Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

NELIMITAT BRANDING
or “Creating a brand that is technically a rebrand but also a new brand”

As the subtitle of this paper suggests, the realm of branding does not have very clear borders.
This may be because there are conflicting definitions for what a brand is and isn’t, and they
evolve over time - as this industry, like all creative and media industries, is closely tied to
technological advancements. This might be one of the reasons why oftentimes people use the
terms brand, branding, brand identity, visual identity and even logo interchangeably.

Historically, a brand was a way to mark your cattle in order to differentiate them from the others
and thus, to prevent theft. This was a practice dating from ancient times (Saif Ullah and Owais
2007, 75–87). Much later, with the industrial revolution and the rise of packaged products,
“producers put their mark on a widening array of products - cough drops, flour, sugar, beer - to
indicate their source” (McLaughlin 2011). Our definition of brand at this moment in time evolves
from a brandfire - a piece of burning wood or metal used to mark cattle, to a brand name - a
mechanism used by the producers to help their consumers distinguish their product from the
others.

From what was stated so far, the concept of brand seems pretty straightforward and doesn’t give
much space for debate. However, the idea of brand as we know it today is a new paradigm, it
appeared and consolidated itself in the 20th century - when the marketers and producers realized
that there is much more to a brand than its name. This could be because of a supersaturation of
goods and services and an emerging need to make their products stand out from the crowd.
Another explanation could be the realization that the consumers are often subjective, guided by
feelings and intuition and what appeals to them might not always be strictly the rational/objective
attributes of a product. In this period the definition of brand started gaining a subjective side to it
because it started to involve the feelings of the customers. According to David Ogilvy, compared
to a brand name that is an objective thing living in the real world, a brand lives in the customers’
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heads - it is the perception of a product’s qualities, the sum of all the tangible and intangible
attributes. Alina Wheeler explores this idea further by stating that companies build brands as “a
way to connect emotionally with customers, become irreplaceable, create lifelong relationships.
(...) People fall in love with brands, trust them and believe in their superiority” (Wheeler 2012,
12). Simply put, under the current paradigm, a brand is the image that the customers see in their
mind when they think about a product, and by image it is meant not only the visual elements that
they might associate with the brand, such as logo, colors or the shape of the product, but also the
values that the brand is trying to communicate and the evoked feelings. Stripped to the very
basics, a brand communicates with the customer, it sends a message about itself, that, if done
right, can be very persuasive.

As stated previously, a brand is much more than its name or the product it represents, nor is it
only the visual characteristics of it. There are at multiple dimensions to a brand: 1)the visual
dimension, including things like logo, colours, graphic assets; 2)personality - identity, tone of
voice, messages; 3)the values, mission and vision that are communicated by the company via the
brand; 4) the customer - the brand’s target audience, how the customers relate to the brand, what
the customers expect and also how the customers perceive the brand and themselves (Kapferer
2007, 16). This being said, it becomes obvious that a brand has a lot of small gears and moving
parts. So in order to communicate efficiently, brands need to stay consistent across all these
dimensions, and the way to achieve this consistency is through a brand strategy. As Wheeler puts
it, “effective brand strategy provides a central unifying idea around which all behavior, actions,
and communications are aligned”. This approach leaves no room for randomness, every
communication decision must refer back to the brand values, mission and vision, these should be
reflected on every plane - from the strategy to the idea to its execution (Wheeler 2012, 16).

While in theory this sounds clear enough, it is hard to put this framework into practice because it
implies that a company should know itself very well - it should have clearly defined values and
goals. The company should also be very aware of itself, know its positioning, limitations and
competitors. Lastly, the company should know their target customers down to the smallest
details, and, at least from my experience, very few companies are aware of that, most live under
the impression that their product is suitable for everyone.
 Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

While working for a local advertising company, I was tasked to create an individual branding for
a new product from Banca Transilvania called nelimitat. Essentially, this product is a
subscription based model for young entrepreneurs and startups. Compared to BT’s other
products, nelimitat is a subscription-based product: in exchange for a fixed fee, the beneficiaries
get unlimited transactions and operations. While I was initially tasked to create the visual
identity of nelimitat, I also contributed to the nelimitat brand strategy, which, in the long term,
created a need to rethink the approach to BT’s main brand strategy.

Banca Transilvania launched this product for a different audience than their usual customers -
this product was aimed specifically at younger people, young adults with a knack for
entrepreneurship and tech-oriented people. This is why they initially didn’t want nelimitat to be
associated in any way with BT - they wanted a different personality altogether (colours, graphic
style, tone of voice); they didn’t want to place the BT logo on any nelimitat collaterals either.
They imagined a totally new product, an 180 degree turn from the original blue-yellow-red,
classic style mother brand.

