The global transition to clean energy will be as impactful on our lives as the first industrial revolution. But there's a huge challenge ahead – current technologies aren't able to scale fast enough to meet growing demand. Fortunately, critical advances in the last five years now make fusion energy generation, the "holy grail" of clean energy, a realistic proposition.
With over 1,000 scientists, engineers and commercial staff working at pace, industry leader Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is on course to have commercially-generated fusion energy supplying the grid in the early-mid 2030s.
Expanding from an R&D-focused startup with MIT origins into a large commercial enterprise, CFS needed to evolve and strengthen their brand to power the new phase of organizational growth. They engaged Supermoon as strategic brand partners.
In partnership with CFS’s executive team we constructed a purpose-driven brand platform to position CFS with investors, policymakers, talent, and future customers. This foundation led to developing a brand personality which we’ve imbued across all aspects of the CFS brand.
We established CFS’s verbal identity with core messaging stemming from the brand platform and a tone of voice that brings the brand personality into our writing.
“Humanity’s power move” communicates multiple important ideas in only three words. CFS’s mission to transition the world to fusion energy and the company’s willingness to boldly tackle huge challenges are at the core. It works equally well in external marketing and as inspiration for CFSers doing the hard work.
With the new phase of the business, an expansion of the existing color palette to deliver more dynamism and flexibility was needed. New, bold hues and a scientifically accurate fusion plasma gradient infuse CFS creative with a more inherent (and meaningful) sense of motion.
CFS photography is primarily documentary, showing what's currently happening or already real. In an absolutely bleeding-edge industry with many hype merchants, CFS leadership understands the need to avoid the perception of overpromising. At the same time, they must reinforce their credibility as the category leader. So to infuse imagery with more emotional draw and to communicate the new "Humanity's power move" positioning, we focused on evolution of technique rather than reinventing the wheel (or the tokamak, if you like). Photography by Gretchen Ertl.
We developed a brand campaign to introduce the refined brand and new tagline, while simultaneously supporting ongoing marketing efforts. Our creative leadership and brand guidance provided alignment for internal and external partners executing across events and marketing communications.
We supported CFS with design work and thinking for events, both at internal events and high-profile industry gatherings such as New York Climate Week.
In a world of screens, effective video and motion content is critical for every brand. CFS produces a large quantity of documentary and content video, so alongside the photography updates, we developed new motion assets and a guidelines framework for CFS to align video assets with the new positioning.
For the tagline and positioning update reveals at New York Climate Week, we conceived and delivered a short brand launch video with our friends at Glass & Marker, including new videography from 4th District. This piece also serves as an anthem video across marketing channels.
As an organization expands into multiple teams, maintaining effective communication and alignment with organizational vision becomes increasingly more complex. Since 2023 Supermoon has collaborated closely with the brand and marketing teams at CFS to develop robust systems, align brand signals and language, and support design strategy implementation.
We ran training sessions to educate team members on the CFS brand, and workshops to instruct writers on tactics to apply the CFS brand voice.
“Climate tech brands by default should be purpose driven, but too often the mission and the vision are meaningless to the world.
We worked with Supermoon to rethink how we tell our story to position CFS as the industry titan that it is.
Supermoon punched above their weight in helping us to up our game.”
Joe Paluska, CMO
