Thought Leadership Network, Brand Transformation
Situation
Established by The Financial Times and Longitude, The Thought Leadership Network (TLN) is a peer-to-peer community created to bring together senior marketing, communications and content professionals who engage in, or have an interest in, thought leadership. It provides these practitioners with the unique opportunity to connect and collaborate with a group of like-minded individuals through online content and a wide-ranging events calendar.
Working in close collaboration with the TLN team, we explored the founding partner organisations' visual identity systems to find both common ground and areas of overlap. This helped lay the path for a unique brand identity that was both highly differentiated and relevant.
Transformation
As the Thought Leadership Network is a place for professionals to come together and learn, debate and discuss ways of connecting with their audiences, we set about creating an identity that had a sense of communication at its heart.
Using the basic symbol for communication – the speech bubble – we created a logo mark that conveys the core idea of conversation whilst simultaneously placing the N for network right in the centre of it through the negative space created.
To accompany TLN's logo, we built an identity system that was easy to work with, but retained a sense of authority and trustworthiness that is to be expected from an organisation set up by the Financial Times and Longitude. The simple blue and white primary colour palette is intended to work seamlessly alongside the founding partners' logos with a series of bright highlight colours adding vibrancy. A focus on warm, quality, engaging event photography acts as the proof point for those interested in getting involved.
We also worked with TLN to bring their brand to life online, creating a place to showcase their offering and allow people to become members and book onto TLN events. It was also a space for TLN to share their own thought leadership through their insights. TLN's Insights are detailed, expertly written long-form articles so we designed a system that allowed for user interactivity and engagement, creating a digital experience that is as rich as the content itself.
