Kitchen Collaborative Launches Make-up Designory (MUD) Repositioning

Long time client Make-up Designory (MUD) needed to re-evaluate their corporate brand, which over time has grown to encompass a wide range of educational and product offerings since we first built their brand in 2007. MUD is now an industry leader through their tailored offering of education and product, depending on the geographical location, business type, and student needs – and their new brand needed to reflect all of their unique characteristics. After launching their new Campus site and Portraits editorial campaign last year, we were ready to take a deeper dive into developing their overall corporate brand through a mini brand platform and new landing page.

Over the years, MUD has transitioned from a school and supporting product line to a much more robust offering through its expansion into international markets and partnerships with complimentary schools. After researching key competitors, we learned that no other brands offer a wide global reach, sophistication of eduction, and robust kits specifically designed for the classroom. We identified that the growing MUD global system was a huge competitive advantage. 

To capitalize MUD’s points of difference, we proposed an emphasis on B2B marketing and repositioning the MUD brand overall as a global “beauty business partner,” to help MUD create new business opportunities with future partners, while supporting existing partners with marketing that fosters brand loyalty. We created 2 brand positionings with brand stories, taglines, and brand clarity style boards that embodied the new brand direction with unique approaches.

Another challenge in MUD’s new positioning was to clearly communicate that Make-up Designory was the clear parent brand that included sub brands underneath it’s umbrella with unique offerings. We proposed that MUD call its US schools that is owns and operates MUD Campuses, keep their international schools named MUD Studios, and call institutes that offer MUD certified courses MUD Extensions. We created a brand family identity and messaging to make the system very clear, including the ability to transfer credits between the schools in the MUD system.

Finally, we took the foundation of our brand story and developed further messaging and our brand clarity style boards informed the design for a website landing page for the corporate MUD brand, which acts as a portal for the user to learn about and explore the MUD system. The final landing page can be seen here!