Transforming TMT Analysis into TMT ID: The Brand Evolution

By the end of last year it was obvious that TMT Analysis was a company that had grown beyond the original idea for the business when it was formed seven years ago.

It had grown in size, expanded its business, and had also responded to what customers wanted – adding more products and services to its offering.

But by adding functions as they went along, and as demand and technology evolved, TMT had ended up in a place where their branding was no longer as functional as – or representative of – the products and services it now offered.

TMT’s unique selling point was still the quality of the mobile intelligence data it offered. But TMT’s now truly global reach and an increasing offering into the identity market meant the original brand name, TMT Analysis, felt that it no longer fully reflected what the company had grown into and what it could now do.

When we set about trying to address all this, the underpinning mantra that emerged from conversations between us as brand experts and the TMT team, was that the goal was very much ‘evolution rather than revolution’. We started from the position that the company was in a good place, doing great work for which it was widely recognised. We didn’t want to throw that away – to create something unrecognisable.

And that started with the name itself.

Having built a global reputation the phrase TMT – essentially the sector the company operates in, Technology, Media and Telecoms, had started to also stand for something palpable company wise – it was known for excellence in data and trust in the market. The brand name was an asset that was widely recognisable. We didn’t want to lose that.

But the additional appending of Analysis did seem dated and often misleading – it no longer felt an adequate umbrella term to describe the multiple functions being offered. So the question was: how to reframe the brand while retaining its core identity?

The answer that we eventually arrived at was…TMT ID.

Identity is a central plank of all of the various TMT offerings and so using it as an overarching description felt much closer to an accurate description than Analysis had – and there’s also a neatness and succinctness when you put the two abbreviated terms together. The idea is that then you can append functions under that overarching brand identity so you then get TMT ID Verify, TMT ID Authenticate, TMD ID Score – and so on.

But having settled on this new corporate identity – or ID, as it were – it didn’t feel sufficient to stop there. Everyone agreed this was an opportune moment to redraw what TMT ID actually looked like. A rebranding was also a moment in time when the company could and should synchronise the whole package – with a fresh, innovative reimagining of the brand and its design ethos across everything from the website to business cards or branded polo shirts, all of it.

This was a moment to realign the brand with what it actually stands for – in line with client expectation and ambition.

So having settled on an evolved brand name, we next looked at how we could evolve the TMT logo.

The outgoing image was a simple arrow – originally intended to express the movement of data that TMT’s business is built upon. But, of course, one key aspect which has become ever clearer since those early days is that data doesn’t move in just one direction. TMT’s great strength is its liveness. The checks the company makes on a user’s number are in real time. They are of the now, never stopping. So the underpinning notion in the redesign was to visually express this sense of data flow – back and forth, round and round, always moving. Then new softer lines are intended to emphasise the human aspect in all this data flow. How human communication is as essential as data values.

If you compare the two logos, old and new, you’ll also immediately notice that something else has changed: it has turned from blue to…green. As has the palette of the whole website. The thought process for this was that the old look felt a little generic, and a little shouty. Instead, it now features darker emerald and electric green tones which we hope make it distinct from conventional tropes in the digital sector.

After much reflection, trial and error, we felt these green tones were the closest we could get to visually reflecting the company’s values: something warmer, more human, than just tech.

This is meant to say: ‘we are highly efficient, trusted and state-of-the-art but we are also about human interaction’. We hope that green, which is associated with trustworthiness, and specifically these tones of green, will imbue the brand with a sense of being professional but also approachable. Because a bespoke service can only come from a place where a customer’s needs are fully understood – and that point can only be reached by in-person communication.

We then tried to carry that feeling through across the entire look of the new website: cleaner fonts, with fewer words that are better chosen, more lower-case, reducing punctuation without sacrificing clarity. We wanted to employ a subtle but powerful visual language, which suggests human connection.

And the new logo, we hope, integrates harmoniously with the refined typography, evoking the fluidity and security of data transmission under the guardianship of TMT ID.

So welcome to the new look. We really hope you like it. Which rather depends on you being able to navigate it. I hope it’s as simple to use as we intended it to be.