The Panel has a Brand New look!
Things are happening at The Panel and we have been keeping busy during the last few months creating The Panel’s new brand identity! Learn more about our journey and the story behind the transformation.
Why did we rebrand?
There are many reasons why a company chooses to re-brand, for our part it had been something we had been thinking about for a while. We have had the same look and feel for over 17 years. Our branding had long overstayed its welcome and was no longer fit for purpose.
We needed to invest in a contemporary brand that best reflects where The Panel is as a business today. Over the last number of years, we have invested significantly in cutting-edge recruitment technology, transitioning fully to the cloud and in the upskilling of our teams. The refresh of our branding best reflects the business of today, rather than one of 17 years ago.
The process
On the recommendation of a client, we enlisted the branding agency Barlo to assist us on the journey. Barlo managed a comprehensive project from start to finish, from doing market research to developing new brand concepts, delivering our new website, designing our new corporate identity and logo as well as several new marketing assets.
Market Research
Our market research results confirmed what we already knew that our branding required a complete overhaul. While the research further showed that both clients and candidates had an overwhelmingly positive interactions with us, a large majority were underwhelmed with the existing branding of The Panel.
The Task
Barlo was tasked with creating a contemporary and flexible new visual identity. Confident, whilst approachable.
The Tagline
They were also asked to come up with a new tagline which reflects not just our business goal, but our promise to our customers.
The new tagline “creating exceptional futures”, is reflective of what we do in The Panel every day, shaping the careers of our candidates and helping our clients run their businesses better.
The Logo
Creating a new brand logo, reflecting our open door set up, resulted in an abstract “P” shape, encompassing not only the P in The Panel, but that of opening a door or opening a book and landing on a new fresh page. It is also a key visual differentiator, we envisage the “P” will develop as a brand identity all of its own in time.
Our Values
Barlo noted the family atmosphere in The Panel. They went away and came up with our new values CLAN, which is the Irish word for family.
Colour
We shifted from the corporate blue and red, to a vibrant magenta and purple. Standing out from the crowd, whilst offering a modern clean look.
Fonts
We moved from the Tahoma and Arial fonts to the more rounded Roboto and Oscine fonts.
Teamwork
A decision was taken early on to form a team with representation from different parts of the business. The “Barlo” team had representatives from administration, marketing and from the consultants themselves. The profile of the team was also diverse from a gender and age perspective, making for some interesting debates…
Interestingly, the final look of the brand has been inspired more by our younger colleagues who overruled managements more, let us say, conservative approach!
Video
To showcase our new brand, we worked together with Owen McArdle and Dara Tallon from Oddboy Media to create a video that best portray what we are all about.
Conclusion
We are excited to be re-designing our brand and are committed to enhancing current relationships whilst building new ones. Our look might be new, but the team remains the same.
To see updates, and to follow our progress, please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Thank you!
To Philip Barlow of Barlo and his team; Molly, Fiona and Denis for all your help throughout this re-brand.
To Barry McCabe from BMC Design for all his work on the website.
To David Kendall and the team from Squarechilli for all the technical integration and implementations required for the website to run smoothly.
To Owen McArdle and Dara Tallon from Oddboy Media, for our brilliant corporate video.
To all our colleagues in The Panel who are so engaged in this process.
Last but not least, to the in-house “Barlo” project team of Mal and Ildiko, Andrew, Evan and Paul, who took all of this personally and were passionate advocates of the “P”, overruling their elders… 😊. And they were 100% correct!
We are off now to create some more exceptional futures!
