Arab Link. Rebrand

Strategic brand development ADIB's money transfer sub-brand

Posted by Mohammed Zubair

Having worked with Unisono previously, I knew working with them on our rebrand would be a sure fired success. They're experts whose strategic process leads directly to engaging, insightful creative work.

Rob Groombridge. CEO. Arab Link

Challenge

ADIB’s existing offer (Arab Link, ‘AL’) suffered from a lack of presence both in terms of store locations as well as mindshare. Brand had no strategy, no CI and no platform from which to grow. ADIB wanted AL to become a top three brand, capturing greater market share in a heavily saturated market.

Strategy

A new brand strategy was developed through a program of market research, brand auditing and a series of facilitated brand workshops with both internal and external stakeholders. A new core philosophy ‘to put the emotion into money-in-motion’ was expressed through new graphic and literal language. The simple brand mark represented core partnership philosophy whilst the graphic device represented the transformation of money in motion. The blue colouration was driven by a need to drive equity from ADIB towards the rebranded AL.

Result

The brand has been successfully rolled out across retail stores and in store promotion materials, corporate services materials as well as social and online media tools. The new brand identity created an immediate impression resulting in exponential sales and customer growth in the first few months. In year one, the new brand grew monthly sales by 100%+ while the customer base grew by staggering 300%+. New brand was so fresh it created the impression that AL was new, avoiding any difficult transition issues from the legacy brand. The new brand identity shaped integrated products and services including loyalty and payroll cards. New brand has been so successful that new investment has been provided to take the operations to overseas locations including Europe.

In addition to the obvious commercial success of the brand, the work itself picked up a highly coveted Distinction at Rebrand 100 in 2014. This second international rebrand award is the third such award Arab Link’s CEO has won with Unisono; the brand’s leader also won a Merit when he was at BFC.