Understanding humans through data: a brand identity
Rebranding our organisation to help us reach our goals
Authors: Caroline Martin, Adrian Jankowiak
Disclaimer: this piece is a meta-analysis of sorts, and more likely to appeal to those interested in branding, communications, and design!
Why rebrand?
- We’re growing and expanding to new geographies and markets.
- We want to be easier to work with, both internally and externally.
- We want our brand to highlight our value and work.
Since 2011 (when our founder, Johannes, paid $8 to receive some pretty awful branding options) until 2019, our brand has seen many iterations.
Today, Busara counts a talented team of 150 staff working across 5 markets. Our growth has been increasing steadily; we have built a global community of transparency and rigor in behavioral science, as well as developed many exciting partnerships with private and public institutions.
As we continue to expand internationally, we want our brand to match our ambitions. Our focus and mission statement will always remain “to advance and apply behavioral science in pursuit of poverty alleviation”, and we are moving closer to that goal: with an office in India and projects in Peru and Fiji, we now work beyond the African continent.
And, while we are working actively to undertake new research that pushes the boundaries of our field, we also know that great content is even greater combined with design: readability improves, the output is more memorable and our clients are, we hope, more likely to enjoy the experience.
How did we approach the rebrand?
A behaviorally-informed process
We are an organisation of Behavioral Scientists who focus on practicing locally-relevant science. We are also a community of driven, committed, at-times-over-zealous and sometimes-meticulous-to-a-fault professionals. As you may expect, our rebrand story is no different.
We collected data about our brand from both internal and external sources from November 2018 to April 2019, after which we studied our market and best practices in branding for B2B organisations like ours. An overview of our research and findings are presented below:
Findings
After this extensive 5 month study, we finally know ourselves better, and can put an analytical finger on our insights.
We found out that:
- We do not fit the standard of a “traditional non-profit”, with many of our staff placing higher than average value on personal growth and career motivation.
- We also don’t fit into the “traditional consultancy” box, with high levels of public sector motivation and pro-sociality.
In addition to this, we uncovered aspects of our organisation’s “personality”, and categorized all our results into 4 main themes:
This data serves as a good reflection of where we are, today. But in order to plan for tomorrow and meet our board-mandated 3-year strategy, we identified elements we want our brand to convey in the future. This signalled the start of the brand redesign process.
Yes, until this point, it hadn’t even started.
How to start a rebrand
Having completed the preliminary research, our talented Creative Lead and Design Manager, Micheal, set about formalizing our brand brief, which included all aspects of our identity, illustrated (in part) below.
In order to avoid tunnel vision and to benefit from the perspective of experts entirely external to our brand and market, we worked with Nairobi Design Week throughout the process. We agreed on the underlying imperative: to have a flexible visible identity, one which operates more as a system than a strict guideline, which can adapt to different situations and even appeal to different people or markets.
What is the future?
Presenting the new brand
The prior research and in-depth iterative process enabled us to develop the central concept for our brand:
Watch our video below to learn about our new brand and supporting materials:
Our goal is to ensure Busara has a consistent brand, with a clear identity and value proposition. This will happen over time, so you will see our new brand roll-out over the next few days, weeks and months!
Our brand, applied
Our brand and all branded materials are created on a 12x12 grid which enables us to work on many different scales, from an icon to a country map, as illustrated here. With flexibility as our founding principle, our brand can live in a dynamic way and grow over time.
As the brand is implemented by our staff, we have created tools to enhance the adaptability of the materials for different uses, with various templates, new photography, vibrant colours and a refreshed voice. To ensure easier and faster application, we have selected a single font powered by Google, Muli, for both headings and body copy. In light of this new brand reveal, we will be updating our materials over the next few months as well as deploying new products. Indeed, this is a brand which reflects its organisation: it is constantly moving and growing.
We look forward to creating new content that serves clients and partners, and seeing this brand identity adapt over time!
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