Our vision is to be the leaders’
choice
for brand-related insight,
advice and activation.
The Brand Union is a world-class, global brand agency with 35 years’ experience, and is part of the WPP Group.
With 500 people in 21 offices, we are an experienced and talented team drawing on the individual skills of brand strategists, graphic and digital designers, brand experience designers, writers, brand engagement specialists and project managers.
We pull together knowledge, inspiration and expertise from across the globe to build brands that thrive in the real world, using a balance of brand strategy, creativity and execution.
People get in touch with us for all kinds of reasons: when their organisation needs to find new opportunities to grow; to find better pathways to brand engagement; when a new vision or project needs definition; to develop new brand experiences; when packaging needs a redesign; for strategic thinking, for creativity and for innovation.
The diversity of our people enables us to provide
a wide-ranging and seamless offer.
For every project, we choose the best people for the job, from both within and
outside of the WPP Group, to provide:
| Research | Engagement | Communications |
| Strategy | Evaluation | Environments |
| Innovation | Corporate Identity | Consumer Branding |
| Digital Brand Strategy |
Minute Maid Nutri-Boost
Giving Juice a Boost
Minute Maid was looking for an opportunity to develop a wellness brand in the broader beverage market. They began the creation of a new drink that could offer a refreshing blend of milk and juice, mixed with added ingredients to provide ‘nutrition assurance’. Coca Cola Minute Maid chose The Brand Union Singapore team to develop a visual identity system unique to their new product line, called Nutri-Boost.
Singapore’s challenge was to develop a system that would work across South-east Asia and China while still maintaining the Minute Maid Masterbrand attributes. The visual identity had to reflect the unique freshness and nutritional benefits this product line had to offer and also ensure it could carry across all future range or variant extensions.
Minute Maid Nutri-Boost
Picking through the category codes
Taking on the challenge of creating a visual identity for the new Minute Maid product line, Nutri-Boost, the Singapore team dived deep into research to fully understand the various markets and competitive landscape of the beverage industry. Based on our findings and rigorous qualitative and quantitative testing, we were able to develop a design concept that balanced the nutritional and energy benefits of the drink while appealing to the predominantly male audience and observing existing Minute Maid visual guidelines. We also designed a flexible packaging architecture system that has allowed for easy pack navigation. A thorough set of guidelines was developed that clearly illustrates our visual identity system for all markets a platform the translation of our system into other communication channels.
Minute Maid Nutri-Boost
A new beverage category in the region
Since creating Nutri-Boost’s main range of flavors, Orange and Strawberry, Minute Maid Nutriboost has successfully launched in Vietnam, with the other markets and line extensions likely to follow.
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Minute Maid Nutri-Boost
by alexparr October 13, 2011
Direct Asia
Creating a bold challenger brand in a conservative market
DirectAsia.com is a game-changing, direct-to-customer insurance company from the Whittington Group. The Whittington team wanted to provide an alternative to the ‘closed shop’ of the big three dominant insurance providers in Singapore that continued to use agents and middlemen and kept premiums artificially high. DirectAsia.com’s vision was to create an approachable, affordable, 24/7, online insurance offering of the kind that had revolutionised the industry in the UK and Australia. We got involved to create a complete brand strategy and identity to see DirectAsia.com to market.
Direct Asia
Building on promises
Despite growing dissatisfaction with rising premiums and poor service, Singaporean consumers were reluctant to break away from the traditional agent-led relationships. Something disruptive and challenging, but at the same time credible and trustworthy, was needed to break the cycle. Our strategy was to keep things simple, straightforward and vibrant, and every aspect of the DirectAsia.com brand was built around a refreshing and distinctive brand promise and values. This promise underpinned every facet of the new brand’s personality, visual identity and communication and was used as the basis for an engagement programme with DirectAsia.com call centre operatives, who would be on the frontline in delivering the brand promise. We also used the brand essence to inform the design and décor of the DirectAsia office in central Singapore.
Direct Asia
A feature in the changing insurance landscape
A year on from launch and DirectAsia.com has contributed significantly to a much-changed insurance landscape in Singapore, where online providers are growing and the pressure on pricing and agents has dramatically increased, giving Singaporean consumers more choice, better deals and improved service delivery. The bright, bold DirectAsia.com identity is now a familiar sight on the streets of Singapore and online.
