Making process visible

Foundation session, Brand Profiling, brand identity and brand narrative, digital design.

Very occasionally the ability to define and understand a business and the value it creates for its market just eludes us. It escapes casual definition. The value remains steadfastly resistant to discovery.

On connecting with the founder and CEO of emerging technology company Innodev we learnt quickly that it had been a problem for them also. How to describe what it is they really did?. How to define and communicate the value they created for their market? This issue was compounded by the fact the business was successful. So we could ask – what was the problem? Put simply it didn’t have the awareness around the workings of the success and therefore it wasn’t in control.

Through a whole of management Foundation Session led by Senior strategist Robert Debelle, the team over two hours contributed their unique perspectives, debated high-level process and protocols and formed an information set of some depth. Following this, working through a collaborative Brand Profiling process we captured a 360º perspective of the business and its market. This work detailed the positioning of the business, the state of its market and key competitors and began to pinpoint the value generated through its services and products. With this information set we worked through a synthesis process and mapped links across the business generating patterns of meaning.

We found one primary, underlying factor. An industry that is so manifestly complex in its day-to-day work relies heavily on short hand communication around the work. Over time the shorthand becomes entrenched or jargonised and remains largely untested, becoming attached to a range of generalised meanings and evolving over time with industry trends. Through the insight gained in the collaborative work with client and team we were able to characterise the business, its operations and the value generated through its work for clients and packaged this into a condensed set of messages that formed a compelling brand narrative. The key to this was to ensure it was broad and encompassing so that it resonated at scale across clients and sectors.

Our work before brand was critical to resolving a clear mandate for the brand identity. With a solid platform and singular vision for the business and team in place we moved through the work on brand – resolving a simple, contemporary typographic mark. As a technology business Innodev works almost exclusively within a space that lacks definition and visible, tangible outputs. With this in mind, and to ensure a compelling communication suite, we recognised the need for a tangible symbol that could embody the strength, energy and intent of the company and its people. This powerful visual device took the form of a leopard. Which quickly became the Innodev leopard. The importance of this symbol is not just in the visual form of the brand but in the personality and culture of the business. The tech warriors locked to their screens in a range of dark places and backrooms were instantly represented – they had a face and a presence. And it was cool.

The Innodev brand project was a case study in the value of generating a deep and nuanced understand of the internal and external landscape of the business. Brand is a tool and as such requires a function for it to go to work. The Innodev brand has generated a sweeping consensus amongst its team and let loose a powerful and simple brand narrative that made sense of the business and the value it creates.