Notion: Think It. Make It.

20232024

As a product and as a company, Notion does...a lot. Its aesthetic is beloved, its devotees are legion. For its 2024 flagship brand awareness campaign, our challenge was to help explain the benefits of a tool that aims to be as useful and flexible as paper — while maintaining Notion’s minimalist rigor.

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 — literal and figurative — Notion can play with for years to come.

Credits

BUCK

Chief Design Officer

Ben Langsfeld

Executive Producer

Kim Stephens

Associate Creative Director

Eric Chang

Producer

Rusty Van Riper

Art Director

Jacob Myrick

Abbie Winters

Brand Strategy Director

Marla Moore

Brand Strategist

Surabhi Rathi

Asia Hunt

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

Vicky Chong

2D Animation

Dan Cantelm

Diego Abad

Jamiel Law

Nick Brown

Paola Chen Li

Yinan Liang

Tony Holz

Javier Ibanez

Editor

Peter Brandi

Assistant Editor

Oliver Lin

Part and Sum

Director of Strategy

Jim Babb

Principal, Strategy

Dani Hoyler

Principal, Growth Marketing

Elliott Hasiuk

Senior Strategy Consultant

Evan Petto

Senior Growth Marketer

Monish Selvamuthu

Growth Team Operations Lead

Samantha Westley

Content Coordinator

Dena Crowley