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Direct Asia
by alexparr May 12, 2011
Corporate Identity
Our corporate identity work uses design to shape the way a brand is perceived through the visual identity system that connects the brand communications and experiences across a variety of touchpoints and media.
Corporate identity designers translate brand strategy into design by creating a palette of graphic elements, including the logo, typographic style, colour and photographic style, to create a distinctive and flexible system and sensibility that can be rolled out across a range of communication points. Each touchpoint plays a different role at different times in the customer, employee or investor experience, and the visual identity system is the vehicle by which they are connected. Through design, we are able to facilitate these connections and make more impact, resulting in a much stronger connection to and understanding of the brand.
The simplicity and strength of a unique and differentiated design system will continue to work with the brand in the future as the product and service range grows and evolves.
Corporate Identity
by os_admin March 11, 2011
Absolut Company
The original design of this iconic brand by Hans Brindfors, now Creative Director of our Stockholm office, has reinvented itself continuously, always staying true to the core idea. Many creative contributions continue to add to the brand’s richness, gaining enormous design recognition across the world, with the bottle always being the hero. From sketchings on the bottle to the little medallion depicting L.O. Smith (the godfather of Absolut) this brand has become one of our most published pieces. What we didn’t know then but learned a few years ago was that the location where we created the Absolut bottle in ’78 was actually the flat where L.O. Smith lived circa 100 years earlier. It must have been the spirit of Absolut in that house!
On the next slide, Anna Kamjou, Global Director Design Strategy for The Absolut Company talks about our design partnership.
Absolut Company
Anna Kamjou, Global Director Design Strategy for The Absolut Company talks about our design partnership.
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Absolut Company
by alexparr January 25, 2012
Research
Research is a means to an end and never the end in itself. It lies at the heart of every strategy and our emphasis is on research that is strongly in touch with the commercial realities of our clients’ businesses. Our approach is founded on the principles of thorough and objective analysis, focusing on providing relevant and useful insights that can be translated into innovative and creative solutions.
Our particular areas of expertise include:
• Competitor mapping
• Customer segmentation
• Customer journeying
• Deep dive brand analysis based on BrandZ
Research drives our work across all disciplines and helps unite brand strategy with business objectives, messaging, design, and innovation.
Edgilis
Innovation gets a new name
Acian Technologies came to us as a self-styled ‘innovation consultancy’. It was already an SME success story, practically doubling in size year on year since being founded in Singapore in 2006. But in 2009 the management team recognised the need for the business to step up to the next level in order to attract the best regional talent and to compete on a more equal footing with larger, more established consultancy networks. This demanded a new brand name and identity that would signal a new force and philosophy in the sector and attract the very best people. We were only too keen to get involved.
Edgilis
The creation of Asia’s first ‘opportunity consultancy’
We began by creating a new company name – Edgilis – which reflected the cutting-edge approach and agility that was typical of the business and its people, and accompanied it with a dynamic, challenging logo.
More important than the change of name and logo, however, was a fundamental reframing of what innovation means to the business. While the competition spoke generically of innovation as the be all and end all, Edgilis recognised that it was simply the journey and not the final destination. The application of innovative people and processes had to be in the service of a bigger, more sustainable objective: the creation and maximisation of business opportunity. And so, Asia’s first ‘opportunity consultancy’ was established.
Edgilis
Attracting future ‘agents of innovation’
The new brand vision and identity was first launched internally and to existing clients, before being applied across all business touchpoints, from a newly designed website to marketing literature and – crucially – recruitment materials. The new look allowed Edgilis to stand out from the established brands at recruitment events and more effectively attract talent with its bold new category thinking in which the company’s people were valued as highly skilled ‘agents of innovation’.
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ADACH
Reconnecting Abu Dhabi’s youth with their past
Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) was created to fulfil the vision of His Highness, the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan. That vision was to preserve and promote the identity and rich culture of the people of the United Arab Emirates.
We were given the opportunity to help tell this story by creating and developing a brand that would reconnect Abu Dhabi’s history with the local youth of today.
ADACH
The unique spirit of the city
As there are few obvious symbols of Abu Dhabi culture and heritage, we had to find something that would capture the unique spirit of the Emirate. Drawing on the influences of Abu Dhabi’s culture and heritage, we developed a distinguished identity that illustrated the years of craftsmanship and creative expression in the area. Through expressive strokes and subdued earthy tones, the logo took its inspiration from Abu Dhabi’s early beginnings, while the introduction of a secondary palette of brighter, more vibrant colours communicated the different chapters in the story of the Authority.
