The result of a six-month rebranding process to refresh and reinvigorate the brands with a strong new identity. The marketing, UX, engineering, and communications teams at ImmoScout24, AutoScout24, MotoScout24, and FinanceScout24 joined forces to breathe new life into these well-established brands. In this three-part series we want to highlight the why, the how, and the wow of this project to showcase the fantastic work that has gone into this new design.
The Highlight(ers) of a New Look
Although the platforms are very different – from real estate to automotive to finance and insurance, it was difficult to visually differentiate each plattform with the previous Scout24 branding. The logos were consistently orange and blue across the board, which made for a very strong overall brand presence but gave the individual platforms too little in way of uniqueness. So it was time to add more colour to the platforms. Each platform was assigned the colour of a highlighter pen to create a distinct and bright brand image, and literally highlight important messages and features that the brands wanted their users to know about.
New Design – Same Goal
A complete change in the visual appearance of a well-known and used platform can cause a lot of confusion and uncertainty amongst users and business customers. It was, therefore, important to start communicating the changes whilst also reassuring the platforms’ end-users that each platform’s services and goals would remain the same. If anything, a cleaner and more modern design would improve the user experience, streamline the user journey and make information more easily accessible.
A True Team Effort
It goes without saying that in order to complete such a large-scale project, you need to have all hands on deck. From strategy and branding to the designers, to the product & UX team and engineers, to marketing and communications: everyone was involved in making this comprehensive rebrand a success. And so it was. The entire process can be broken down into different phases, with the 1. July being the last one when the design and marketing campaigns were officially unveiled. To illustrate the order in which such an extensive creative project can be tackled, we divided the process into four separate phases:
- Adaption of logos, fonts, colours
- Adaption of icons & illustrations
- Implementation of onsite activities & quality assurance
- Go-Live
The coordination efforts have paid off. Each Scout24 platform now has its own distinct look and feel. A consistent, modern, bright colour scheme, unmistakable branding elements, and visual language. These all work together to make it much easier to distinguish between the individual platforms and provide a better user journey for end users.
What’s Next?
With this article, we wanted to give an initial overview of the project, who was involved, how long it took and what the outcome was to celebrate the great work of our colleagues at SMG. As mentioned at the beginning, two more articles will follow in which we will look into the creative process, how the visual and tonal execution of the branding was adapted for the Swiss market, as well as the strategy behind the roll-out and the marketing campaign.
