Brand Bible

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BRAND BIBLE240

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how To Brand

a paper producT



It’s all about “the brand promise.” Every brand

communicates to the public what it promises to

deliver on. This is done through marketing, commu-

nications, and design, and all of that adds up to

how the brand presents itself and its products. The

public then evaluates that brand on whether or not

it’s keeping that promise. Does the brand messaging

ring true? Is it resonating? Is the company acting

the way it told you it will? People develop an anity

for a brand because they believe in the promise the

company makes. If the brand keeps, and even over-

delivers on that, then the anity continues to grow.

And that’s how someone begins to feel passionate

about that brand.



Christine Mau

Kimberly-Clark

21

Giving Kleenex new

relevance to young and

old consumers alike

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



I came to Kimberly-Clark because of my anity for

the brand. To me, the Kleenex boxes were these little

pieces of art that could go into everybody’s home.

This is a really powerful idea. We’re not talking

about one piece of art that goes into one home—

we’re talking about something that becomes part of

the everyday landscape, because it’s in millions of

homes and other settings. At Kleenex, I got to work

on the branding and graphic design, and I also got to

focus on the print, pattern, and style I was passion-

ate about. I liked the opportunity to leverage both of

these, to dene the interplay of the print and pattern

with the brand’s positioning.





In 2009, Massimo Vignelli said that if you can design

one thing, then you can design everything. At that

time, Kimberly-Clark realized that a successful

strategy for the company needed to be a brand-

centric one, so our leadership dedicated the top-level

talent to one particular brand. In this approach, each

person evaluates and creates a design strategy for

that brand, no matter what the channel or medium is.

I’m the Brand Design Director of Family Care Brands.

My scope of design encompasses everything from

product development all the way through to oversee-

ing television production.





Early on, the Kleenex brand had a strong propensity

to use design to create an anity with its consum-

ers. In 1967, Kleenex came out with the upright

cube box—what consumers call “the cube.” That

box featured the hippest, trendiest, grooviest

graphics. Then the business went back to the

plain pattern—what we call “the tortoise shell,

ame stitch pattern”—something that was more

expected and traditional. Looking at the entire

tissue category after a few years, Kleenex real-

ized that it was at and stagnant. I kept asking,

“What’s wrong?” It turns out that Generation

Y was not purchasing facial tissues as previous

generations had.

So I started interviewing every twenty-year-old

I could nd—at the airport, at family reunions,

wherever I was. I would ask them about Kleenex,

and they would tell me these stories about the

fact that when they were kids, it was a big deal to

choose which Kleenex box to buy. People would

light up as they were reminiscing about this.



Two packages for

Kleenex Boutique

Tissues, 1970s



Contemporary

Kleenex packaging

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