ORRO
Creating a brand to encapsulate a new future for three brands
THE BRIEF
Three IT businesses (Customtec, Comscentre and Mach Technology) were being merged to create a major new player, intended for public listing. The
board of the merged company asked us to create a brand that would:
- unite all business units and inspire the team;
- create a strong, established brand within 1-3 years;
- position it within the right peer group for optimum valuation; and
- allow for it to acquire more
businesses in the future.
Partner agencies
Three Scoops
Brandwell
Scope
Brand strategy
Naming
Brand Architecture
Stakeholder Engagement
Verbal brand
Cultural brand
Brand architecture
The legacy stakeholders came into the process with understandable protectiveness for their own brands. Nevertheless, we recommended the new company should operate as one new brand. This would unite the teams of the incoming businesses, enable faster development of brand awareness, and demonstrate a focus on the future (which the board considered would improve valuation).
Futuristically human
Competitors positioned themselves as being customer-focussed, but most used confusing jargon and cluttered
designs that caused information overload. They also favoured colours which can feel cold and unfriendly.
We saw an opportunity for the new brand to build distinctiveness through warmer colours and simpler, more inclusive language. To be a brand that was an everyday reminder that “our job is to connect people, not machines”.
We crafted a distinctive brand personality that encapsulated a softer, more emotional engagement with tech. A collection of attributes that we summarised as “Futuristically human”.
This came to life visually through a palette of purples, pinks and yellows, and imagery that combined lifestyle photography with imaginative visions of people immersed in virtual worlds.
NAMING
A name for tomorrow
Finally, this business needed a name. After a brainstorm that considered more than 900 options, the board chose our recommendation of “orro”.
A shortening of “tomorrow”, the name suggested this business worked in the future. It also felt friendly – fun to say and pleasing on the eye with its compact mirrored letters. And as it spelled the same in both directions, it also suggested the smoothness with which orro connected all areas of its clients’ operations.
