Intercontinental Bank Corporate Identity and Retail Environment
| Fact |
Value |
| Contact |
Johannesburg |
| Client |
Intercontinental Bank |
| Project |
Corporate Identity and Retail Environment |
| Industry |
Financial Services |
| Services |
Brand Identity
Environments
Brand Positioning
|
Intercontinental Bank is one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions. It started as a merchant bank and converted to a commercial bank in 1999.
In 2005 it merged with Global, Gateway and Equity in what was one of the most successful and seamless mergers in the Nigerian financial service market.
The bank has steadily grown its customer base over the past number of years, and is now one of the most recognisable banking brands in Nigeria.
Intercontinental bank’s primary identity was identified as being visually weak, outdated and cluttered and was not representative of the new bank that it had become.
They too had just embarked on a very successful ‘happy customer, happy bank campaign’. Unfortunately, a resulting factor being that the campaign identity became stronger than the bank’s primary identity.
The Brand Union was ask to assist Intercontinental Bank in resolving these issues and did so by re-looking their brand positioning, visual identity and style, as well as their retail environment.
Intercontinental Bank needed differentiate itself in an already cluttered market. Their strong culture of customer service was drawn upon in the creation of the primary identity.
In terms of colour we decided to keep with the blue and yellow that was used in the original logo, but softened them to make the brand more approachable, the result being a bolder identity.
The construction of the icon is based on a hexagon which represents the idea of global reach- the 6 sides representing the 6 continents. We further built on this idea by using the concept of inner light with the yellow radiating out of the blue, indicative of the link to their service culture ,with the emphasis on the inner light that radiates out of the employees of the bank.
Intercontinental Bank’s newly revised identity provides a much needed consistency between their internal & external image, being more in line with the values that the bank represents today – strong, modern and iconic.
