News & Press Releases

A Tale of Two Brands

 Branding is all about identity, from the logo on a company’s website to the way they answer the phone, the brand message should be continuous. So what happens when a company with a well established brand wants to expand its services and seek recognition in new areas? Should they create a new, separate brand, or should they stick with the old one and simply promote their new services? It’s a dilemma many companies come to face, and a wrong move could prove perilous. Carbon explains how it escaped the flames of brand change without getting burnt…

Credibilty,  a burning issue...
As an established PR agency with a solid client base including IT blue chips Microsoft and Capgemini, Inferno Communications has a strong brand identity with wide recognition in its field. However, the company’s rapid growth and notable success in delivering the experiential side of its client’s marketing strategy opened the door to pursue an additional line of business, focusing on events management, speech and presentation writing services as well as spokesperson training. The question then was whether to set up a separate, completely differentiated brand, or use the strength of the Inferno name to carry things forward, or to simply find a marriage between the two.  It was decided that to not take advantage of Inferno’s established brand strength would be to miss a trick as brand credibility takes so much time to build up, and can be a company’s most valuable asset. So a ‘happy marriage’ it was, and 'Carbon' was born.

The building blocks of life...
Tom Berry, Director of Carbon explains that the name was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, carbon as a fundamental element is one of the ‘building blocks of life’, and helps every living organism to grow, breath and flourish. Berry believes that great communications and marketing is also made up of several building blocks – the right audience, the right spokesperson, the right medium, the right message and the right result.

The building block analogy is reflected in the company’s visual branding, which is based on carbon’s atomic structure. Secondly, as a metaphor and eloquent link with its parent company, Carbon is, of course the product of an inferno. This subtle connection and multiple meaning is surely a great testament to the creativity and marketing nous of the people behind it.

To find out more about Carbon, click here!