Arielle Walrath & Sean Wilkinson Of Might & Main: Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t be afraid to change — looking timeless doesn’t mean that you’re always the same. Being flexible and adaptable over time is a hallmark of successful brands, and we work closely with a lot of great clients to help them grow and evolve their brands over the years.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Arielle Walrath & Sean Wilkinson.
Arielle Walrath and Sean Wilkinson are co-founders of Might & Main, a boutique brand design firm located in Portland, Maine. Might & Main specializes in the hospitality and food & beverage industries, and has garnered national attention for excellence in execution and attention to detail and craft. Might & Main has created visual identities for nearly 100 restaurants and hotels, partnering with global brands, regional hospitality groups, and independent operators, leading the company to receive numerous awards and recognitions for their work in the hospitality industry. Might & Main’s mission is to find a brand’s voice and make it tangible — to create a sense of realness that guests want to seek out, build a relationship with, and keep in their lives.
As co-principal and creative director, Arielle seeks to bring meaning and context to the artifacts that Might & Main produces. She believes in the power of design to connect people with brands in authentic ways, cares deeply about systems thinking, loves over-complicating design problems, and always seeks material honesty in every detail — never faking it, always making it. Day-to-day, she crafts strategic brand narratives, oversees the firm’s creative output, and ensures that brand storytelling is represented seamlessly in every touchpoint.
As one of the principals and creative directors of Might & Main, Sean has overseen the creative work of the boutique brand design studio since its founding in 2010. Sean believes in the power of typography and form, of language and craft, to shape brands into true personalities. His mission is to find your voice and make it tangible — to create something that truly exists in the world, that we want in our lives, and want to build a relationship with.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
SW: Arielle and I were both young but seasoned design freelancers when we started to commiserate on wanting to tackle more interesting jobs and take more ownership than we were able to when working for other agencies. We really just went for it: got an office space, hung out a shingle, and started seeking work together. We wanted to work with restaurants, and we had that wish granted when the owners of Eventide Oyster Co. came to us in our second year. Portland was experiencing a serious restaurant boom; one restaurant project quickly turned into dozens, and eventually spread into Boston, New York, and beyond. Our branding and design for restaurants then led us to hotels and hospitality at large. Along the way, we’ve built an incredible team of first-rate designers and a well-tuned set of processes for strategic branding and compelling visual design.
AW: In the few “real” jobs I held before starting our agency, I found myself running out of things to learn and growing bored with repeating the same types of tasks over and over. Running an agency has given me the chance to constantly figure out something new, travel to new places, and learn the intricate details of countless different industries. It’s the only career I can imagine wanting to do for life.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
AW: It’s not really “funny” — especially not at the time — but our first two years in business we were under another company name. We chose the original name because we liked it, plain and simple…and then we got smacked with a cease and desist from a much bigger company who owned the trademark on a similar name. We learned an important lesson about naming, and since then we strongly suggest that all of our clients, no matter how much they love their first choice, do their legal homework before we start designing a logo or identity system.
What was our original name? Can’t tell you. We swore to never speak it again.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
AW: Our culture. We don’t have account managers; instead, our designers are deeply invested in and work directly with clients, which leads to much better work than if they were simply assigned a task. Because we’re a small, tight knit group, every member of our team knows what everyone else is working on, and we often call on one another to help solve a creative problem.
SW: We’ve all evolved to take on a variety of roles in our small firm, but we all started as designers. We live and breathe the language of visual aesthetics. Our team loves to invest extra effort into tangible, visible things that express a brand’s unique voice and provide a moment of joy and delight for someone to discover.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
SW: We’ve been working on several new hotels and hotel brands in the southern United States, including some very exciting projects in Asheville, North Carolina that are challenging the usual set of rules for a typical hotel brand. Just like our favorite restaurants, these new projects are interesting because the people behind them are interesting — we knew from our first conversations that we were going to create really cool stuff together. There’s so much to be said for finding good people to work for, establishing mutual trust, and then testing the limits of what one can do within that relationship. That’s the kind of client that lifts up your company with their success and innovation, and it’s exactly the kind of client we love working with.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
AW: For us, branding is about defining who a company or organization is at their core: what are their values and beliefs, what makes their approach unique? From there, we build a visual vocabulary that expresses that essence in every detail. It’s about providing the tools and empowering people to act as and for the brand, so that the brand appears to take on a life and a personality of its own, no matter who is pulling the strings. Marketing and advertising are about putting that brand out into the world and encouraging the right consumers to form an emotional connection with it.
SW: Sometimes we think of our branding work as creating the voice of an entity. Advertising and marketing can make use of that voice to tell the stories that engage customers, guests, and consumers.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
AW: If you were to undertake an advertising campaign without the core brand work coming first, you wouldn’t have established an authentic brand voice and personality. I think consumers sense when a brand doesn’t know who it is, and they don’t engage in the same way they would with a brand that’s been crafted with intention.
