 1999.
The campaign turned every perceived weakness into a strength.
・Small became practical.
・Simple became intelligent.
・Honesty became persuasive.
The brief was simple: Don’t hide the fact that it’s small.
By refusing to hide behind deceptive camera angles or farfetched claims, VW gained immediate credibility with the masses. Not only was it a great campaign, it went on to spark the creative revolution at Madison Avenue, a renowned 1960s movement led by advertising veterans like Bill Bernach, David Ogilvy and Phyllis Robinson—fighting to replace dry, hard-sell pitches with minimal design, clever copy, and honest and light-heartedly self-deprecating humour.
Looking back, what is striking isn’t how successful these brands have become, it is how deceptively simply their founding briefs were.
A bottle that can be recognised in the dark, a logo on a budget, furniture that should fit in a car, a small car not pretending to be big, a toy with pieces that always fit—the world’s most valuable brands weren’t built on pages of complicated and tedious instructions, they were built on remarkably clear ones.
It makes us think, perhaps sometimes sticking to the brief isn’t so bad and limiting after all.
Alright, ready for a quick quiz?
Which is the most used colour in logos universally?
It’s BLUE.
About 40% of top corporate and Fortune 500 company logos incorporate the colour blue! It isn’t a coincidence. The colour blue has a physically calming effect and actually helps lower stress levels and pulse rate. Our ancestral preferences aren’t lost on us either—humans naturally link the colour blue to trust and safety. It was after all, aeons ago, the indicator of fresh water and good weather!
Before we go, here’s a quick recap of GAM’s best of the month (some latest releases from brands and some from our timeless archives)…
Tap on the images to view the ads
Alright then, that will do it for this month.
You can find us on the links listed below. If not here, we will be at the local park, sweating it at badminton. PS.: We always have an extra so feel free to challenge us if you see us ;)
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See you in September!