Name: New Word Order
Address: 205 Juliette Street, Greenslopes, Brisbane, 4120, Australia
Telephone: 07 3334 8340
Price range: $

Unitywater brand refresh

Improving public sentiment towards a utility brand

We get excited when we can get our teeth into a big, tasty brand project. It gets all our strategic, creative and design juices flowing.

When Unitywater appointed us, one of the first items on the agenda was an interrogation of their brand. As a utility company, they recognised that some of their historical brand behaviours needed to be addressed.

New Word Order stepped in with a clear plan and a desire to make a difference for this important community-based organisation.

Brand Human services

Challenge

Unitywater has a lot of customers. But they were first to admit that they were not a customer-facing brand.

So our first challenge was to look at ways to turn Unitywater into a more human-centric brand. This involved considerable research work to understand more about where they could pivot and how their public persona could be massaged.

It was decided that their visual brand identity was in need of a refresh, but not a complete overhaul. This gave our design team the challenge of identifying how far boundaries could be pushed, and knowing when to retain existing visual brand elements.

There was also the challenge of developing a new brand voice and tone that had an authentic feel for what the brand was and could be.

STRATEGY

This brand projects involved a sizable strategic component. Both the client and agency agreed that the foundation of any work needed to be based on insightful strategy and clear directives.

Our strategists spent considerable time talking to stakeholders and doing discovery work that led to the uncovering of compelling insights. Central to this phase of work was developing the ‘brand bond’ for Unitywater, which provided the strands of all customer connections with the brand.

With the strategy clearly defined, Unitywater’s brand purpose and future brand behaviours could be identified and documented in the style guide for the benefit of all stakeholders, present and future.

Creative

The creative element of this project was split into two areas: verbal and visual.

The verbal element comprised the creation of a brand narrative that tells the story of the Unitywater in a humanistic style. It also included a voice and tone guide that authentically represented the personality and ambitions of the brand.

The visual element of the creative work was a large and dynamic piece. It involved updating the logo identity, including the graphic icon. A complete new colour palette was designed for all communications, alongside a newly devised typeface family.

Other visual elements such as photography, illustration and graphic styles were also intricately designed in a future-proof manner.

Impact

This brand project for Unitywater covered various phases and had a collaborative approach from start to finish. While the brand style guide was a tangible asset that came out of the process, the adoption of a strong branding focus within the internal Unitywater team and across their leadership team was a powerful testament to the importance of the project. Brand now sits front and centre as a vital part of operations for Unitywater.