So, how does the Gulf’s own brand consultancy celebrate its first decade? Well, by upgrading its identity of course!
In the ten years that Brand Lounge have been helping Gulf-based businesses build their brands a lot has changed. We’ve seen digital disruption, the penny has finally dropped in the business world that brands are central to their success and Gulf businesses have started to make a name for themselves on the bigger global stage. Brand Lounge’s branding philosophy has also found favour in more distant markets with major projects in Africa and new opportunities emerging in Europe. So with ten years under their belt, they felt it was time to re-affirm their position relative to the new business paradigm.
“We stripped ourselves down and re-assembled our brand as we would for any of our clients”. Says Brand Lounge Founder and CEO Hasan Fadlallah. The result has been a more tightly defined proposition and an up-to-date identity that reflects that.
“We’ve always tried to avoid being bracketed with the design shops and advertising agencies who design logos and make out this is what branding is about” continued Fadlallah, “We’ve always been strategy led. We design brand identities and logos of course, but our focus is aligning entire businesses behind an idea that resonates with the sector that offers them the greatest opportunity. Brands drive everything that happens in a modern organisation – structures, processes, products and services – it’s no longer the other way around – and we help our clients transform into businesses fit for the new business paradigm”.
Brand Lounge’s evolution has seen them, among other things, riding the digital wave. “Digital isn’t about automating what you have always done, but doing completely new things that you never dreamed were possible” added Fadlallah. “We help businesses understand that and make it work for them”.
Brand Lounge’s longstanding promise is that they’ll help businesses leverage their differences. Standing out, being different is essential in today’s busy marketplace. “Brand Lounge has always been different. We underline that in our strap-line ‘The point of differentiation’. However, differentiation takes on a new relevance in the new digital age and our new logo represents our appreciation of this”.
The consultancy have taken the bold step of incorporating the “&” symbol in their logo. In digital culture such abbreviations are universal. But does that threaten legibility?
“We research our solutions, so we know that our audience – managers of contemporary businesses – read our name without missing a beat”. Says Fadlallah, “We’ve also made our ampersand different and uniquely ours by incorporating the colour palette that we’ve always used and which has come to represent the five-stage process we apply to our projects. And we’ve built the line ‘The Point Of Differentiation’ into our logo for the first time. After all, it’s what we are about. We really feel our new logo says a lot about who we are, plus, it’s bold and it’s different. Just as it should be” concluded Fadlallah.
Visit Brand Lounge Website here.