Wolff Olins Creates Bold new Brand for Bite Back, the Youth Activist Network

Sep. 28, 2023

Wolff Olins has created a new brand for Bite Back, a youth activist network that’s calling out ‘junk food giants’ in the fight for a fairer food system. 

The brand aims to shift the narrative on food by calling out ‘corporate irresponsibility’ and demanding food companies stop bombarding children with unhealthy options. 

The new identity for Bite Back - a movement co-founded by Jamie Oliver in 2019 - is inspired by "brandalism", the subversion of marketing and critique of corporate control.  

James Toop, CEO of Bite Back, explained:

"Bite Back is on a mission to change the narrative around food and to share the truth about the food system - and it's amazing to have Wolff Olins help us in the next phase of our journey. The reality is, the food system is currently rigged against us and we are paying the price. So we’re calling out the food giants, urging them to act responsibly and stop driving an epidemic in food-related ill-health.” 

 

Wolff Olins Associate Creative Director Joe Waterfield added:

“We want to help people have a bit of a ‘penny drop moment’ and realise that they’re surrounded by a flood of junk every day. So we’ve taken the incredibly common typefaces, colours and even highly saturated photography styles you find in so much food marketing, stuck it all in a blender, and put it in the hands of young people as a tool for progress.” 

 

The brand’s voice plays a central role in the identity, playing with the language of food and calling out junk food marketers with lines like ‘Cereal Offenders’ and ‘Fuel us, don’t fool us.’ 

The new voice of the network was inspired directly by Bite Back’s young activists, according to David Stevens, Executive Strategy Director at Wolff Olins. “Bite Back’s network is full of witty, funny, whip smart young people who are hungry to make a change. The brand’s new voice bottles that wit and uses it to cut through all the crap people are fed every day. It makes the whole brand feel smart and sassy and it hits you right in the gut.”  

Bite Back activist Becky, aged 20, from London, said:

"As a youth activist movement, one of the most important aspects is ensuring that our brand represents us: young, innovative and ambitious change makers fighting for better food. The rebrand does exactly this - it shows people who we are, what we set out to do, and it tells everyone that we will persist until we achieve our goal.” 

 

The brand also serves as a healthy reminder to the marketing industry itself.

Stevens explained:

“Most people have moral qualms about working on Big Tobacco. But there’s an epidemic of food-related diseases out there now. Junk is the new tobacco. It’s time marketers opened their eyes to the dodgy tactics of Big Food and started thinking about what they’re putting out there for public consumption.” 

 

The new identity uses a colour palette inspired by junk food marketing, including colours like ‘Chicken Shop Red,’ ‘Deep-Fried Yellow’ and ‘Unlicensed Mauve’. The typography follows similar lines by combining fonts such as ‘Fried Serif,’ ‘Sugar Rush Round’, and ‘Cereal Script’. 

The brand also comes to life thanks to Wolff Olins’ close collaboration with character animation studio Animade. Animade created a series of mouth expressions and animations to ensure the brand could talk to all its many audiences. The new core Bite Back logo features a towering mouth, a signal that the brand is ready to speak up and bite back against the flood of unhealthy food.

Sairah Ashman, Global CEO of Wolff Olins, said:

"We’re committed to building brands with a conscience. With Bite Back, we’re equipping a generation with a brand that’s a useful tool for expression, helping them get their voice heard by the media, the government, and the corporates who have the power to shape the way we all eat."