Branding c&binet

C&binet | 20 Nov 2008, 11:47

By Martin Lambie-Nairn

Creating c&binet was a really interesting process because the brief was to create a brand that works for me and pretty much everyone I’ve ever worked with. I’m someone who built a business – Lambie-Nairn – that sells creativity. And now I’m trying it all over again with MLN, starting from scratch.  So what could c&binet do for me?

There’s so much excitement around this project that the first challenge when we got the brief was to strip away all the peripheral ideas and focus on the basic elements. We needed to say, in as few words as possible, what it’s for and what it will do.

So here’s what we got it down to:

The reason c&binet exists is to act as a catalyst between creativity and commerce – to make things happen. What it will do is drive the growth of the creative economy by unleashing the power of creativity.

So the brand celebrates the power of creativity. It’s something I believe passionately in.

And it’s a meeting place for the whole of the creative economy – not only “creatives” but people with the ideas, money and commercial scale to make things happen.

There were some other things we had to keep in mind too. Although born in the UK, it’s an international network which will have an international perspective. That meant we weren’t going to be draping it in the Union Jack.

And this is a property that will be owned by creative people themselves. So it had better be good.

A brand has to work on an objective basis, not just a subjective one. It doesn’t matter if someone thinks the name sounds silly or the logo’s the wrong colour – nothing’s more worrying to a brand consultant than when the client announces at the start of the process that they dabble in art and have a few thoughts of their own (I’m happy to say that didn’t happen in this case).

What matters is whether it does what it needs to do, set against some definable criteria.

Before we developed c&binet, we drew up a list of things the brand had to be able to do – some technical, some strategic. If you can agree the criteria in the brief and you come up with a solution that ticks all the boxes, then you know you’re on to something. With c&binet, we knew we were on to something very early on.

C&binet suggests people coming together. The ampersand is the expression of that process – sitting between the ‘c’ of creativity and the ‘b’ of business.  All of the design work featuring the brand will use the ampersand to link images which symbolise creativity and commerce.

Over time, the “Creativity and business international network” bit will fade and the brand will simply exist as c&binet, with the ampersand becoming more and more prominent.

And is it any good?  I hope so. But creating the brand is only the first step. The name and the logo are just a badge. The next – and more important – bit is to live up to the brand values. For c&binet, the test will be whether it does bring people together in new ways, start new conversations and give birth to new creative enterprises.

This site is part of that brand promise, so I’m delighted to be one of the people getting the conversation started.