ADACH
Harnessing the power
By developing a brand with more focus, ADACH now had a strong marketing tool with which to promote the events they hold and the work they do. We had created a design that harnessed an eclectic combination of cultures, people, traditions and icons, all into one powerful symbol that reconnected the youth of today with their proud past.
In the proud words of Director General of ADACH Mohamed Khalaf al Mazrouei, the new identity is “a work of art”.
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Communications
We partner with our clients to convey the right message to the right audience, through the right media. To convey ideas, facts and brand promises in engaging ways and build complete brand stories across all traditional and new media.
Communications
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Environments
We translate brands into memorable and relevant consumer experiences. The first step in this process is to translate a brand's intangible values into a concept platform and a unique design language. A design language is a conceptual, visual structure that allows us to manage 3D communication of the brand at any given touchpoint. It is a set of visual guidance directions, normally in the form of mood boards, that showcase the look and feel of a brand. This means that even if you can’t put a logo on it, the design language can be used to convey the identity of the brand, through shape, colour, material, smell, etc – it’s the difference between badging and branding.
Environments
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Evaluation
Discovering insight to inform the next stage of brand strategy.
Evaluation begins with getting the right mix of performance indicators in place at the outset: metrics, qualitative data, feedback from stakeholders. It is about organising the data into a format that is the most useful and revealing for the brand team, and making it available in the right place and at the right time. It is about moving beyond a simple assessment of data to an understanding of the results that informs what should happen next to develop the brand for the future. Evaluation is about providing insight on data to inform and instruct decision-making and strategy development.
Evaluation
by alexparr September 16, 2011
visionapp
A new brand vision for visionapp
visionapp is a leading player in the cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) market. Formed as a spin off out of the Dresdner Bank, the company needed to differentiate itself in what remains a cluttered and crowded marketplace. We were tasked with creating a new identity that would strengthen the business positioning and could be seamlessly applied across its sub-brands, including the modular product brand CloudFactory.
visionapp
The “Cloud Identity”
We developed a design concept that truly embodies the positioning, bringing the dynamism and flexibility of the cloud to life, as seen from the end-user’s perspective. While the competitors focus on explaining the workings of the cloud, our concept is centred on the view that ‘the cloud is in your hands’, with the unconventional ‘birds-eye view’ photography demonstrating the view from inside the cloud, into the customer’s world.
The concept deploys a distinctive brand iconography and a system of individual colour coded logos for each product module, providing simple navigation and a strong brand umbrella over the entire portfolio.
visionapp
The next generation of cloud computing
visionapp chose to launch the brand at the 2011 CeBIT trade show, presenting their concept of the next generation of cloud computing to a broad range of ICT professionals and it was resounding success. As Marina Walser, CMO visionapp AG commented “The large number of compliments from our peers in the IT industry and our clients was only exceeded by the overwhelming feedback from our own employees.”
“From the first brief to the strategic and creative development, right through to implementation, The Brand Union team did a great job. The new CI reflects the internal values and communicates the character of the brand, products and employees in a perfect way.”
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Glenilen Farm
From small beginnings
Started by Val and Alan Kingston, Glenilen Farm are a small traditional dairy farm based in Drimoleague, West Cork. In 1997 Val began making cheesecakes and yoghurts for the local market. Since then they have grown from strength to strength and now they convert all of their milk into delicious products using only the best quality ingredients, reflecting their steadfast belief in the goodness of wholesome, natural food.
Glenilen Farm
Introducing Sally & Sue
Our challenge was to refresh the brand in a manner that attracted new consumers to Glenilen Farm products without disengaging the pre-existing consumer base. Also required was a tone-of-voice to allow the genuine, simple and honest nature of Glenilen Farm to be expressed on and off pack. At a practical level, the brand needed to reproduce well across a wide variety of pack formats, substrates and printing techniques. The new Glenilen Farm logo, ‘Sally and Sue’, drew provenance from ‘Anniken and the Cows’, a painting by Canadian artist Robert Duncan. The painting, which hangs in the farmhouse of Glenilen Farm, is a simple and honest portrayal of farming life and so aptly represents the Glenilen Farm brand. We developed pack designs and tone-of-voice to reinforce the repositioning of Glenilen Farm as producers of authentic farmhouse products. The design differentiated itself through a strong typographic style, the use of simple language, packaging formats and the reinterpretation of traditional dairy colors (blue and white).
