Evernote and Nudge
Case study · Brand, launch and motion
A two-part concept for Bending Spoons. First, a 25-second film to turn long-term Evernote Free users into paying ones. Then a full brand identity and launch campaign for Nudge, a new companion app that remembers everything and tells you what matters, when it matters.
Evernote Ad
Part one
The Evernote upgrade film
The brief
Create an asset that persuades people who have used Evernote Free for years to upgrade to Personal or Professional.
Our approach
Long-term free users already love the product. What they're missing is having it everywhere. So we led with one clear benefit, syncing across every device, in a text-led motion piece with no footage that works with or without sound. We kept pricing out of the film so nothing broke the flow.
Nudge Launch Film
Part two
Nudge: brand and launch
The brief
Nudge is a new mobile app from Evernote. It reads your notes, calendar and contacts, and reaches out at the right moment, so you never have to set a reminder. The goal: give it a brand, plan its launch and create the hero asset to lead it.
The challenge
An app that reads everything could easily feel invasive. Nudge needed to feel like a thoughtful friend who has read all your notes, not something watching over your shoulder.
01 · Brand
Part of the family, with a personality of its own
Nudge only gets going once people let it see their notes, calendar and contacts. That's a lot to ask of a brand-new app. People have trusted Evernote with their notes for years, so we extended the Evernote brand rather than starting from scratch. Same typography, same colour structure, same drawing style, with Evernote's green swapped for blue.
For the mark, we wanted an animal that could sit beside Evernote's elephant. Dolphins have the longest social memory ever recorded in a non-human animal, and they quite literally nudge with their noses. Paired with Evernote's green, the blue completes the colours of our planet: land and water, two different environments that are deeply connected.
What matters, when it matters.
The brand line, taken straight from the product's promise
02 · Launch
Tell, convert, grow
The insight: we write things down so we don't have to remember them. Then we forget we wrote them down. The launch had to give people that small moment of relief: "I'd have forgotten that."
1. Tell
Start with people who already use Evernote, with an announcement inside the app and an email to their inbox.
2. Convert
Retarget people who have seen the film with "try it free" ads, and meet them with a clear App Store page.
3. Grow
Reach new people beyond Evernote through social ads, creators and digital outdoor posters.
03 · The hero film
Why a film came first
Most of what Nudge does happens quietly in the background, so you only notice it when it pops up with the exact thing you'd forgotten. That's hard to show in a still image. In a film, you watch it happen: the client call, the car service, the PE kit, each one arriving just in time.
One film also covers the most important places at launch: the announcement inside Evernote, social, and a recut for the App Store. It's text-led and designed sound-off first, with a soft water swoosh as a quiet nod to the dolphin.