SW: Our work goes beyond creating the visual identity and personality of a brand — it’s important to also create a foundation of strategic positioning that becomes a set of rules for how the brand interacts with the world. Whether that’s an in-person interaction with a guest or a multi-level campaign, a good brand strategy acts as a compass to keep communication efforts on the right path.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
1. Objectivity
SW: You need objectivity in the process of building a new brand. I think it’s one of the most important things that we offer to clients; getting an idea out of the echo chamber and putting it through the paces is where it becomes stronger and more compelling.
2. Find your right audience
AW: Define your audience and their needs that you are best equipped to satisfy. Brands don’t succeed by trying to be everything to everyone. Some of the strongest brands today offer one product to one niche audience. They have a strong point of view and they express it in language that’s designed to connect with a very specific demographic or psychographic.
3. Ensure internal buy-in
SW: Include your stakeholders and get them excited. Your first real ambassadors are going to be the people who work most closely with the brand, and the branding team should help the client build consensus and get buy-in throughout its organization. Their input and feedback throughout the process adds to the valuable objectivity we’re seeking, and if they understand and believe in the brand that we all create together, they will serve as the launch crew that gets the new brand off the ground.
4. Your brand is in everything you do.
AW: Build a brand that you can live fully every day, in everything your company makes, says, and does. Engaging a professional branding partner isn’t a quick or cheap endeavor, and you get more out of it when you put more into it. Your branding team should provide the tools and education your people need to actually be the brand in their day to day work. We also see this as an opportunity to create beautiful and memorable branded touchpoints that enrich and deepen the connection between your brand and your audience.
5. Don’t be afraid to adapt / change
SW: Don’t be afraid to change — looking timeless doesn’t mean that you’re always the same. Being flexible and adaptable over time is a hallmark of successful brands, and we work closely with a lot of great clients to help them grow and evolve their brands over the years.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
SW: I think Huckberry has done a fantastic job building a brand that works hard for an old school business model of outdoors gear and men’s fashion. They’re thinking in more interesting, innovative, and younger-minded ways than the typical old guard of outdoors gear brands: focusing on collaborations that make sense, getting gear in the hands of personalities that are too cool to be called ‘influencers,’ and crafting beautifully made aspirational content — both online and in print. It all feels very natural, authentic, and never feels like it’s trying too hard. At the end of the day, they have a great shop of well curated goods that’s hard to browse without buying something…
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
AW: Brand building is definitely harder to quantify. We feel we’ve succeeded when, at the close of our work, the entire organization feels like the brand is an idealized, but genuine reflection of their highest aspirations as a whole. When people are excited to be a part of the brand and to represent it. Additionally, we feel like we’ve succeeded when everything the organization is putting into the world looks cohesive and speaks with one voice.
SW: I wish that metrics for the return on investment for branding were easier to come by, but our clients tend to come to us because they know how important it is. We often say that we’re not in the business of convincing someone that they need branding. Our best clients come to us because they know what we’re bringing to the table.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
SW: We always think about how any brand will be perceived by its intended audience, and that audience is always going to be on social media to some extent. It’s different for every project — some brands have a very ‘digital native’ voice that’s comfortable online and works hard in that space. Some brands feel more natural posting on a semi-regular schedule with predictable kinds of content. Others can rely heavily on organic content, and we can find ways to encourage patrons to generate more content for the brand. It’s all about determining how the brand voice should authentically speak.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
SW: We work hard to find an authentic voice for brands. It’s important that we find ways for people to quickly ascertain what a brand is about based on very little input — sometimes just a logo or a sign or a name. Because of this, I’m hyper-aware of how much of our daily actions are driven by first impressions, and I wish that we would all take a little more time to learn the story behind the things (and people) that we can be so quick to categorize. Information keeps coming at us faster, and we seem to increasingly put things into highly polarized buckets of right and wrong, left and right, on my team or abject enemy. There’s more nuance to life than that, so let’s leave snap decisions to what we’re eating for lunch and give humans a little more time and consideration before we act.
AW: We could all stand to be more conscious of the things we buy and consume and the impact that our choices have when added to millions of others’ choices. I hope that we continue to work with brands that prioritize slowing climate change and increasing social equity — at least until these concerns become table stakes for doing business at all in today’s world.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
SW: My dad was talking to me about a very mundane task when I was in high school and introduced the power of “under-promise and over-deliver.” I know it’s been said a billion times, but it’s something that I think about all the time, whether I’m reminding myself not to float untested ideas that might not work (it’s hard to not get ahead of yourself when you’re excited about a project), or thinking about how we can really wow a client or a guest with an extra consideration that they wouldn’t expect. I feel like when we do the latter successfully, that’s when we’re doing our best work.
AW: A place for everything and everything in its place. If there isn’t a true place for a thing, whether it’s a personal habit, or a decorative flourish on the page, it needs to go.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
AW: Mona Chalabi, the data journalist, or Hasan Minhaj. They are both incredible at translating complex and often little-known issues and inequities into super-accessible, entertaining but thought-provoking formats. I’d love to just soak up either of their knowledge for an hour. Day to day, nothing interesting happens at breakfast or lunch. Who wants to grab a whiskey?
SW: I would love to talk with Danny Meyer about his approach to hospitality and building Union Square Hospitality Group over the last few decades (and maybe do some work together).
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Website: https://might-main.com/
Instagram: @mightmain
Facebook: @mightmain
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