Glenilen Farm
The crème de la crème
A recent success story of the food sector, Glenilen is at the forefront of Ireland's food exports and since the rebrand has managed to get their products into various prestigious British outlets, ranging from Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London to Tesco, Waitrose and Wholefoods. Public response to the rebrand has also been extremely strong, with customers referencing the new packaging in many comments left on Glenilen's website and Facebook page
In December 2011 the rebrand work for Glenilen Farm won the coveted Grand Prix at the Irish Design Effectiveness Awards
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Glenilen Farm
by alexparr January 30, 2012
Al Rajhi
Making the world’s largest Islamic bank relevant to a new generation
We began our relationship with Al Rajhi Banking and Investment Corporation way back in 2006. The largest Islamic bank in the world had a huge amount of brand equity in the region but they were struggling to appeal to the younger market that saw Al Rajhi as their parents’ bank. Together with the new changes introduced into the financial sector, the bank was feeling vulnerable to competition from the well-known global banking brands. The Bank also recognised that in order to realise their aspirations to become a regional bank by expanding into Malaysia and the like they need well defined compelling brand for the future.
Al Rajhi
What’s in a name?
As the new guardians of Al Rajhi Bank, our job was to refocus and renew their promise of being a truly Islamic bank that provides real customer service. We also had to make the brand relevant to the broader regional banking market, while maintaining and growing the bank’s loyal following in Saudi Arabia.
We began with the name. It was simply too long and not seen as customer-centric enough. So the first thing we did was to shorten it to Al Rajhi Bank in English and to Masraf Al Rajhi in Arabic. It was a small step, but along with the new icon and typeface, it signalled a new future for the bank.
Al Rajhi
Elevated ranks
We didn’t change the bank itself, but through our work we helped them to fulfil their potential and, for the first time, elevated them to the position of 69th best bank in the world.
“The new personality and image that The Brand Union has created, accurately reflects the bank and its mission, now and into the future.”
Moh’d Aba Alkheil, Marketing and Branding Manager, Al Rajhi Bank
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OSRAM
Exciting lighting solutions
We have been working with OSRAM since 2007, as the lead agency for their corporate and packaging design. During this time we have carried out customer interviews and brand and market assessments to really get to grips with OSRAM’s business. We have led internal trainings and workshops to understand and shape the OSRAM brand from the inside out. Our aim has been to transform OSRAM from simply another light bulb supplier in a crowded marketplace, to a leading provider of exciting lighting solutions.
OSRAM
Standing out from the crowd
We began our work with the entire OSRAM Automotive Range with a period of analysis of existing strategy and visuals, which shaped our packaging design, naming and up-sell decisions. We had the opportunity to create a unified look and feel for OSRAM from scratch, and so we are in a process of redesigning the entire luminaires range and organising it into product families, each with a ‘hero’ product. The new branding and product range now stands out from the competition with emotive and high-tech designs. The use of powerful visuals focuses on the product benefits and the use of advanced technology, to promote OSRAM’s brand values in terms of exciting lighting concepts. The new designs really set OSRAM apart from the crowd.
OSRAM
A hat-trick
The hat-trick of awards that our work for OSRAM has achieved speaks volumes. We were awarded two iF communication design awards for LEDs DECO and SIRIUS Torches in 2010, and in 2011 we won the iF packaging award for the launch of QOD.
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Engagement
Engagement is the process of transforming words on paper into memorable experiences that inspire people, drive understanding, belief and commitment, and create lasting change. It can be summarised into four distinct elements:
1. Creating a compelling story
Turning complex brand or business strategy into a narrative that makes sense to each audience. Making it simple and stirring and ensuring it has life beyond a Powerpoint presentation or brand book.
2. Engaging managers
Ensuring the leaders of the business drive and support the story.
3. Employee voice
Creating interactions between the story and employees so they are actively involved and buy-in to the strategic direction.
4. Integrity
Ensuring the values that underpin the story are integrated into the business and support the desired change.
