More than forty operating companies,
one brand above them.
Akima is a portfolio of government services companies, each with its own contracts, customers and history. The engagement began by building a brand platform every one of them could sit under, and became a multi-year retainer across design and marketing.
The situation,as it arrived.
A portfolio company competing for federal work has a particular problem: each operating company has earned its own reputation, and none of them can afford to lose it in a consolidation. A single brand imposed from above erases the thing the contract officer already recognises.
So the question was not what the parent brand should look like. It was what a brand platform has to do for more than forty companies to tuck under it without any of them being flattened.
Four moves,in the order they happened.
The brand platform first, and the strategy under it
A refreshed brand platform and the strategy that governs it, built so operating companies inherit a system rather than a template. Positioning at the parent level, with room for each company to stay itself.
Messaging, company by company
Operating company messaging written against the platform, so the portfolio reads as one firm to a buyer who meets two of its companies in the same procurement.
The system made usable
Brand guide, icon and graphic libraries, video and branding assets, and the rollout that puts them in the hands of the teams who publish daily. A guide nobody can execute is a document, not a brand.
Then the website, then the retainers
Website redesign, followed by a technical retainer to keep it running and a design retainer to keep the system alive as the portfolio changed. Three and a half years, one accountable team.
Everything thatleft the building.
- Brand platform and brand strategy
- Logo and visual identity system
- Icon and graphic libraries
- Operating company messaging
- Brand guide and rollout
- Video and branding assets
- Website redesign, with a technical retainer behind it
- Ongoing design and marketing support
Scope reported by Pyxl. Akima has not published performance figures for this engagement.
More like this one.One a month.
Written out of engagements rather than off a content calendar, by whichever principal ran the work. No sequence afterwards.
Your situation is not this one.Tell us what it is.
A senior strategist reads it and replies within one business day, with a straight answer about whether we are the right people.