A company with purpose - and a modern logo.
Here's a recent example. Before I joined Liquid I knew that the first thing I'd need to do was to work on ensuring that our brand story (some people call it an “Origin Story”) was redrafted to be strategic, positioning the company at the forefront of pan-African technology. I used the company founder as a narrator, lending authenticity through the perspective of human endeavour. After spending weeks talking with the senior management team and discussing our corporate ambition, I redefined our brand essence to “Building Africa’s Digital Future”, with each word holding poignancy and meaning. This purpose statement was adopted and now guides all communications across all platforms and media.
Along with this change came a raft of knock on effects, including a set of core brand behaviours, a tone of voice and a set of imagery that we were all able to identify with. We set about building a brand guidelines and terms of reference for product, technology and industry fora.
Building brand then becomes an ongoing project of adapting the ways we work to keep this promise and maintain this consistent message to our customers. It's my view that if you're in business, you're in marketing and the brand is the linch-pin that holds this all together.
The challenge that most businesses fail to take on is how they build brand deep into their operations, by ensuring that brand managers and marketers are allowed to impact every element of the business (how invoices are presented, how receptionists greet people, how we recruit staff and incentivise them to stay, how the office is laid out and where we're located etc.).
Only once this is all in motion does the commonly misunderstood brand (the logo) get a look in. Here's how this was changed in 2014.
The old fibre splay logo was simplified, cleaned and modernised for the digital market.
Here are some branding fundamentals that I try work to,
- whoever tells the best story, wins;
- right brain beats left brain;
- people trust people, not facts;
- empathy and engagement bests rational and logical.
- So show, don’t tell.
Quickly, this also meant a logo refresh to match a contemporary image and a more usable image for digital media. Also, it led naturally to the creation of brand convictions, a tone of voice and new brand guidelines.