Engagement
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Fa Nutriskin
Fa NutriSkin – Creation of a New Sub-brand for Europe & CEE
One of the current top trends in the body care market is ‘nutritional cosmetics’, - body care products that have a nourishing effect on the skin. Our long-standing client Henkel was striving to make its mark in this new product category with Fa NutriSkin, Fa’s first sub-brand comprising of an entire product range. We were tasked with developing the concept and design for the range (including shower cream, cream bath, deodorant, body lotion and cream bar) and bringing three distinct product categories – hand, body, and deodorant – under one umbrella brand.
The challenge: Fa is well positioned in consumers’ minds as a brand that offers ultimate feel-good freshness. With NutriSkin, Fa was looking to extend this positioning by highlighting the scientific sophistication of the range, and its nutritional qualities, which needed to be reflected in the brand and packaging designs.
Fa Nutriskin
Bringing NutriSkin to Life
For Fa’s new sub-brand, we created a coherent brand architecture, design concept and packaging design. In order to bring the NutriSkin concept to life, visual cues were taken from both the cosmetics and science category. The silver finishing and high proportion of white communicate intensive care, while the ball icons symbolize the multifunctional performance of the product’s seven nutrients.
Fa Nutriskin
Beyond Freshness & Fragrance
Fa’s innovative body care range is a great success with consumers who are excited by the combination of intensive nourishment, feminine fragrances and multifunctional performance.
“For Fa, NutriSkin represents a new dimension in the body care market, and is leading the way in the deodorant, shower gel and body lotion categories. The NutriSkin brand effectively positions itself as a scientific approach to body care whilst simultaneously reinforcing Fa’s brand claim ‘Feel Fantastic’.” Thomas Geister, International Director Brand Management, Fa
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Fa Nutriskin
by alexparr September 16, 2011
National Lottery
Reinvigorating a national brand
The National Lottery was established in 1986 by the Irish government to raise money for good causes. 20 years on and the brand had grown organically, becoming fragmented and weakened. An evolution was needed to bring the brand up to speed with a fast-changing and contemporary Ireland.
We were approached to carry out a comprehensive brand review to investigate opportunities for reclaiming the core essence of the National Lottery. This meant creating a brand strategy that would deliver on the organisation’s goals of responsibility, fundraising, retaining the current players and attracting younger consumers.
National Lottery
Creating Ireland’s brightest star
We began by developing a masterbrand strategy that would align the National Lottery game portfolio, media channels, beneficiary branding, sponsorship activity and stakeholder engagement. This was supported by a new masterbrand symbol that was used to endorse the main games and tie the National Lottery products together into a cohesive and appealing brand family.
National Lottery
A world-class, iconic and lucky brand
We created a new identity that has been proudly received as more Irish, more appealing to all ages and demographics, and significantly more visible in retail – a world-class, iconic and lucky brand for the future.
The new masterbrand architecture has allowed National Lottery to introduce new games and generate significant increases in sales. The rebrand has also provided opportunities to increase the company’s CSR commitments and reduce its carbon footprint.
The identity we developed took top prize in the Branding & Corporate Identity category at the 2008 Irish Design Effectiveness Awards and a Distinction in the 2009 Global ReBrand 100 awards.
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National Lottery
by alexparr May 6, 2011
Tegra
Creating the Brand to Support Syngenta’s Future Growth
Syngenta is a leading global agribusiness based in Switzerland. In a world where we are challenged to feed a growing population while safeguarding our natural resources, Syngenta’s purpose is “bringing plant potential to life”. Leveraging its expertise in using innovative technologies to help farmers grow more from less, Syngenta developed an integrated rice offer with the ambition to transform rice farming in Asia.
Tegra
Talking Smarter
To bring this offer to life, we collaborated with Syngenta to create the service brand, Tegra™ – one of the first of its kind in a product focused business. As Tegra™ represented a new means to rice farming, the brand needed to change the mindsets of farmers accustomed to farming methods practiced for generations. As an integrated offer, Tegra™ comprised of healthy seedlings development, modern transplanting, and expert agronomy advise to ensure excellent harvests. We positioned Tegra™ as a smarter farming approach designed for rice farmers looking for improved yield performance and greater convenience in the field. So, they experience visible change and feel relieved of uncertainties in planning and realizing the potential of their fields, believing in better lives and futures.
