On the heels of the largest split ever in technology, as Hewlett Packard Company became HP Inc. and HP Enterprise—a workforce, and an industry that had relied on the strength of the founders of Silicon Valley were unsure of what the future had in store. HP Enterprise asked our team to help them brand a new company, MicroFocus, as they split again, in a spin-merger, splitting off their $10B software division to merge with a British firm into a new NYSE symbol with a 12.9B market cap. When Gartner’s team saw the new brand unveiled in Monaco, they exclaimed “If how you look is a predictor of future success, the future of the New Microfocus is bright.”
Hewlett Packard’s Software division was built through massive acquisition in the early 2000s to support their booming enterprise hardware division. The software division had always been supported by hardware sales. When the new MicroFocus was formed as a pure-play software organization, they wanted to distance themselves from hardware in their visual identity. We built their photo and video libraries around culture, and the software experience. The signature images we created for them envisioned the user inside the software..
As we launched the new MicroFocus across the globe, both to external customers, the press, and internal teams, we considered it’s application in physical environments—like the New York Stock Exchange, global offices, and events, digital environments—like apps, web sites, and UI/UX, video, photography and print collateral. Our team built standards and directed teams globally, so that as the world “Discovered” the New MicroFocus the message and visual identity would be consistent.
We applied the MicroFocus Brand in consistent, but innovative ways, to make the day one experience “New” for all of the stakeholders and customers that were experiencing it for the first time. From their offices and Executive Briefing Center to their Global Sales Kick Off, to a Global Customer Road Show, and all of the digital, print, video, and built that support the new company, we made Day One a seamless experience.
In the end, our visual identity work and messaging is only as strong as the strategy behind it. In addition to all of that work, there were hundreds of hours spent mapping out the go-to-market strategy as well, and making sense out of this new giant’s massive combined portfolio.
We don’t look at just one aspect of a brand. We consider the whole experience. How a brand looks, speaks, behaves, feels, and dreams.