Savage Brands and Client AFGlobal Earn 2018 Top Branding Crystal Award from AMA Houston
Author Savage BrandsCategories News
The AMA Houston Crystal Awards, hosted by the American Marketing Association (AMA) Houston Chapter, is the largest marketing award show in Texas and recognizes marketing leaders in strategy, creativity and innovation. It is attended by more than 650 professionals—the marketing créme de la créme from virtually every industry and career level.
Savage Brands, along with our client AFGlobal, was awarded a prestigious 2018 Crystal Award in the rebranding category. The Crystal Awards is the only competition in Houston that determines winners based on results.
“We worked hand-in-hand with AFGlobal to end brand confusion from its many acquisitions, infuse some new life and energy into the brand, and unify its identity and messaging—for both internal and external audiences,” said Dahlia Salazar, Principal, Vice President and Creative Director at Savage.
“One of the most rewarding results went beyond the high readership recall and other excellent metrics that attested to the effectiveness of the new brand,” said Dahlia. “AFGlobal employees, from several legacy companies, embraced the new brand identity and messaging from the start—meaning we got it right with an authentic brand story.”
How we did it.
A key objective was to develop a bold aesthetic that would highlight AFGlobal’s differentiation in the market space, while also speaking to its technological advancements, completeness of offerings and agility with client collaboration toward purpose-built solutions. This involved extensive internal research, leadership meetings, employee engagement and client focus groups to assure the new brand identity was a true reflection of the company.
The synthesis of the brand to a positioning statement is the power behind the entire campaign. The tagline—Agile thinking. Engineering change.—is evergreen and communicates the company’s ability, as a smaller provider, to move quickly and to take a flexible approach to technology and how to work with customers.
The visual reflection of that is the new AFGlobal logo circular symbol, demonstrating the core value proposition—a complete and holistic offering that goes beyond and leads through informed decision-making. It projects modernity, alluding to an infinity symbol and the infinite reliability that comes from continual innovation and flexibility.
We placed the symbol to the right of content to convey an openness and agility to better serve our clients. The shape is bold yet elegant to signify the confidence of controlled decision-making and the energy that stems from efficiency. The color solution incorporates a gradient blend to symbolize the seamless integration of technology and manufacturing—a transformational standard.
A client event was hosted to provide a unique platform to debut the brand messaging to targeted clients and prospects while showcasing our technology in an open yet intimate environment.
Overall, the AFGlobal rebranding project included:
- Logo and brand identity
- Strategic message development
- Print and digital advertising
- Website refinement
- Logo integration across all mediums and channels
Savage Brands believes in unleashing the good inherent within all organizations. Business results are driven by connecting with people at the belief level. That’s why we align everything a company says and does with its Purpose through a proven process that links strategy and execution with “why.” We solve the challenges corporate America faces by building tribal loyalty from the inside out, focusing on people first to deliver authentic brand experiences. Savage builds purposeful brands, communications, leaders and cultures.