Tegra
Instilling Confidence to Deliver Change
Not only was Tegra™ creating change in rice farming in Asia, but as a new service brand representing a new business, it was also breaking ground within Syngenta. Internal brand engagement was a key component in transforming the way Syngenta viewed brand launch and assimilation:
“Having a brand to hitch our demand creation campaigns to has helped our promoters and customers to identify and understand Syngenta’s integrated rice offer, TegraTM better. The brand engagement workshops in particular played an important role in lifting the confidence of the sales team, clarifying the value proposition with consistent messaging and role playing exercises, and turning participants into confident brand ambassadors.” Ruchika Kapoor, Syngenta, Business Manager
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Consumer Branding
Branding consumer products isn't just about creating innovative packaging design, it’s about understanding the total consumer experience in the retail channel. Delivering impact at 30'and engaging at 3’ drives our approach. Rich consumer insight, together with a clear point of view about the value of a brand to consumers, drives differentiated positioning. This in turn enables us to create engaging and compelling consumer brand design with a measurable return on investment.
Consumer Branding
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Digital Brand Strategy
A digital brand strategy shapes the opportunities and initiatives that build relationships with a brand via digital touchpoints. It engages target groups through the delivery of exceptional digital brand experiences. Our digital brand strategies focus on two key areas:
1. Digital brand expression
Successful digital brand strategy will use digital interfaces to express a brand’s attributes (identity, values, key messages) and positioning, while ensuring the brand promise is delivered through every user interaction and experience.
2. Digital brand engagement
A person develops a relationship with a brand when they are engaged on an emotional level. Through digital channels it is possible to deliver extremely targeted experiences (to the right person, in the right channel, at the right time) which, by being more relevant, generate greater emotional engagement.
Digital Brand Strategy
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Telkom
Revitalising a national institution
Telkom Indonesia is a state-owned telecommunications company, which, with over 25,000 employees, provides a broad range of services from fixed line to network and infocomms. Over the years, Telkom had developed an unwanted reputation for being slow to change, non customer-centric and bureaucratic, and once the market was deregulated, Telkom faced the difficult job of retaining its customer base and modernising its image and range of services. Technological progress in Indonesia has also created new lifestyles, moving people away from the fixed-line services that had been Telkom’s core business for decades. To tackle these challenges, Telkom’s strategy was to transform itself from a telecommunications company into a comprehensive TIME company – Telecommunications, Information, Media and Edutainment –so a fresh, relevant and dynamic brand was critical in achieving this long-term business aim. And so we set to work.
Telkom
A trusted brand in a changing world
Our job was to refresh the Telkom brand by leveraging existing strengths but also infusing distinctive change elements. We developed a brand strategy to put Telkom back into shape by focusing on progressive changes to the company. The new brand would guide all businesses and inspire a modern internal culture. Acknowledging that change can be daunting, but also recognising its benefits, a new brand positioning was developed to inspire Indonesians to find new confidence in Telkom and its commitment to support their lives amidst the changes of a fast-paced technological world. To signal this progressive direction, we created a new identity that would not only represent Telkom’s strategic transformation, but also reflect its nurturing personality. The circle and hand combination portrays a sunrise, to signal new beginnings and change, while being in touch with a world of future opportunity, and reaching out to customers and stakeholders.
Telkom
From identity to action: breeding a new business culture
Refreshing the Telkom brand involved an exciting end-to-end corporate branding project, comprising strategy, design, retail and engagement. The new brand was launched in Indonesia in October 2009 and was very well received. Stakeholders immediately acknowledged their personal appreciation by displaying an open-handed wave or salute, inspired by the icon of the new identity. Therein, the new brand set a major milestone for both Telkom and Indonesia, influencing internal corporate behaviour and
inspiring lives.
“Our new brand strategy and architecture have been set by The Brand Union based on their in-depth research and evaluation. The new brand positioning and values are on their way to becoming a new culture that will transform the company.” – Muhammad, Telkom Indonesia, AVP Corporate Communications
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Strategy
All great brands have a centre of gravity to which they always return. For us Brand = Reputation, which is enduring and operates as a central organising principle closely aligned to a business’s strategy.
A brand is about everything that business is and does. This requires us to have a very inclusive approach, understanding all stakeholders for whom a brand exists and all of that brand’s touchpoints.
For each project we build a powerful brand lens and brand principles which inform all phases of our work from Insight, through Definition, to Activation. Strategic tools such as POSITIONING SPECTRUM™, 3 C EVALUATION, BRAND MODEL and MESSAGING FRAMEWORKS help us to achieve tangible outcomes with solid strategic foundations.
