Eastern Europeans have been steeping dried fruit in hot water as a warming drink for centuries. We worked with Piramida in Kiev to modernise the drink into a handy tea-bag format for a cosmopolitan audience who is looking for an alternative to tea.

“The traditional drink’s folksy origins suggest an outdoor-oriented and wholesome character.  In the UK or US, these attributes would have likely translated into earthy illustrations and muted tones. But these memes look less attractive in Eastern Europe and a more urban approach was required” explains Niqui Harwood, designer on the project.

The selected design for the identity incorporates symbols from nature and fruit without feeling twee and traditional. The result is a set of ques that support the fruit and wholesome messages and appeals to the aspiring urbanite.

Time to catch up on new work with our teams. We’ve been working in the UK with Scott Wilson – a large engineering and design firm. Our teams have been working in Russia with the much loved national retailer Gloria Jeans. Finally, we have been working across three continents to re-brand the world’s largest Islamic bank, Al Baraka. There are the usual fun bits  and a new regular piece in the top Civil Branding posts we’ve written this season. Enjoy!

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Some engineering projects take your breath away. Scott Wilson is one of the oldest and most successful engineering companies in the UK. They employ 6,000 staff across 80 locations around the world.

The firm began as a partnership and has been transitioning into a PLC structure, shifting emphasis to customer-facing units. This shift required a new vision to help make sense of the change and continue along their trajectory to become a top five global engineering and design company.

Gillian Garner, partner at Brandinstinct adds ‘In visiting the various outfits and in facilitating several workshops, it became clear that team working has always been at the heart of the Scott Wilson story. The new vision is helping the former partner groups consolidate the units and work as bigger teams across geographies and disciplines.’

In anticipation of launching the new brand, we also evolved the brand identity to better support the new ambitious strategy. Print concepts were prepared and a new website is in the making.

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From our first meeting with Adnan Yousif, president and chief executive of the group, we agreed that a new brand will signal the continuing consolidation of the cultures, processes and products of the dozen different banks in the group.

The culture of the group management team is conciliatory, so the approach for consolidating the strategy of the group took on a highly consultative nature. Leaders from banks that had been operating successfully in markets for over thirty years needed to be brought into the vision development for the converged bank.

“The time and effort we spent listening, adapting and inching toward a shared vision paid off in spades when we needed to quickly implement the brand. Once agreement on strategy was reached across the twelve markets, we were able to implement at lightning speed” says Aaron Shields, partner.

One of the major dilemmas we tackled was bringing the 30 year old Islamic banking narrative up to date without diluting the original values that emanate from Islamic texts. Ethical and religious principles were what attracted staff and customers to the bank. Yet, no matter how much scholars argue over the details, all Islamic banks tend toward the same principles and therefore appear relatively undifferentiated to customers as a group. We needed to stand out from other Islamic banks, but being ‘more Islamic’ than other banks was not the solution.

‘Partnership’ was selected as the subject for the new narrative, both for its nod to participation-style values and for its forward-thinking notions. ‘Your Partner Bank’ resonated with both staff and customers. We found the new story to tell and management was eager to begin telling it.

In response, we created the launch campaigns and guided the production of all launch materials with local agencies. We continue to work with Al Baraka launching the brand in each of its twelve markets.

The new brand is being launched consecutively beginning with Bahrain, South Africa and Lebanon. Staff feel immense pride in the new brand and there has been a big increase in new dialogues with retail and commercial customers. In all, the brand has been a big success.

Thanks to the financial crisis, more conservative and more ethical banks like Islamic banks and cooperative banks are thriving. Al Baraka is taking advantage of this golden age by continuing to expand their presence in Asia and Europe.
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Founded in 1988, Gloria Jeans became the leader of kids and teenagers fashion apparel in Russia. They’ve grown rapidly, including during recessionary times, and have been active in global markets since 2003.

Key members of our team have a new-media background so we knew exactly how to launch the first version of the fashion website. We also emphasised transferring our knowledge to our client, believing it is crucial for brands to be able to manage their on-going dialogue and interaction with their audiences independently.

The first step was a concise planning stage, focusing on information architecture. We helped scale the team’s needs in a way that allowed a quick launch but also created a platform that could continually develop at the live-state once it’s on the Web.

