Grey Matter: Agency's Centennial Logo Incorporates Brainwaves Of Its Staff

WPP’s Grey Advertising turns 100 this year and is celebrating with a series of activities — including a big gala this week at New York’s Madison Square Park — and a new commemorative logo, part of the shop’s visual identity for its centennial year.

The logo is designed to celebrate the agency’s golden anniversary and the employees who have driven the agency’s success over the years, with creations like the E*Trade Baby, Jif Peanut Butter’s “Choosy Mothers” and the “Leave the Driving To Us” campaign for Greyhound.

To do so, the agency used a mix of technology and design to scan the brainwaves of the agency’s current 5,000 employees. Those scans are incorporated into the new logo, symbolic of what the agency calls the “colorful minds” of its staff.

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The logo was created using 3D-printed brainwave-monitoring headsets. The headsets read electrical activity as employees worked on real briefs. A custom algorithm then generated colorful images of the brainwaves Grey has dubbed “Brain Portraits.” 

Portraits from Grey offices worldwide were combined to create the new logo, designed to represent the diversity of thought that fuels the shop’s creativity.

“As Grey turns 100, we want to celebrate our individual and collective creativity, the power of diverse minds colliding to create new and beautiful things,” stated Michael Houston, Grey’s global president. “Our new logo represents the power of our diverse and colorful minds and the people whose ideas have made Grey into a leader in creativity.”

Centennial festivities include a weeklong series of events at the Whitney Museum in New York that look at the legacy of Grey and discuss the future of advertising.  The agency is also having a book published on its first 100 years. Other events are still being finalized.

 

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