The choice to open our Asian office in Singapore is backed up by the infrastructure and the social environment that encourages and strengthens a productive ground for the creative industries. It would be hard not to notice how the city-state is shaping fast into the creative hub of the East. This article is a first thank you note for our second home, overseas.

While communities play an important part in branding and social media is making its way to media plans and creative strategies, we were curious how do global branding companies themselves fit in the landscape provided by Facebook and Twitter.

A detailed look at Bitdefender rebranding process, as seen from inside, revealed in premiere at David Airey's Identity Designed.

In the fall of 2003 Wally Olins came to Bucharest to deliver his speech for the first conference dedicated to nation branding. I welcomed him at the airport together with my partners and during the first minutes of our conversation, Wally – who was setting foot for the first time on Romanian land – asked us: “So, what’s new with the Romanian Royal Family?”

If you Google „integritate” (meaning “integrity” in Romanian) you will have the unpleasant surprise to come across pages and pages of authorities and committees that fight against corruption; integrity in Romanian society nowadays is defined by obsessively opposing it to corruption. Not the same happens if we Google the English word, where the first meanings of the concept emerge clearly with reference to „the most admired person, company” etc.

In the same way a change of name can attract a certain change in reality, design has the power to transform perceptions. We chose a subject (and both an object) apparently insignificant, that we always carry around and is often the first answer to a foreign authority’s question: Who are you? What is more intimately connected to a citizen’s identity than his ID card?

The identity of a brand lies in the way in which it expresses, sincerely, something internal – a belief, a spirit, a character, a promise— and by no means, the obsession for an external form. The external form has to be intrinsically, even umbilically related to the internal truth. The identity of a brand gets sealed in its DNA, where the vision, rhetoric and visual expressions must create a coherent whole.

Aneta talks with Anaezi Modu for the REBRAND Expert Interviews series.

I dedicate this article to those Romanians usually never mentioned by the national business press: the hundreds of true Romanian entrepreneurs, known and respected only by their families, their employees or their business partners. The very success of modern state building depends on their success.

Location is Not Enough. Price Neither. Try Branding.
An Opinion Paper by Brandient

Cristian-or Kit-Paul, the 35-year-old founding partner and creative director of Brandient (Romania), leads a firm whose design work transcends language. Even logos that incorporate Romanian words make sense to the English speaker.

Why is it now the time to create Romanian brands?

Aneta Bogdan, managing partner of Brandient, which was picked to be Romanian Television’s long term consultant, tells Business Review about the decisions taken in the wake of the brand’s audit.