Practicing what
you preach
Day in, day out, we help businesses to craft their brand identity and drive commercial success. But what happens when you turn the tables and begin this process on yourself?
2018 was the right time for BEAR to put itself under the microscope: it was time for a new look. We’d spent the past 18 years adding real value to other businesses, through branding and identity. Yet, in that time we’d rarely taken a step back to explore whether our own brand was representative of who we are.
Starting from scratch
Analysing yourself is no mean feat: we had to separate ourselves from what we’ve known for the past 18 years. Were we successfully representing everything we now stand for? Did our identity portray us as a forward-thinking brand communications agency?
Looking at ourselves with fresh eyes was liberating. We began the exact process we recommend to our clients, to find the real heart of our business, the reason we all get out of bed. Find this, and the rest always falls into place.
Our new branding is built upon the core concept of getting to the heart of businesses and affecting real positive difference. We experienced – as always – a few too many iterations but once we’d nailed it, well, that was it – the new BEAR was well underway.
Cutting to the chase
A popular phrase within the BEAR team, ‘cut to the chase’ has now been taken from the studio floor to stand centre-stage on our new homepage. Cutting to the chase represents exactly what we do as an agency, what we’ve got tons of experience doing.
It does not mean cutting corners; in fact, it’s the very opposite. We deep-dive into your business and discover exactly what you and your customers need without any delay or fluff. We unearth your businesses’ key drivers and differentiators and execute them through quality branding and communications to drive commercial success.
Taking it to the next level
Our logo links back to ‘cut to the chase’. After many tweaks, we flipped the ‘A’ of BEAR by 90 degrees to represent a moving arrow, nodding to our constant forward-thinking nature and keeping with the repetition of arrows across our site that demonstrate business growth through design.
Take our Music Licence case study: by amplifying simplicity for customers and injecting a much-needed personality there’s an immediate credibility from the get go. A few months ago, there was nothing for customers to connect with and now there is a product with a clear identity, tone of voice and offering… it’s speaking to hundreds of thousands of businesses.
Giving the green blue light
Even our brand colour was a carefully considered affair. It’s no longer acceptable to choose red, or perhaps green? With retina display devices becoming more and more available, brand colour can more expressive. We didn’t just want to produce the blank canvas sight so many agencies adopt. We wanted to stick our necks out with a colour that cuts through and, moving forwards, it’s about design for device over print.
We are really proud of what we have achieved, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There will be regular updates with our content and in particular new project case studies, watch this space!
Author: Roberto D’Andria. Owner | Strategic Creative Director