Jardines Corporate branding
| Fact |
Value |
| Contact |
Hong Kong |
| Client |
Jardines |
| Project |
Corporate branding |
| Industry |
Industrial |
| Timeline |
Jan 99 - Ongoing |
| Services |
Leadership Engagement and Team Dynamics
Brand Architecture
Brand Identity
Brand Communications and Collateral
|
| Team size |
15 The Brand Union
6 Client |
Jardines gives back to the community
In 2002, The Brand Union developed a visual identity for the conglomerate’s community initiative in Hong Kong. The initiative, named Mindset, aims to change people's attitudes towards mental health by raising awareness and understanding regarding mental health issues, as well as supporting those individuals, families and organizations who are in need of help.
Today, with the help of The Brand Union, Jardines continues to further its commitment to the communities in which it does business – a commitment that has characterized the past 175 years of this vital enterprise in Asia.
An enduring brand reinvigorated at age 170, still going strong at 175. Established in 1832, the Jardine Matheson Group (Jardines) is one of Hong Kong's oldest companies. Moving into the new millennium, Jardines wanted to update its visual identity system to more fully reflect strategic developments that had taken place in its business.
And thus began the Hong Kong studio's relationship with this prominent Asian conglomerate. Since 1999, we have touched upon multiple aspects of its business, playing an integral role in the Jardines brand story.
We first helped to articulate the company's key attributes and establish a visual language, or personality, for future marketing communications materials.
The design team then reviewed the corporate symbol – the thistle. An enduring symbol of Jardines, it enjoyed tremendous equity but had not been reviewed in almost two decades. Given the strong heritage in the thistle, we took an evolutionary approach to updating this logomark.
The refreshed logomark was incorporated into a new identity toolkit, which included stationery, template designs and signage. We also updated communications pieces, such as the employee newsletter, 'The Thistle', and worked with Jardines on its corporate communications materials, including every annual report from 1999 through to 2006.
Brand Architecture
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s in particular, as Jardines and the number of its operating companies and investments grew, so too did confusion in the marketplace in terms
of relationships between its various entities – particularly those entities bearing the Jardines name as part of their only customer-facing name. With over 30 different variations in the thistle's usage and over 15 written endorsement lines to express the relationship to Jardines, the integrity of the powerful Jardines name and symbol was being undermined.
With the newly-developed Jardines visual identity in place, our specialist brand architecture team created a brand architecture model that mapped out the relationships between the Head Office and the various operating companies such as Mandarin Oriental and Hongkong Land, and that supported the corporate strategy to elevate and protect the status of the Jardines masterbrand.
We conducted an audit of how the group operating companies used or incorporated the thistle into their own visual identity systems, and from this study, crafted a branding strategy and consistent naming and visual identity systems. To ensure correct usage and to maintain ongoing brand management, The Brand Union then developed a password protected web-based download site, including a digital guideline with links to the website for artwork templates.
Jardines recently polled the senior management of its Group operating companies to understand how well the parent company was doing in terms of connecting with this key stakeholder group. The results were positive with a marked level of pride in being associated with Jardines, not to mention an appreciation for the shared Group values.
