The Futures Company

- Project summary

The coming together of...

On January 31 2008, Yankelovich was acquired by WPP and merged with Henley Centre HeadlightVision (an existing WPP group company).

Yankelovich was the US’s leading consumer trends and lifestyle research business and Henley Centre Headlight Vision was Europe’s leading consumer trends business, providing global trends intelligence, research and consultancy services. Neon were approached to provide a new brand idea, name and identity for the merged company, along with a brand architecture that could successfully integrate existing sub brands.

Project summary

• New company naming
• Brand proposition
• Brand architecture
• Migration strategy
• Brand identity
• Sub-brands
• Internal launch movies
• Internal communications
• Brand guidelines
• Literature
• Stationery
• Signage
• Web transition

The Futures Company

- Brand Idea

Unlocking Futures

Inspired by the high ground of serious, grounded yet inspiring future-facing research consulting, the brand idea is Unlocking Futures and the new name is The Futures Company. Both of these capture their unique blend of qualitative and quantitative research; their focus on learning from the past and present to understand the future; their rigourous analytical skills; and their imagination, curiosity and passion to excite and inspire clients to unlock
a better future.

The Futures Company

- New brand mark and transition descriptor

The Futures Company

- New brand mark animation with sub brands

The Futures Company

- Literature scheme

The Futures Company

- Office branding

The Futures Company

- Stationery

The Futures Company

- Kind words

Thinking with the future in mind

Working with people who view themselves as both experts in the future and creative lateral thinkers is most design agencies worst nightmare. Neon rose to this challenge and were both flexible, accommodating, challenging and inspirational at all the right times. I believe the design is fresh and critically evokes the feeling of energy and transformation. The directional nature of the design challenges us to always focus on the deliverables and ultimately, the impact our thinking must have on our clients business.

Compelling and creative

Neon were a really great partner for our naming and rebranding work. The enthusiasm and care that they put into the pitch carried on throughout the engagement. They consulted widely with our management team and demonstrated a strong grasp of our business fundamentals and opportunities, resulting in a strong and compelling brand idea. Their creative work was innovative and pushed us to a new level in terms of how we present ourselves. The internal launch was made particularly successful because of the video developed by Neon, which gave a powerful strategic rationale for our new name and identity, and brought it to life in a way that proved inspirational to the team.

Inspirational, insightful
and inspiring

Neon did great work for The Futures Company. We had a difficult branding challenge, which they mastered brilliantly. They started by defining a process within which we could focus on key issues, and with that we were able to articulate a set of criteria that successfully guided the rebranding of our company.

They exhaustively developed creative alternatives for us to review and provided insightful counsel as we narrowed down our choices. Once the decision was made, Neon developed an outstanding video and presentation for us to use in introducing the new company identity internally and to our clients. We rely closely on the rulebook of branding guidelines they prepared. Every step of the way, Neon was a close collaborator and a nonpareil strategic branding partner.