About the client
Osler is one of Canada’s top firms specializing in business law. With a team of over 400 lawyers and offices across Canada and in New York, the firm represents industry and business leaders in all market segments.
Why Osler hired Zync
When Osler approached Zync, they wanted to update their brand direction, uniqueness and overall presence in the marketplace. Despite being one of Canada’s largest firms, with top talent and top national legal cases, their brand simply didn’t capture and represent their overall success. A refresh was required to inject the image and team with a new approach, energy and tools to stand out and project their growth opportunities.
How we refreshed the Osler brand
We began by running a series of discovery sessions with key stakeholders, clients and prospects to provide a strong foundation for the complete repositioning of their brand promise. Market research was conducted in addition to providing insights into work done by their competitors and leading brands in other industries. Based on all this information we formed a brand strategy, creative direction and activation plan.
In our research we found that the logo itself held a lot of brand equity, however, the rest of Osler’s image felt tired and didn’t connect with its target. Based on this new knowledge we decided to keep the logo as it was, and develop positioning around a new tagline, “It’s law that works”, along with creative based on clean typography, a simplified colour palette and storytelling using photography and infographics rather than editorial illustration which was used previously.
Next, it was important to review and adjust Osler’s entire brand ecosystem to ensure its support of various lines of business, including legal services, client tools and other branded solutions.
The new brand, with its cleaner, bolder look, new voice and visual language, was launched across all corporate communications and marketing channels over a period of two years to allow the entire team time to adapt to new positioning and collateral templates.
A very detailed brand standards manual was developed to clearly outline usage and flexibility of all new brand tools, from logo applications, fonts and photography styles, to layout formatting rules and various applications. The manual helps Osler stay consistent in its brand application and build strong brand equity.
With the complete refresh we also had an opportunity to develop new digital solutions to help position Osler as a trusted advisor and partner to businesses dealing with new technology and global market pressures. We proposed to push their cornerstone publications online, putting Osler ahead of all other major law firms in the country.
One such example is Osler’s Legal Year in Review. Zync worked with Olser’s marketing team to completely rethink the publication: how it was structured, delivered and promoted. Osler’s Legal Year in Review, and now other key publications, are delivered via a microsite giving Osler the ability to deliver it more quickly to a wider audience using more channels.
Final outcome
The refresh helped reframe Osler’s brand as a leader in business law. Having a strong brand and a solid structure enables them to focus on evolving their business to not only keep up with changes in how clients buy legal services, but lead the way with new legal strategies and solutions.
