A successful business rebrand is about much more than the colours of a logo. It’s an opportunity to step back, look at what makes an organisation different and make sure its brand reflects where it wants to go next.
Nine months ago, we started talking about what Penguin PR could look like, writes Olivia Hancock.
It would have been easy (especially with my former role as a brand manager) to think of it as a purely branding project. A new logo, new website, some updated photography and a fresh colour palette.
But it became obvious fairly quickly that it was about something bigger and we started to ask some fundamental questions about Penguin PR.
Defining a mission
Who are we? What do we do best? What do we enjoy doing most? Who do we want to work with? What do we want people to think when they come across Penguin PR for the very first time?
Having spent my career working in marketing before moving into PR, this was always going to be a project I wanted to get my teeth stuck into.
Branding is one of the things I love because the smallest details make a big difference. The words you choose. The effect colours have. A tone of voice. Whether everything feels like it belongs together.
I’ve worked through major rebrands in previous roles, so I’m not a newbie to the process. I’ve spent a lot of time developing positioning and thinking about how best to communicate with the audiences you want to reach.
But doing it for Penguin PR felt different.
There have been plenty of conversations over the last nine months. Some decisions were easy. Others trickier. There were plenty of versions, refinements, tweaks, and moments when we thought that’s it, only to realise it wasn’t quite right.
And I think that’s probably one of the things I’ve taken most from the project is that a brand isn’t just a design.
You need to work out what you’re trying to say first.
More than a new look
The new Penguin PR brand is built around a simple mission: we connect, communicate, and build credibility where it matters.
Everything we do is guided by that. For us, PR has never really been about getting a name into a newspaper for the sake of it. It’s about understanding a business well enough to know what’s worth saying, who needs to hear it and why they should care.
Sometimes that might be a brilliant piece of print coverage. Sometimes it’s positioning an expert around an issue that matters to their industry.
Other times it’s helping a business to explain something complicated in a way that people will understand or supporting a client through a difficult moment.
It’s having the ability to recognise that there’s a really interesting story sitting right in front of a business but they’ve stopped noticing because they’re too close to it.
And that’s where the connection between PR and brand is particularly interesting to me.
How marketing and PR work together
Moving into PR has shifted my perspective.
On the marketing side, I was always thinking about how an organisation presented itself and how its brand could be communicated to different audiences in the way that would resonate most with them. Ultimately, the aim was to turn that engagement into action.
PR has made me think much more about what happens outside an organisation’s own channels.
It’s less about controlling the message and more about finding the stories, expertise and perspectives that other people (and journalists) will find interesting, relevant or useful – and building the credibility that comes when someone else chooses to talk about you.
Your brand tells people who you are. PR gives other people a reason to talk about it.
But neither works particularly well if you haven’t worked out what you actually want to say. That’s why this rebrand is relevant to the work we do for our clients.
We’ve spent months asking ourselves what we usually ask our clients: what makes Penguin PR different? Who do we want to help? What do people come to us for? What do we want our clients to say about working with us?
We’re a small team. We work closely with our clients and really take the time to get to know their businesses and aims properly.
We believe the best work happens when a PR agency feels like an extension of your marketing team, rather than another supplier sitting outside your business.
Developing the new identity
Once we knew what we wanted to say, we had to work out what we should look like. The penguin icon was non-negotiable. It’s been part of the business for a long time and is something people recognise.
We wanted to see how far we could stretch the brand while still making sure it feels appropriate and authentically Penguin.
The penguin now works more as a contemporary symbol or watermark than a traditional logo. He (I think the team has now agreed it’s a boy, although we’re yet to settle on a name) is warm, friendly and brings a little bit of personality to the brand without taking over.
The typography has an editorial feel, reflecting the journalism roots of Penguin, while the inky black and warm white palette gives a nod to both the penguin itself and Sarah and Simon’s newspaper days.
The bright yellow accent takes its cue from the markings of a king penguin and stops things feeling too serious.
The businesses behind our rebrand
As with all good projects, this wasn’t something we did on our own.
We’ve been lucky to work with some brilliant local businesses along the way.
Think Plus Ink Ltd helped us develop the visual identity and, importantly, challenged us throughout the process. There were a lot of conversations, a lot of versions and quite a lot of thinking about whether something really felt like Penguin.
Gravity Digital took that identity and turned it into a website that feels like a proper home for the new brand – one that reflects the breadth of what we do and makes it easier for people to understand where we can help.
‘AV IT Media captured the team behind Penguin PR and gave us a bank of photography that feels much more human and much more like us.
Working with local businesses on a project like this has been a good reminder of how much talent there is in Derby.
Not your agency. Your team.
We work alongside ambitious organisations to shape stories, strengthen reputations and build meaningful connections through PR, communications and content. Combining strategic thinking, compelling content and trusted relationships, we help our clients become seen, heard and understood.