How a logo designer caught the attention of every brand

Today we’re covering Emily Zugay.

Emily made the media rounds as she is the girl who uploaded some TikToks where she jokingly redesigned some company logos only for those companies to see the redesigns & actually put them as their official logos on their pages.

The Beginning

Emily uploaded part 1 of this series on September 8th, 2021 and since then things have taken off. She’s done two more parts which I’ll get to below and grown over 200K subscribers on TikTok and each video has gained over 10M views. A pure testament to how things can quickly go viral on TikTok but not as well on other platforms.

In Emily’s video, she redesigns the logos of Starbucks, H&R Block and of course Apple. She majored in design so of course she has to apply her degree here to make these logo suggestions. It’s obviously a joke and her deadpan comedic delivery adn the actual logos make this work very well.

Brands taking Notice

Now Emily uploaded this on September 8th obviously not expecting to go viral. No one who goes viral actually thinks that brands will immediately start approaching them about their content. That’s an unrealistic expectation off of just one content piece by any standard.

The crazy part with Emily’s TikTok though is that brands did take notice.

In fact, many brands who weren’t in the TikTok commented on the TikTok asking to be next for a re-design. Brands you love like Fenty Beauty, sports teams and even Amtrak amongst others commented on the first part hoping they would be featured in her content.

For a user that has less than 1M followers on TikTok, that is the literal goal of content creation, get people to see my content. Emily’s combination of deadpan humor, delivery, creativity and just sheer brilliance got her noticed by brands that I’m sure are now wanting her to redesign their logos.

But things get even crazier in Part 2 of this series where she redesigns some more logos, uploaded here on TikTok.

Catching the Eye of the Platform

In this next part, she redesigns Target, TikTok itself, and NASA. While all three redesigns are hilarious, the TikTok one itself started getting more traction because the official TikTok page actually changed it’s logo for a few days to pay homage to Emily’s redesigns.

If you think about it, it’s a win-win for TikTok & for Emily.

• Show support to a user on their platform by changing their logo for a few days

• Drive more traffic to Emily’s page and the platform because people will ask “what’s this?”

• Illustrate a platform’s willingness to lean into their own creators which many platforms don’t do that often.

You’d think the story is over after Part 2, right? TikTok officially changed their logo, that’s the biggest this can go, right? Wrong.

Emily’s 3rd video of logo redesigns would go off-platform and catapult her into one of the most viral things on the internet across platforms.

Merch on the way

In the last (at least for now) and 3rd installment of her series, Emily redesigned Nascar, Tampax, the Washington Post, the Detroit Lions, Ocean Spray, Tinder, and certainly least Adobe.

Here’s where things get fun. Not only did more an more brands see this and comment and reach out asking for logo redesigns but one of those mentioned above actually went above and beyond and actually made merch with her logo on it and then got some customer reactions.

The Detroit Lions football team social media team actually gets the W for this because in record speed, they made shirts with Emily’s logo (which is just a bunch of lines for the Detroit Lines

They not only made merch but also gave it to the players to get their reactions on what they thought about the new idea. My favorite is one of the players saying “I might use this to clean the floors”. Again a win-win for the Detriot Lines here:

• They change their logo on their official page leaning into a fan’s content

• Build virality and impressions by getting the players involved

• Ideally lead to people liking the team which leads to more sales

Takeaways

Emily Zugay isn’t some creative genius who hacked going viral for brands to take notice. Instead she had a creative idea of redesigning some logos and executed. It’s actually kinda funny how many people have great ideas but never execute. If you just do what you say you’re going to do, you’ll go further than most. Her deadpan delivery & hilarious designs caught the eyes of brands and then they commented leading to more views and other brands to see it. More brands should lean in rather than tell the creator exactly what to do.

At the end of the day, good content wins. Content is king…or queen in this case.

Three main takeaways from this are:

• Lean into what a creator is doing. More times than not, you’ll hit your metrics better by leaning in rather than trying the same cookie cutter stuff

• Execution > Ideas - Redesigning logos is not a novel idea, but Emily just made the logo redesigns for fun and then made a TikTok about it. Don’t overthink your content.

• Follow-Thru - Just like basketball, follow-thru is important for a creator. Once you see an audience for a certain type of content, make more of it. Double down on what works. I’m guessing Emily didn’t plan on making like 10+ logo redesigns but after the success of the 1st one, it seemed like a easy way to generate more buzz and reply to commenters.

If you read this far, reply back with your favorite team. Mine is The Phoenix Suns.

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Thank you so much and see you on later tonight with the latest Creator News!