Gold CityWealth Brand & Marketing Awards
Gold Transform Awards
Silver DBA Design Effectiveness Awards
A new brand has no equity to fall back on. No history. No reputation. Everything it needs to achieve, it has to achieve from scratch, often on day one.
That is the challenge of new brand work. It is also its greatest opportunity. With no legacy to protect and no internal politics about what is sacred, you can build exactly what the brief demands. But only if you get the foundations right.
We have created new brands for prizes, think-tanks, emergency services and campaigns, each starting from a blank page and each needing to establish credibility immediately.
What makes a new brand succeed
The biggest mistake in new brand work is rushing to the visual. Organisations often come to us knowing what they want to look like before they know what they want to stand for. The two are not the same, and confusing them is expensive.
Our approach starts with positioning: who are you, what do you believe, and why should anyone take you seriously on day one? The answers to those questions drive everything, the name if there is not one yet, the visual identity, the tone of voice, the way you launch.
A new brand built on clear foundations does not just look good at launch. It holds. We have brands still unchanged nearly twenty years after we created them.
When you need a new brand
01 / Launching something entirely new
A new organisation, prize, initiative or service. Whatever it is, it needs a name, an identity and a reason for people to care. We build that from the ground up.
02 / Spinning off a division or service
When part of an existing organisation becomes its own entity, it needs a brand of its own. We help it step out from its parent and stand alone in the market.
03 / Creating a new entity from a merger
When two organisations merge and the result is genuinely something new, a new brand is often the right answer. It signals a clean slate without carrying the weight of either predecessor.
04 / Building credibility in a new market
Entering a new geography, sector or audience requires a brand that establishes trust and authority quickly. We build for immediate impact and long-term credibility.
What we do
Brand strategy and positioning
Establishing who you are, what you stand for, and why your audience should care, before we touch the identity.
Brand naming
From the name of the organisation to sub-brands and service lines. Names that are distinctive, ownable and built to last.
Brand identity
Logo, typography, colour and the full visual system, built for impact from day one and designed to hold for years.
Tone of voice
How you speak to your audience, from your first press release to your website to your internal communications.
Websites
Website strategy, design and build, ready to launch alongside the brand.
Here is what new brand work looks like in practice.
World’s Best School Prizes
A new prize with no history, no reputation and a field dominated by well-funded, long-established rivals. Our brief: create a brand that could establish immediate global credibility and give T4 Education’s new initiative the authority it needed from day one. In year one, entries hit 1,000 against a target of 750. The Prizes reached 463 million social media users globally. Headline sponsors included Accenture and American Express. The Philippines government adopted the best practice of a winning school and rolled it out to 1.2 million learners. DBA Design Effectiveness Award winner.
European Council on Foreign Relations
A bold new think-tank founded in 2007 by Mark Leonard as part of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, entering a crowded market and needing the world to take it seriously from day one. Our brief: create a brand identity and website that gave ECFR immediate authority. ECFR was named Best New Think Tank in the World in 2009 and 2010 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go-To Think-Tanks report, the most authoritative ranking in the field. It has since won three Prospect Magazine Think Tank of the Year awards, grown to offices in seven European capitals plus Washington DC, and built a council of more than 300 European leaders. Eighteen years on, the identity has never been redesigned.
Saudi Air Ambulance
Saudi Red Crescent invested in 30 new helicopters and an Airbus for international relief work to create a world-class air ambulance service, and needed a brand to match. Our brief: name the service, define the brand vision and create an identity capable of establishing trust immediately across a complex, high-stakes environment. We created the name, positioning, identity, liveries, uniforms, helipads and internal communications from scratch. Brand vision: ‘Safeguarding futures.’ ‘The new name and branding positions us as a modern organisation that people can trust.’ Dr Muwaffaq Al-Bayouk, CEO, Saudi Red Crescent.
Frequently asked questions
How long does creating a new brand take?
A complete new brand programme, from strategy through to identity, guidelines and launch assets, typically takes four to six months. If there is also a website to build, allow six to nine months. Shorter timelines are possible for organisations with an urgent launch date, and we are experienced at working at pace without compromising the quality of the thinking.
Do you help with naming?
Yes. Naming is one of the most important and most underestimated parts of building a new brand. We work with organisations to develop names that are distinctive, available, and built for the long term, names that work legally, digitally and culturally across the markets they need to operate in.
What if we already have a name?
No problem. We can work with an existing name and focus entirely on building the strategy, identity and voice around it. Having the name already decided removes one significant variable and can make the process faster.
How do we know the brand will last?
The brands that last are the ones built on a clear, honest understanding of what the organisation stands for, not what it wants to project. We invest heavily in getting that understanding right at the start. ECFR’s identity is still unchanged nearly twenty years after we created it. The World’s Best School Prizes brand was still driving global impact years after launch. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.
