The average length of an engagement in the U.S. for couples married in 2022 is 18 months, according to wedding brand Zola. The figure is an increase from 12 months during prepandemic times.
Looking to be there for all of the critical moments in that time period from engagement to nuptials, Zola has debuted a new logo and campaign.
The brand wants to reframe its message. Rather than fixating entirely on the wedding day, Zola’s rebrand conveys how it’s there for couples at every moment of the wedding planning process.
“Weddings as an industry is very antiquated,” Zola chief marketing officer Victoria Vaynberg told Adweek. “That’s something we’ve always talked about and tried to show in our work, and we also felt like everything was very one note and lacked differentiation.”
And that forms a perfect marriage with its slight evolutions over the years. Zola started out as a simple registry business, but the 2013-born startup branched out over the years into other areas of the wedding process including save-the-date cards and invitations, expanding its wedding vendor platform of all 50 states and allowing couples to plan honeymoons.
In making its brand more of a one-stop shop in the wedding category, Zola added a new tagline: “For all the days along the way.”
“I don’t think that’s something people really talk about,” Vaynberg said of couple’s small accomplishments in planning a wedding. “Everything’s just focused on your wedding day, but there are a lot of these pivotal, exciting moments that happen on the journey that we’re really there for, and really at the core of helping you make those moments happen.”
Popping the million-dollar question
Zola’s new primary logo is similar to its previous look but makes a few notable changes. The two hearts featured in the update are clear and made with serif fonts compared to the previous iteration’s pastel font theme. The entire logo is navy blue and the two hearts have moved from left of the brand name to the right.
“We really wanted to make sure that we were appealing to modern couples,” Vaynberg said. “It’s a simplified, more modern approach. We wanted to have our typography with a little bit of a classic wedding invites feel with serif fonts. [We wanted to] make a shift from pastels to jewel tones that feel energetic and exciting. A modern evolution on our look and feel.”
Searching for authenticity
Hitched to the brand refresh is a new campaign with two different 30-second spots. One is titled “Anthemic” and focuses on the moments leading up to the wedding, while the other one, “Product,” leans a little more on the actual services Zola offers. The ads spotlight moments in the wedding process such as the day a venue is finalized.
The campaign was created with the help of Zola’s creative agency, Arts & Letters. The brand and agency began their relationship at the top of the year, and worked together on this brand refresh.
“It’s a really simple idea,” Arts & Letters executive creative director Nick Kaplan told Adweek. “It’s about the journey. And that’s what the whole campaign is really about. Isolating those different moments along the way, from social posts to the film, it’s about celebrating the whole roller coaster ride from engagement to the actual day and all the details and planning that go into it.”
Kaplan said the couples who appear in the spot are together in real life as the brand was aiming for authenticity when creating a campaign.
As Zola gears up for the new campaign, it’s looking to pounce on a booming wedding market and separate itself from competitors like The Knot and Joy. According to research from The Knot, 94% of weddings planned for 2021 took place successfully and 2.6 million weddings are expected to happen in 2022.
Vaynberg said Zola views itself as a tech company. “There are companies in this space that have moved their business online, but there wasn’t one until Zola came along that’s a digital-first disrupter,” she added.
The ads will run on social first, and the brand will make a bigger push during engagement season from November to February, according to Vaynberg. “[The ads] will be on HBO Max in September, and we have ongoing OTT, online video and streaming, where both spots will be running as part of our consistent media dollars as well.” OOH ads will run later in the year.