This idea must have sounded good in internal pitches and on paper, however in practice a big
problem would occur - by making an individual brand too different from the mother brand, you
risk burning all the connections between them, creating unnecessary friction for the customers.
The existing BT customers that could benefit from this new product would find it confusing that
BT is not communicating about it on their main channels and so this may affect how accessible
or reachable this product is for them. Additionally, the potential new customers would be
confused about what nelimitat is - is it a bank? Is it an app? Why have I never heard of this
before, can I trust it? BT has a huge reputation and visibility and it would be a pity not to use that
to their advantage, i.e. to profit on BT’s visibility and reputation so that new customers could
know a bit better what to expect.

On the other hand, we were aware that we cannot keep the same look and feel as the main
mother brand and expect a different outcome. We had to be very honest with ourselves and with
one another and be very aware of BT visual identity’s strengths and weaknesses. It is indeed not
 Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

very consistent to have a brand targeted at young/hip people, which has freshness, coolness, ease
of use as values, but at the same time uses the Romanian flag ribbon on their ads along with a not
very modern Serif font and a photo of a family.

After long thought periods, we realized that the answer is somewhere in between. The solution
was to create a new look and feel but connect it subtly to the main brand - so that when a
customer sees a marketing collateral they understand that this is a new/distinct product, but at the
same time they can understand that it is part of the BT umbrella. The starting point was to
identify the strong points of BT’s identity. An example of that is the main colour palette - red,
blue and yellow. By themselves, they can be very powerful and vivid colours, it is only when
they are all combined that they create other associations like tradition and nationalism. So the
plan was to use these three colours but never combined, and also I used slightly adjusted hues - a
bit brighter and a bit more saturated. The difference in hue was subtle enough that an average
client would never notice it across different materials, however it allowed us to create designs
that were more aesthetically pleasing.

As for the general style - the plan was to make it reflect the Nelimitat values we established -
clear, straight to the point, simple and refreshing. This has been then reflected in the style of the
logo, the typography and the general layout of the collaterals. The logo uses a clean sans-serif
font to symbolize that it is modern, it is written with a small ‘N’ to send the idea that it is
friendly, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, not pompous. The simple semi-circle shapes at the
top and bottom enforce subtly the idea of unlimited, infinite transactions. We went for a clean,
typography-based layouts along with simple geometric illustrations or photos with coloured
overlay. The messages on the key-visuals were also a bit different from the usual BT ones - the
tone of voice was friendlier and less formal. We also agreed to keep the shortened monochrome
version of the BT logo on all the materials.

In conclusion, although the definition of brand has changed overtime and is generally blurry, it is
our duty to be aware of all its different components and perspectives. We should also be aware of
the power that a good brand can have over its customers - as it involves feelings, semiotics,
ideologies and biases - it is in a way very raw and visceral and certainly hard to observe, because
 Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

it is non-tangible. In order not to get lost in this ambiguous realm, consistency is a brand’s holy
grail, as it assures that the same message will be communicated across mediums and planes and
so it will minimize the risk of the message not being received accurately enough. However, we
must keep in mind that in order to achieve consistency, as a company you need to develop a
sense of awareness and self awareness and discover your limitations and strengths. The sense of
awareness also applies to knowing your customer down to what they breathe - their aspirations,
wishes, frustrations and uncertainties. I realized how important all this is while I was working for
nelimitat, but at the same time, there is always space for growth and improvement. However,
despite the common consensus, visual identity is not just randomly placed colours or aesthetic
graphics just for the sake of being aesthetic - it is as calculated, researched and insightful as the
strategy, and as realistic, simple and clear as the execution, often not receiving enough credit for
what it is. As for the subtitle of this paper - this task I worked on was a juggling act between
existing and new, between mother brand and young disruptive brand, it was about finding the
balance between the already existing assets of BT and the values and personality of nelimitat.
After we realized how important consistency is for a brand, this sparked a debate about BT’s
brand as a whole and how it may lack consistency internally in some areas of the main brand.
Sadly, customers change, ideologies change, perceptions and buying habits change. Fortunately,
from a brand’s perspective, it means that you get to grow and evolve with your customers, eager
to see what tomorrow will bring.
 Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

Bibliography

1.Kapferer, Jean-Noel. 2007. “Competition of Brands - Or of Business Models ?” Advertising

Age 78 (9).

2. McLaughlin, Jerry. 2011. “What Is a Brand, Anyway?,” 2011.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrymclaughlin/2011/12/21/what-is-a-brand-anyway/?sh=4
580b5a92a1b.

3. Saif Ullah, Khan, and Mufti Owais. 2007. “The Hot History & Cold Future of Brands.”
Journal of Managerial Sciences 1.

4. Wheeler, Alina. 2012. Designing Brand Identity. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
 Lucia Codreanu, DIA I

nelimitat assets:
Lucia Codreanu, DIA I