We created a design that is consistent with the heritage of the brand but also seeks to take advantage of the opportunities the web platform provides to innovate and delight. The look & feel of the site is consistent, but it is designed to change seasonally to complement the changes of the “fast fashion” merchandise and to engage the brand’s many fans.

Finally, for the often dreaded development stage, we partnered with open source wizards Linnovate. The benefits of the open source platform, Drupal, enabled the creation of a highly scalable site with a powerful content management system at a fraction of the time and cost of similar endeavours taking the propriety software route. We’re excited to see where they take it.

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It’s not every day that you get to redesign a whole new family cards for a bank. The new cards for Budapest Bank communicate the identity we recently designed in a monolithic but fun way.  The logo and key identity elements feature prominently on all the cards no matter whether they are for entry consumers like students or for high net worth clients. We designed a total of 13 cards and all have been launched in the Hungarian market.

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We have been working with the largest company in Palestine, advising on new strategic directions for the brand as they welcome competition into the market. As one might imagine, operating a telecommunications company in Palestine has unique challenges. Telecom masts have been detained at the airport for months while illegal competition from Israel mobile operators perforates the border. The West Bank and Gaza are more or less completely cut off from one another, making travel and moving of goods and services impractical. There are interesting security dimensions that harm and help business. Did we mention there is war on?

The team at Paltel take these incredible challenges in their stride and are focused on growth, community and innovation. The same people who are leading the company are leading social change in the community and for the nation. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the leading minds in Palestine, who are vocal in business and the political sphere. We will continue to advise them on their brand as competition enters the market.

After five years in residence at The Tea Building, we have upped camp and moved into Sapling House on Worship Street. While still naked (without signage), it’s a lovely four-storey Georgian building on what used to be referred to as the ‘Old Hog’s Road’. Worship Street is the old dividing line between the civilisation of the old ’square mile’ and the region of uncivilised lands north of the city. We’ll let you guess which side of the road we’ve found our new home on.
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While there is definitely a down-side to this downturn, the purge will be healthy for the industry. In many ways, we have been living in times of excess and as a friend of mine once observed: “I have seen many more companies die of gluttony than starvation”.  Gluttons are now leaving the table and this can only be seen as a good thing.

For our clients, times of turmoil represent great opportunity for the small percentage of companies that have the bravado and cash to make bold moves in the market. Specifically, times of great challenge are a leveller of sorts for competition and embolden boards for taking major decisions which can have a major affect on the business. Many companies shrink away and adopt risk adverse positions due to previous exposure or perceived harm in taking action. However, when the vast majority of companies in an industry are not taking risks, this aversion lowers competitive barriers and increases the reward for differentiation from challenger brands. 

Ironically, it’s the big brands that have the most to lose during times of strife since large organisations typically act with the most risk-avoiding behaviour in times of uncertainty. Challenger brands that are experienced enough and have the customer at the centre of their focus are at great advantage when times are uncertain and the environment is changeable. 

Despite a palatable drop in UK activity, Brandinstinct’s growth remained on track thanks to increased activity in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We worked in over 20 countries this year, racking up air miles, new friends and calories.  

The closer we came to 2009, the more our brand strategy and engagement services were called for. Clients are logically focusing less on the big launches and more on creating powerful strategies for their brands, making their teams more customer-focused and preparing them for future expansion. 

Our engagement practice continues to be the highest growth area for our business. We are involved with several large-scale change programmes that are not running beside a branding effort. Many clients are taking advantage of this hectic time to regroup and focus on the inside of the business. 

On a lighter note, the Brandinstinct team will begin the New Year in a new office space. We are moving from the ultra modern parking garage feel of The Tea Building to the intimately more human Georgian feel of Sapling House. The journey is a quarter of a mile and 200-years of architectural history. We are occupying the full four floors and will be having a housewarming party in early 2009. 

Finally, 2009 will also see the launch of a new not-for-profit effort by Brandinstinct aimed at raising awareness among marketing professionals about using brand communication as a tool for positive change in society. You can see the beta version of the blog, download the foundational paper and research, and get involved at www.civilbranding.com. You will be hearing more about the effort throughout 2009. In the meantime, good luck with the year ahead and we look forward to talking with you again soon.

With best wishes

Aaron and Gillian