New Brand Strategy, New Logo
As the year ends, satis&fy AG is starting afresh with a new brand strategy, an updated logo and a new brand promise: “We are trusted with bringing the most ambitious ideas to life. Worldwide.” The company wants to extend and improve its customer reach, accelerate growth and stand apart from competitors with this new branding.
In a bid to present satis&fy as a global brand, the enterprise is retiring its sun logo and slogan, “The true colours of events,” after more than 25 years of service. The color bar, a CI visual since 2015, will no longer feature in the company’s business collateral.
Old identity outgrown
“Our roots in event technology and exhibit construction run deep, but we have evolved in recent years with our customers’ projects. This development prompted us to reconsider our positioning and rephrase our brand promise with wording that is part of our vision statement. We have been rendering far more than the usual event services with our business model, the one-stop-solution, for a long time now. We combine these services with innovative trends such as virtual reality, 3D staging and new digital developments, as well as conceptual and creative services,” says satis&fy CEO Nico Ubenauf. The company has also branched out into many new business lines such as retail shopfitting, brand experience support, and location management. It also has strong allies on its side with SPACES, Cyberhoist and Habegger AG. “We have outgrown our old identity,” says Ubenauf. The company has had to adjust to addressing a wider target group. “Today, we talk to event agencies, but we also communicate with location operators, architects, retailers, designers and end customers,” says Ubenauf, commenting on the company’s extended reach. The CEO believes the ability to make the right offer for every customer group is essential. “We want to play to our strengths for every target group.” After so many years with the same design, the time was right for a facelift with a new visual that would launch and accompany the enterprise’s transition to an international player in live communication. Ubenauf also considers a uniform appearance across the group to be very important. “We speak with one voice, no matter where we happen to be in the world, which why we have just one global corporate design. We are, after all, one brand.”
A magnetic brand
The restyled brand underscores satis&fy’s new identity with a confident flourish. Timeless, clear and universal, this design goes to enable the company to retell its brand story. It will continue to bracket a large range of services. The visual can readily accommodate further services, should the company wish to integrate or add more later. Its designers went to great pains to ensure it would work in all conceivable offline and online contexts. “We have liberated the logo from the figurative mark and tagline. The ‘90s-look sun logo had become a bit too unwieldy for external communication, and it no longer reflected how we see ourselves. It’s been a long time since we were a lighting company,” says Katrin Fougeray, who heads up Brand, Marketing & Communication at satis&fy. The slogan has been divorced from the visual because the term ‘events’ falls short when it comes to describing what satis&fy actually does. Much the same applies to the color bar in the logo. “Black and white figure prominently in our new corporate identity. Colors will remain part of our look, but with a revamped scheme set in a new context designed to lend our brand a definitive character,” says Fougeray. Other design elements will gradually emerge in the company’s marcom.
In-sourced design
All of this – the new logo, font and color scheme – was developed in its entirety by an in-house team. Now that it has been launched, the new logo will gradually appear on all relevant platforms as the old logo fades from view over the next few months. The brand management team at satis&fy expects all subsidiaries to have transition to the global look by spring of 2020. Efforts to adapt the company’s website and social media channels are underway.