How a small group of in-house product designers killed Cabify's corporate brand and made it purple
Looking at Cabify's new purple brand, it's hard to remember what it once looked like. I don't know if that's a measure of success, but to rebrand a company in such a way that people forget what you used to look like, is at least a good start.
Like with most startups, the first logo and design kind of happen organically, without too much thought as none of the founders are designers, says product designer René Galindo:
But as Cabify expanded we started noticing different city’s doing their own kind of branding, using different patterns, different shades of colors, and there was no dedicated designers like there are now.
However, the main reason why Cabify needed a new brand design was because of the perception, or the misperception of the startup, according to René:
The brand spoke of a cold and distant service, it seemed super exclusive, corporate and very expensive, even though it's cheaper than a taxi. We needed to make the brand more relatable!
Risking it, going in-house!
The original idea was hiring a branding agency to do the redesign, like most tech companies that raises multi million funding rounds do.
They were presented with several ideas from a couple of agencies but was left with a feeling that nobody really understood the product and the vision they had.
René thought they could do a better job in-house:
We love our product, and use Cabify a lot. We felt that we understood the essence of the brand much better than an agency
So they went for it:
Me and another designer pitched our crazy idea to the management team and they actually went along with it. Most people thought we used an agency or that we have a huge team of designers, but in the beginning we we’re just a couple of people.
They later teamed up with a graphic designer from Barcelona and did everything from logo, to colors and illustrations inside Cabify.
It was really a rebranding through the eyes of product designers. We started the whole process with how the logo would look on the app (René Galindo).
Why purple?
If three in-house product designers doing the rebranding wasn't crazy enough, a few people raised some doubts when René came back and showed them the purple colored logo they had chosen.
A few executives and investors actually said they liked the old logo better, but the majority was very supportive of the changes.
He goes on:
I know some people find our color choice a bit odd, but if you come to our offices you'll see that it makes totally sense. Purple is a bright, cheerful color that represents the people inside Cabify.
According to René it was obviously also vital to be very different from their main competitors, Uber who owns the black/greenish color and taxi's that uses yellow and orange.
From cars to helicopters
But it wasn’t only what Cabify director of product and design David Smyth once called “a cold and generic brand” that led to the changes, there was a also business incentives that led to the new design decision, for example the fact that the company recently announced a funding round worth €100 million.
There was definitely a race to get the new brand design done before announcing any big news.
The startup is in the process of going beyond the service of providing private drivers. Cabify wants to be a provider of all kinds of transportation, they recently started offering eco-taxis in Madrid and are already offering delivery in Madrid, Lima, Mexico City and a few more cities.
René also mentions an experiment where they are offering a helicopter ride from the airport in Mexico City to locations in the city center:
As we develop our product, you’ll see that Cabify eventually will be the app for everything mobility in cities.
He goes on to explain that they didn't lose any shares in the corporate market after the rebranding, but they've seen a clear increase in private individuals using the service. As metrics go, they're experiencing 20 percent month on month growth globally, especially in Brazil:
I wouldn’t say the redesign is the only reason for our growth, but it’s definitely giving our users a much more consistent brand experience.
“We're not robots”
René is now back to focusing solely on the product, as they’ve built a brand and design team dedicated to keep the new purple feeling alive and coherent, something that didn’t exist before.
His focus now is to continue to push the product to new levels and differentiate from their biggest competitor Uber.
It's not a necessarily a bad thing, but Uber is very robotic, getting from A-B the cheapest way in the fastest car, it feels more like a generic platform, where as we want to be perceived more as a community, a place where humans work.
It was an amazing experience to lead a rebranding project like this, but I’ll probably stick to product design only from now on.
