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One year after launching creative division SmithGeigerFathom, Michael Vamosy and team are rebranding the agency to Vivid Zero. The team also is working to more closely align the division with the rest of SmithGeiger in terms of design and function.
“I realized, in just one year, we’ve built a nimble, skillful collective, using the power of design, strategic thinking, and storytelling to deliver cutting-edge creative,” said Vamosy, co-founder and chief creative officer of Vivid Zero. “We’ve taken our client’s projects from zero, the starting point of all creativity - the blank slate, to wildly vivid. And in doing so, we’ve created and produced some of the most exciting work of my career.”
As it evolved, the agency adopted an approach of “before us, there was nothing” by tearing down old practices and starting over with data-driven creative solutions as part of its partnership with research and analytics firm SmithGeiger.
In July, the SmithGeiger Group expanded to include a new division, AccelerateSG, which helps brands accelerate growth. While Vamosy and his creative team were designing the new unit’s brand image and contemplating how it fit into the SmithGeiger Group equation, the idea of reshaping his own team arose. The thought process ultimately led to unifying the entire group of SmithGeiger, which includes Elevate, Accelerate and now Vivid Zero, into one cohesive, strategic and well-branded company.
“We looked at where we started and where we’re going,” said Vamosy. “We’re now more closely aligned with SmithGeiger, using data as the foundation of our creative.”
The rebrand includes Vivid Zero’s logo, which is intentionally compatible with and reflective of SmithGeiger’s logo, and Vivid Zero’s website.
Vamosy and Vivid Zero redesigned SmithGeiger’s logo, playing on both the S and the G in the company’s name, and then realized that same graphic design could apply to its own look. Vivid Zero’s logo is literally a zero, but the slash through the middle also calls to the “V” in Vivid Zero and the agency’s signature color of hot pink signals its boldness and creativity.
In the year the division has existed, it has worked for such clients as ABC News, Black News Channel, Headspace, NBCUniversal and Showtime Pay-Per-View Boxing.
In one of its most recent campaigns, Vivid Zero collaborated with Showtime PPV Boxing and social-media star Jake Paul to create a spot in which Paul and Tyler Woodley, who could not be filmed in person due to COVID, fight each other in a holographic boxing simulator ahead of the event.
“There’s a beauty to boxing and we were able to overextend that and over exaggerate it in a digital space,” Vamosy said. “We wanted the spot to feel like commercial quality versus promo quality—we wanted to raise the level of execution. We wanted to push the visual effects.
The agency also has created an entire branding package for Black News Channel, now known as BNC.
“For an agency that started a year ago with two projects, to be able to scale up to do a 70-person shoot and compete on the highest level—that’s a way for us to re-announce that we’re here,” Vamosy said. “We are here and we are going big.”