IllustrationX
Transforming the brand and creating an unrivalled online experience to announce a new global leader
What began as a single market illustration agency in 1929 has become a global leader with eight offices across four continents and counting.
Most of IllustrationX’s growth has come in the last 15 years under visionary management. They asked Manifest to create a global brand, a compelling customer proposition and integrated marketing communications to power them into the future.
The challenge
In an impressively rapid transition from a single office to a global agency operating in four continents, Illustration’s positioning had become confused. Amongst other issues, by continuing to think as local businesses, its unrivalled ability to offer outstanding illustrators sourced from all over the globe was hidden from view. But these people and their artists love what they do, value their customer relationships and don’t want to be a global corp. So how can you provide a global proposition with local, small team values?
Our bright thinking
• Vision and Values
• Qualitative research
• New brand strategy
• Internal workshops
• Services restructuring
• Strategic Consultancy
• Service design and alignment with brand
• Website design and build x 2
• Launch
We ran a series of workshops with team members from every office to discover what makes the brand different and meaningful for employees. We undertook quantitative and qualitative research to find out why customers choose the agency over its competitors, and to identify their real and perceived differentiating advantages. We worked with the management team to identify and define the values that drive the customer proposition and business.
We recommended a positioning and applied our brand skills to articulate the vision, mission and purpose of the business, built around the core brand idea of ‘Connecting You to a World of Illustration’.
Customers found the business name ‘Illustration’ confusing for the medium in conversation with colleagues, using the local corporate name (such as Illustration Ltd in the UK or Illustration Inc in the US) instead. We advised that a global brand needs a single name to stand for one proposition wherever customers connect with it. After a naming session with management and key employees we recommended the smallest possible evolution - adding an ‘X’ to the name to represent the extra value and advantage delivered by a global agency and to symbolise the passion of the employees and artists who deliver the brand promise. We created a sister brand for the animation side of the business calling it AnimationX.
Our inspired creativity
In creating the visual identity for the new name, we developed the ‘Heartmark X’, an energetic visual shorthand for the love that the employees and artists bring to delivering on the brand promise to clients. In the internal engagement sessions we also explained to employees how the Heartmark X reminds them to live their values of being caring, thoughtful, courageous and fun in everything they do. The brand guidelines show how the Heartmark X can be used creatively as a distinctive and recognisable device.
To help each IllustrationX office to implement the new brand in their own way while maintaining one global standard, we created clear brand implementation guidelines in both digital and print formats. Now every IllustrationX office can confidently engage the power of the brand while ensuring a consistent experience for customers around the world.
A global leader needs an exceptional online experience that works beautifully across digital platforms. We created brand new websites for IllustrationX and its sister brand AnimationX, using innovative features and distinctive content to give users with an enriched and captivating experience along the pathway to commissioning. While both websites operate independently, users can flip intuitively between the two offerings to maximise referred commissions.
