How can we create a global brand that positions both IFC and its Employability Tool as a leaders in tertiary education?

Background

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our team was on-boarded to the project to support an IFC team that was used to delivering all their services in person. Our team supported IFC developing their organizational strategy, product roadmap, implementation plan, and launch a new brand for their reinvented Employability Tool.

Objectives

Create a global brand to target clients

in Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa

Position IFC as a global leader

in tertiary education advisory

Differentiate IFC's offer

from traditional investment and advisory work

The branding approach

Our team mapped out the audience profiles and growth strategy for the Employability Tool and developed insights that pointed to the need for a separate brand to differentiate from IFC’s core investment offering to a branded product of IFC. We worked with IFC’s External & Corporate Relations (ECR) to establish the core requirements for a new brand, and ensure that our strategy fitted IFC’s branding architecture for sub-brands. Our recommendations presented a new challenge for IFC, the creation of a branded product that was in keeping with IFC’s core brand.

We led the core IFC team through a brand strategy and naming workshop where we narrowed down on a core set of names and tested them in the market. We facilitated the process of approving the selected name and Vitae was approved by the team, ECR, and IFC leadership. With a name selected, we held creative design workshops for creatives and self-proclaimed “non-creatives” that ensured that we heard from all team members and created a brand identity that the entire team felt bought in and felt ownership of. Early iterations pulled in ideas from the team and our discussions allowed our team to gather insights to then take concepts, refine and iterate on them.

Our design process energized IFC’s team and as we developed further concepts, our teams met more frequently to iterate together. Our collaboration resulted in the development of a strong, iconic brand that leveraged most of IFC’s secondary branding palettes. ECR requested specific guidelines on how to use the Vitae brand alongside the IFC brand, and ensure that we developed a clear set of rules and instructions for future designers.

All of our work was subsequently documented and launched on IFC’s first digital brand platform available on https://vitae.brandkit.host. With the core brand designed and documented, IFC onboarded additional, regional designers to support with local level efforts. Our team supported those suppliers in implementing the brand and helped the IFC team define rules as teams found new needs and requirements for the brand.

Outcomes

The brand was launched in March 2021 with a coordinated communications campaign supported by IFC, World Bank, GiZ, Fias, MFA of the Netherlands and the Norwegian Government. We supported the continued growth and development of Vitae by providing materials in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese for marketing, email and social media channels.

Our team supported the Vitae team to build internal capacity to take on most of the communications and branding strategies in-house, and helped onboard small, nimble agencies to take on day-to-day design tasks. By reinventing its employability brand, IFC has made progress in acquiring dozens of new education institutions to adopt its one of the four new product lines designed to meet different client segments. With our focus on evidence based research to inform branding, we created a brand that respected IFC’s brand equity, and helped the team leap forward on their ambitious goals to improve HEI’s bridge the employability gap.