Our Work / Absolute Radio rebranding

When the Times of India group bought The Station Formerly Known As Virgin Radio, they didn’t buy the license to use the Virgin brand. And they had to give it back to nice Mr. Branson in 90 days. So we had to create a brand from scratch in record time.

They already had the name Absolute Radio (the new management team had been running a radio consultancy called Absolute since 2001). But we created everything else.

The very first thing we did was create their open staff blog, onegoldensquare.com. Most companies treat rebranding as a huge secret; and then are surprised when people don’t understand why they did it. We recommended that they do the opposite, being absolutely open, and inviting their staff, customers and most loyal listeners into the process.

Next we ran lots of workshops, research groups to make sure we really listened to what was special and what we must not change. The brand strategy was hammered into shape over a period of weeks, via round-the-clock discussions in Skype chats.

Then once we knew what they wanted to stand for, we developed the new brand identity to project that attitude visually. We crafted the new logotype, typefaces, colour palette, and image style.

We then wanted to showcase the new brand identity and proposition, so created a newspaper that was sent to media agencies, advertisers and., of course, staff.

(Click the corners of the newspaper to turn the pages)

Then we rolled out the identity across the station. We got real pleasure from injecting their attitude into pretty much every item they have in the building. We think it’s often these little details that make the biggest statements about a brand’s attitude.

Tagged as: Absolute Radio, Branding