Notion’s objective in their 2024 flagship brand awareness campaign was to help explain how its flexibility and new AI tools made it a “second mind” for users, a substrate for work and life. Our challenge was to explain these characteristics while maintaining Notion’s minimalist rigor and beloved house style.

Our first insight: Many of Notion’s existing visuals — created by their resident superstar illustrator Roman Muradov — showed people at work, in full or medium view.

These highlighted work itself, but what if we could push closer and valorize these characters? What if we could show how vital thoughtfulness, play, and experimentation (a.k.a. the stuff going on inside the mind) have become to modern work?

After months of interviews and close collaboration with Ivan Zhao (Notion’s CEO), Rob Giampetro (Notion’s Head of Creative), Katie Chang (Head of Creative Strategy & Operations), Roman, and a whole host of Notion’s core team, we arrived at three new key developments:

“Think it. Make it.” as the new brand tagline for Notion, and a suite of bespoke headlines for OOH placements that highlighted Notion’s new AI features without being loud or on-the-nose about them...

...a new conceptual foundation for Notion’s OOH illustrations that allowed for (and celebrated!) primary colors, showed close-up profiles of people thinking, and stayed away from literal representations of interfaces...

...and an animated anthem that synthesized all these new ideas into a succinct story, to excite current Notion users and delight users-to-be.

The result: Placements in SF, NY, London, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, and Berlin; 460M+ impressions; significant increases in first-time visitors to Notion’s website/search in key markets; and a new palette Notion can play with for years to come.

Credits (BUCK):
Chief Design Officer: Ben Langsfeld
Executive Producer: Kim Stephens
Creative Director: Eric Chang
Producer: Rusty Van Riper
Art Director: Jacob Myrick, Abbie Winters
Head of Strategy: Marla Moore
Lead Strategist: Surabhi Rathi
Strategy: Asia Hunt, Cole Hammack
2D Animation Lead: Vero Gomez
Copywriting: Dave Evans, Brooke Kessler
Design: Codie Chang, Joel Plosz, Grace Park, Jose Flores, Julie Alter, Margaux Saulou, Pierre-Nicolas Riou, Sam Lee, Jamiel Law, Vicky Chong
2D Animation: Dan Cantelm, Diego Abad, Nick Brown, Paola Chen Li, Yinan Liang, Tony Holz, Javier Ibanez
Editor: Peter Brandi
Assistant Editor: Oliver Lin

Can we center Notion as an AI innovator, while staying true to its illustrative roots?