Transitioning an industry expert with a strong personal brand into an organization with a distinctive corporate brand identity.
GAAD Inc.
GAAD, Inc. is the primary business advisory provider to the energy and utilities industries founded by Mr. Guido Delgado. As an expert in the industry with his experience as President of National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) from 1994-1998, GAAD, Inc. was established to help businesses in the energy industry to overcome business challenges. Since its inception, GAAD, Inc. has been associated to an individual, Guido Delgado, rather than a corporation. As their team grew bigger, GAAD recognized the need to establish a stronger organizational brand instead of revolving the brand’s name to its founder. With Guido Delgado setting the foundation and fueling the organization’s expertise and passion, our objective was to strengthen GAAD’s brand image as an organization while still retaining Guido Delgado’s personal brand and vision for the company.
Challenges
To clarify GAAD’s corporate branding, we facilitated our Brand Workshop in order to get insights from Mr. Guido’s own personality and incorporate these into the organization’s brand. Through anecdotes and interviews of Guido’s unique personality such as holding business meetings in swim shorts at his local deli, we were able to visualize his captivating character and disposition as GAAD’s founder. We wanted to infuse his unconventional and unique personality into GAAD’s new branding. By doing so, we would be able to communicate an authentic and distinct brand in the industry that was both reflective of its founder and the organization’s vision for the future.
What we did
The Jester was the fitting brand archetype for the GAAD, Inc. brand. GAAD’s optimism, youthfulness and genuine care for the country, all reflected traits of a Jester archetype. Instead of positioning as a humorous and comedic Jester brand, we chose specific archetypal traits that will still indicate a Jester’s character while at the same time complementing GAAD’s expertise and credibility. With the statement, “The difficult we can do; the impossible, might take a little while”, we communicate a brand that has a positive outlook on solving even the complex problems.
BRAND ARCHETYPE:
Jester
GAAD’s new brand image revolves around the idea of optimism. Results from the workshop led us to realize a central statement to capture the new spirit of GAAD.
Communication Strategy and Brand Identity
The energy industry shouldn’t be boring.
We are literally lighting up the world.
The new GAAD brand focuses on the idea of a brighter future by using imagery that finds the beauty in the energy industry. Windmills against picturesque backgrounds, perfectly lined solar panels, and photos of friendly employees were incorporated into that branding to communicate a company composed of optimistic visionaries.
We redesigned GAAD’s logo by shifting to a modern sans serif wordmark. A wide custom type was designed in order to communicate stability and dependability.
A blue, gray and white color palette gave the brand a calm and serene brand image complementing the brand’s optimism.
With a clearer brand strategy and unified identity, we were able to develop a new GAAD: a breath of fresh air in the energy industry.