eMAG
Brand consultancy, 2021 — the emotional layer
What affection is worth to a market leader — and how to earn it
In 2021, at twenty years, eMAG had little left to prove commercially. It was Romania's second most valuable brand, its brand value had more than doubled in five years, and it had built the country's convenience economy. Leaders at that stage face a different question, and eMAG asked it plainly: trust it had earned — could it also be loved?
Brandient treated the question with rigor rather than flattery. Affection has real commercial value for a leader — steadier margins, customers who forgive a bad day and resist a rival's discount, a stronger hand in recruiting. But its limits are real too: generalist e-commerce is a category built on usefulness, where speed, range and accessibility keep relationships practical. A transformation into a "love brand" would have promised more than the category can deliver, and Brandient said so.
The counsel instead drew a working distinction between habit and preference — between the attachment that comes from being reliable and the attachment that comes from how a brand makes people feel about themselves — and proposed building the second without disturbing the first: deliberately, and measurably.
The result was a program the organization could act on: eight defined ways customers want to see themselves through the brand, each matched with practical moves across communication, experience and measurement. It closed the arc that began in 2010 — the first decade earned leadership; the next earns affection.
Client:
eMAG
Industry:
E-commerce
Project type:
Brand Consultancy Specific Solutions
Year:
2021
Services:
Brand Audit; Brand Positioning; Brand Name, Narratives and Voice
Rebranding, 2019—Design upgrade
Articulating the e-commerce leader through a decade of branding
The new logo design was conceived to increase the brand’s visibility and modernize it, transmitting lifestyle, shopping joy, and a contemporary vibe. The new logo design imposed the redesign of the site and strategic decisions at the level of the visual digital platform.
The on-site advertising platform was comprehensively overhauled and standardized for style consistency and operational efficiency.
For off-site advertising and electronic signage, the logo was dramatized and animated by leveraging the new opportunities provided by the color gradient.
A flexible, modular, layered proprietary illustration system was developed for the delivery lockers, accommodating locker blocks of any dimension. The illustration system was adapted for other branded materials: bags, gift cards, etc.
In this later phase the work matured into a fuller creative and communications platform and an internal relaunch, crystallizing the enabler idea into a clearer everyday promise built around freedom of choice — Libertate în fiecare zi — the most emotionally resonant expression of the leadership the brand had earned but never fully claimed.
Client:
eMAG
Industry:
E-commerce
Project type:
Rebranding — Brand Repositioning · Design Upgrade
Year:
2019
Services:
Design Audit, Logo and Visual Identity Program, Web & UI Design
Corporate Brand Design, B2C Communication Design, Retail Design, Packaging Design, Brand Guidelines, Internal Communication Design
Evolution, 2015 — the international brand
One brand for four markets: preparing eMAG for expansion beyond Romania
International expansion raises the cost of an unclear brand. By 2015 eMAG was operating in Bulgaria and Hungary and entering Poland. A brand made for one home market now had to work in four, entering each with no local standing and little room for error. Management counted the brand among the company's three engines of growth, alongside technology and organizational culture; the task was to make it perform as one. An international brand needs simpler rules, stronger assets and more discipline than a local leader ever did.
Brandient rebuilt the brand platform as a management tool. One positioning for the region — the everything, everywhere, everyday shopping needs of the New Europe citizens — and one brand idea, Experience Enabler, kept internal by design: a standard against which decisions about portfolio, service and communication are tested. Its five commitments — listen, communicate, please, impress, help — were tied to the measure the business already ran on, treating the company's NPS as the sum of individual ones.
The identity was evolved rather than replaced, keeping the recognition the business had already paid for. A dual-logo system pairs a fixed corporate mark with a commercial mark built to carry themed objects — a coffee cup in the morning, a heart on Valentine's Day — so one controlled identity can follow the retail calendar in four markets without fragmenting, and without buying separate campaign assets to do it.
The 2015 brand guidelines turned the system into an operating manual. A custom corporate typeface; communication typography covering Romanian, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian, so the brand speaks with one voice in every market; the red, blue and cyan palette held in white space and treated in the manual as equity in its own right; documentary photography; a consistent visual form for eMAG's services, one of the brand's declared points of difference; and a logo extended with the country domain for each new market — recognition on day one, the suffix dropped once the brand earns local standing.
Client:
eMAG
Industry:
E-commerce
Project type:
Rebranding — Brand Repositioning · Brand and Portfolio Architecture
Year:
2015–2016
Services:
Brand Audit, Brand Positioning, Brand Name, Narratives and Voice, Logo and Visual Identity Program, Corporate ID Program, Digital Design, Branded Environments, Communication Design, EVP and Employee Brand Engagement, Brand Guidelines
Rebranding, 2010
The first rebranding of a future giant — and the start of a decade of work together
By 2010 eMAG was Romania's e-commerce leader, with strong market share, millions of customers and a major strategic investor in Naspers of South Africa. The business had outgrown its brand: awareness, service reputation and customer advocacy were strong, but the relationship with customers remained functional. Brandient's task was to build an emotional bond on top of an already trusted operation, because durable loyalty is built on more than function.
The strategy reframed eMAG as an enabler — not the place with the cheapest products, but the service that meets customers' everyday needs through technology, design and service rather than price. Brandient defined the brand's DNA, platform and idea around that role, giving the brand a deliberate path from single purchases toward a lasting place in customers' lives.
The identity was renewed, not replaced. Given eMAG's position and its loyal base, the redesign kept the name, the color palette and the logo structure, and modernized them to carry the new promise. The result was the modular logo — a mark built to change with the day and the occasion — and a simple, versatile communication platform.
That platform put the brand's own name to work: the "e" of eMAG became the device for emotional and functional messages alike, built to grow awareness with new audiences.
Client:
eMAG
Industry:
E-commerce
Project type:
Rebranding — Brand Reconstruction · Brand Repositioning
Year:
2010
Services:
Brand Audit, Brand Positioning, Brand Name, Narratives and Voice, Logo and Visual Identity Program, Corporate ID Program, Digital Design, Branded Environments, Communication Design, EVP and Employee Brand Engagement, Brand Guidelines
Awards:
Transform Gold Award in 2010,
Graphis Gold Award in 2012,
Graphis Silver Award in 2013
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