Why and how we rebranded CMA

At the beginning of this year, we set ourselves a goal.

That goal was to reinvent CMA’s brand for the better. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.  

When and why should a company rebrand? 

Our original branding was created back in 2016 when CMA was launched by CEO Mike Rhodes, back then it was a one-man show. And now, seven years, two offices, numerous clients, more than forty employees and a global expansion later… We were sure an update was due.

The old brand simply didn’t represent the new CMA with all its creative and strategic capabilities. With its many types of thinkers and doers. A marketing business working with some of the UK’s and USA’s biggest household brands.  

We’d outgrown our colours, our fonts, our website—basically every aesthetic element of CMA. We felt underdressed for the party we’d started. 

We wanted something formal, yet playful. Familiar, yet fresh. Business-like, but bright. 

So, where to start? 

Firstly, we got our creative team into a (virtual) room with renowned Art Director Andy Bull... We soon began referring to this genius as ‘Brandy Andy’ because of his expertise, in well, branding! 

The importance of logos

Think of your logo as a symbol. It should be understood instantly.  It’s your brand’s symbol and the main communication tool for saying who you are and what you’re about. It should be the most recognisable expression of your brand.  

This was our old logo…  

Sourced from a company that charged $59 for this plus an entire brand book in our business's infancy (you get what you pay for right?) And we got good mileage from it, but this logo came before our creative department—which couldn’t wait to change it.  

The logo felt too corporate, but old corporate, reminiscent of the finance sector in the 1980s. It wasn’t clean or symmetrical, memorable or versatile. But as they say, we all start somewhere—and we were eager to evolve.  And evolve we did. 

Our new logo says, ‘we’re a mobile-first marketing agency.’ 

It’s hand-crafted and futuristic. It’s clean and visible. It will suit everything from an iPhone home screen—to a roadside billboard. And because it’s flat, it’s also versatile. 

A recent trend has shown company logos becoming flat and simple as more businesses (BMW, Pepsi and Burger King to name a few) learn that they need to consider how their logo translates on mobile. And so, this new CMA symbol works incredibly well in small formats.  

Our Core Colour Palette

Brands need to have a strong colour palette. Repetition of colours strengthens brand recognition. And different colours tend to have specific connotations that we’ve collectively, yet often subconsciously, all agreed on.  

Dark blue is banking. Green is often energy. Black is luxury.  

We chose a specific palette of six key colours: Slate, Coral, White, Sand, Teal and Volt.  

They are designed to work with the vibrancy of modern screens, but they also look distinct and ownable to us in print. They pick up RGB light when used digitally, yet don't fall into being too trend-led.  The CMA colour palette provides an antithesis to the category: modern, not trend-led, optimistic, and energetic.   

We wanted to combine our core colours with our logo. This allows us to harmonize with other brands using a diverse range of colours.

As a mobile-first business, we’ve taken dark mode into full consideration. This is where our core colours come into play… 

Because a black logo in our email signature wouldn’t show in dark mode, and because a white logo wouldn’t stand out in light mode, we used teal for our email signature. Our colour palette is a tool that allows us to work around readability issues and any occurring design context issues.  

The importance of a slogan

Every good brand has a slogan. Something that encapsulates everything it’s about in very few words.  

 We wanted our slogan to have:  

Clarity, it should be understood instantly in a b2b setting. 

Creativity, it should stand out from the rest.  

Personality, a pinch of flavour to make it memorable.  

We wanted something we could use on the home page of our new website. We decided on: Truly effective mobile marketing. 

Truly effective because we pride ourselves on our results. And because these two words rarely pop up, so they are ownable. We didn’t want to express our capabilities in another cookie-cutter fashion.

Truly effective mobile marketing, as we need to succinctly explain what we do. Thirdly, it needs to roll off the tongue, twisters aren’t advisable. 

Our fonts and design assets

We decided upon Neue Machina as our main header font. It’s a powerful and meticulously crafted typeface boasting monospace/geometric type features… As well as deep ink traps in its heavier weights.  

It is inspired by the aesthetics of robotics and machines—a font suited for the future of technology and CMA.  

Inter is our main body font — the one you’re reading. It’s crafted and designed for the screen. It has those qualities which we need for a mobile-first font: Easy to read yet elegant.

Our main symbol – The Orbit

The orbit is an additional brand asset in our suite and is representative of our total customer lifecycle. The circle also mirrors the invisible haptic touch in the way every single mobile user interacts with their device.

Lightening the brand with moments of delight through in-house illustrations

We wanted unique illustrations that we felt fit our brand. We call it Believe in the Unbelievable. CMA illustrations should feel imperfect and handcrafted. They have a minimalist—preferably black and white—colour palette.  

The handcrafted brushes and textures nod towards the human elements of our brand, adding moments of delight to the dense topic matter of mobile marketing.

We wanted to use illustrations to lighten the heavy topic of mobile marketing. This is often a technique used by businesses, using characters that add a pinch of frivolity, to make the brand more memorable and approachable. For example, Churchill Car Insurance or the Compare the Market Meerkat.

The finished product…

There is no better place to experience our branding than our newly completed website. Where all our new elements are composed and presented to represent CMA in the way we’ve chosen, so explore, enjoy, and if you believe it’s time to level up your mobile marketing — drop us a message.