Maybank
Plastic fantastic
The introduction of the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip to Singapore in 2010 gave banks there an opportunity to redesign and relaunch their card products and seize extra market share. In a hugely competitive retail-banking sector no segment was more challenging or critical than students and young PMEBs, who also represented the greatest opportunity for lifetime loyalty and value. However, this audience was also the most fickle and demanding in their choice of plastic card.
And so we were tasked with creating a design for Maybank’s new eVibes credit card. The challenge: in a sea of lookalike credit cards with undifferentiated benefits and brand communications, our design would play a key role in Maybank standing out from the crowd and appealing to the values and tastes of younger consumers.
Maybank
A category-breaking approach to card design
A visual audit of the market revealed that the approach of most banks to card design for this segment was narrow and self-referential, and that young consumers deserved something that celebrated their life-stage and individuality, rather than seeing it as a stepping stone to conformist adulthood.
Our approach was not just to design a card-face, but to seamlessly reflect design cues from products in other categories that our audience found desirable and inspiring. It would be a revolt against over-designed, patterned cards that dictate a 'youthful persona’, instead we would design a card that offered a different perspective, challenging both category conventions and existing production capabilities.
Maybank
New look, new voice
The result for eVibes was a radically different card design that stood out from the crowd and invited younger consumers to interact with their bank in a completely new way. The cues taken from modern design classics ensured that the design would remain both timeless and cutting edge. Inspired by unique contemporary design, Maybank used its new card as a platform to speak to young adult consumers in a relevant and more involved way, using branded digital displays employed in destination shopping malls across Singapore. With our help, Maybank was suddenly talking the same language as this critically important target audience.
“They're great to work with. There’s great meeting of minds between agency and client. They put in a lot of thought into the design. They are able to provide effective solutions ... just when you thought you've seen a great idea, they surprise you with an even better one!” – Israel Chai, Head Marketing Communications, Maybank
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Innovation
We have developed a variety of proprietary approaches, for example BRANDLAB™, which help us facilitate and deliver breakthrough, brand-led innovation. Success is defined at the outset of each project and we use our Brand Compass Check, a synthesis of brand and business objectives, to track this throughout the process. With the brand and its customers at the heart of each project we connect with relevant market experts to help develop powerful insights (IDEALAB). This combines with realtime visualisation (OPTILAB) and feasibility checking (ACTILAB) to form part of our simple, yet robust, approach, leading to greater speed to market.
Innovation
by alexparr September 16, 2011
Electric Ireland
Engaging the energy vision
Ireland’s national electricity supply company, ESB Customer Supply (part of ESB Group), approached us with a clear challenge: to create a new brand identity to reflect its vision to compete in a newly deregulated energy market.
To achieve this we focused on the ethos underpinning their strategic vision of fusion: ‘our energy, with the customer’. This ethos, optimism and transformation to an energy solutions business are expressed in the visual identity and reflected in the market strapline ‘Ireland has a new energy’. Comprehensive guidelines and a brand asset management site support the new identity and brand world.
Electric Ireland
Our energy combined
We worked closely with the Electric Ireland brand team to build a powerful presence in the marketplace for the new brand Electric Ireland, to leverage the trusted heritage of ESB and to evoke an optimistic future.
The design system is built on a number of unique elements (or kit of parts) to create a compelling and consistent suite of communications with customers. We created a brandmark that uses a clear and simple lettering style to present the brand as being helpful, accessible and straightforward. The bright cyan ‘Electric’ blue creates distinction for the Electric Ireland brand in the local market. The arc within the logo represents the focus on providing a wide choice of innovative products and services. The bright spark is an expression of the brand promise and embraces the optimism Electric Ireland has for innovation and a sustainable future.
Electric Ireland
New identity, new horizon
The new visual identity system provides the necessary tools and direction to implement the brand successfully across the business. While the new advertising launch campaign was key, two of their most important customer interactions – a simplified and redesigned billing statement and a redesigned fleet of home service vehicles – were fast tracked.
We developed a bespoke branded design solution for the new Electric Ireland building using the natural landscape of our island and its significance in natural generation of energy, combined with the energy of the workforce to express the diversity and benefits of energy to people’s lives. The experience is a colourful and optimistic environment that supports the brand character and enables both staff and visitors to have a better understanding of Electric Ireland customers’ needs and the engaging ways in which they relate to the brand.
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