Equifax Australia sought uberbrand’s help in transitioning from a private equity-owned business to an ASX-listed enterprise. From there, developing the new brand continued well beyond the acquisition, resulting in evocative new identities for their organisation and key service areas. These could be leveraged to execute B2B marketing activities that deliver value to and build upon their audience, long into the future.
M&A Strategy
Veda was Australia’s largest credit reference score provider and the go-to company for businesses offering finance. After a series of acquisitions across a decade, eventually Veda itself was acquired by Equifax, a global leader in information solutions.
In evolving Veda to Equifax, the new entity needed to retain some of the original brand identity and positioning of Veda to avoid disenfranchising clients and stakeholders.
Based on a clear understanding of the organisation and its goals, a strong external and internal communications strategy took shape. This would drive all activity to come, from advertising to internal communications and collateral updates.
In order for the changes to be well received, the conversation around the acquisition needed to be about evolution and progress. This helped ensure that stakeholders would understand that they could continue to rely on the service; in fact, this would only be enhanced by the global reach and capabilities of Equifax.
This approach helped ensure that the new Equifax Australia brand retained credibility, transitioning the positive reputation established by Veda through the acquisition and name change.
Developing a new Brand Identity
Following the successful metamorphosis into Equifax Australia, a new brand strategy model was created to reflect their ambitions. This mapped key attributes such as overall purpose and value propositions, anchored in insight and underpinned by an overall big idea for their brand: “Confidence, informed”.
Through this process, a personality was developed for Equifax that established a system behind how they would look, feel and communicate going forward.
Embodying the “sage” archetype, they would maintain insightful language, using a clear tone, while their imagery style would have an independent atmosphere, offset by a warm colour palette.
Designing Brand Architecture
In order to articulate the full breadth of services offered by Equifax effectively, specific identities were created for their three key service areas of Risk, HR and Marketing.
Each of these areas were given their own distinct, yet related, visual identity, derived from the overarching brand. These could be used to appeal to specific sectors within Equifax’ audience, communicating with them in the best possible way.
Corresponding content, guided by these new identities, such as explainer videos and marketing collateral. In the case of Equifax Risk Solutions, a specialized activation platform was designed, complete with a unique logo and compelling storytelling.
Roll-out and execution
Exercising the new Equifax master brand and service portfolio illustrated and consolidated brand value through content and placement.
Activations such as knowledge hubs and long-form content such as whitepapers placed Equifax as thought-leaders in the data-industry. This was supported by an ongoing stream of platform-native and lower-funnel marketing activities – from PR to Linkedin showcasing to inmails and bespoke landing pages.
Through the tendrils of their service area identities, Equifax created highly-insightful “unmissable” content – specifically tailored to Equifax’s three market focuses. In this way, Equifax continually demonstrated their breadth of capability and depth of expertise.
“uberbrand gets us, having continually evolved our brand to reflect our business objectives including the transition from Veda through to Equifax.”
