Building a brand based on confidence

The challenge

Founded in 2015, Collabria had big ambitions to become Canada’s largest credit union credit card issuer. The company onboarded 98% of Canadian credit unions in a short time frame, which meant it had to devote a lot of time and resources to scaling its products, services and operations accordingly. The initial rollout presented several operational challenges, and having recently carried out a successful plan that addressed the root of these complexities, Collabria was now ready to centre its ambitions on a new focus: growth.

With this new aim in mind, Collabria set out to increase market penetration and product usage organically, all the while evolving its client relationships into true partnerships centred on strategy. In order to recognize and highlight this new evolution and growth-based focus, Collabria wanted to communicate two key goals: becoming the partner of choice for credit unions and being the first card credit union members take out of their wallets.

To effectively get this message across, our team needed to show a clear break from the operational challenges the company faced in previous years. We also wanted to present an inspirational message – one that is appropriate for a B2B2C brand offering white label products and that respects the unique relationship credit unions have with their members. Finally, we aimed to embolden the brand image to make it more competitive against other technology startups, without sacrificing trustworthiness.

Our perspective

In a truly collaborative approach, BrandBourg teamed up with the Collabria team as well as fellow Humanise agencies L’Institut Idée and BBR to tackle these challenges. Brand strategy for Collabria was developed through L’Institut’s Structural Mapping Process® (SMP) and Strategic Framework, and a detailed creative brief ensued.

BrandBourg then worked diligently to establish a brand identity platform, which would include a new logo, signature, story and overall expression for the brand. And through various workshops with the frontline Collabria team, BrandBourg and L’Institut were able to create key B2B customer personas to help Collabria employees gain a renewed understanding of their clients. 

Finally, the entire team – BBR, Brandbourg and Collabria – worked on the launch and deployment of the revised brand, which included a corporate video, trade booth design and production, personnel training tools (including best practices for presentations and trade booth operation), brand launch presentations and presentation templates for corporate, internal and key clients, and other collateral materials.

The solution

To show the possibility Collabria ultimately gives end users, we developed a simple yet powerful identity system to represent Collabria’s story across various touchpoints and situations, positioning Collabria as a partner of choice for its clients.

We transformed the two Ls of the wordmark into a key communication device (which we call “the shutters”) that splits open to reveal a window of opportunity, inviting possibility to become reality.

The colour palette is a crucial element of Collabria’s brand identity, reflecting the company’s mission of providing diverse solutions for their clients. The wide range of colours used in the shutters can be adapted to harmonize with the various possibilities shown in the window, while the use of black shows strength, confidence and consistency across all touchpoints.