Norsum Consulting and identity for a corporate merger.
Building a better world starts with building better.
Guiding the merger of two companies, each a leader in its field, is a delicate matter. Many questions on the strategic side — the usual ones. What naming strategy? A new name? Does one brand dominate the other? What story? A union to improve service, strategic growth, a transition to a new service and product model? Working on projects like this is, for the “consulting” side of our positioning (a creative consultancy), an absolute source of pride and pleasure. Being chosen for what may be the most delicate project in a brand’s life (merging with another) reflects a degree of trust in our services that motivates us enormously.
We began working on the merger of Norgypsum and Diteknor, two construction-products distribution companies from northern Spain. Asturias and the Basque Country. We devoted the first part of the work to analyzing the market and mapping the road ahead.
After a couple of months, we identified the narrative foundations of this project. Since the beginning of our existence, humankind’s purpose has been to build a better world to live in. And that takes three things: ideas, hands and materials. Our client takes care of the materials. With several decades of proven track record behind them, they have built a great relationship with the people who build. And they have grown, joining forces to build the world, better.
Sharing the same north, the same ideals and the same project. Doing it from the understanding that addition is the essence of progress. And of service. That led us to propose Norsum as the new name. The “nor” is part of both brands. And they add up. Simple.
Just as the name emerges from the merger of two companies, the brand mark results from the conversation between them. A brand of people, for people. Two companies together. Without losing their north. For the ecosystem, a gesture inspired by conversation, and a color inspired by nature and the processes of construction.
The Norsum brand takes shape as a logotype built from the combination of a brand mark and a typeface customized to make it its own. We softened the angularity of its edges, reinforcing the warmth that defines the brand. Approachable. And trustworthy.
But you can’t create a new name and a new visual identity, with its corresponding ecosystem, without first building a story. Building a better world. It starts with building better. This is the narrative platform with which the new brand opens a conversation with its world. And with the world. We shifted its role from materials warehouse (a physical space) to a facilitator of solutions for creating new spaces and ways of living (an active agent). From Norgypsum and Diteknor, to Norsum.
A project like this achieves, beyond defining a positioning and an identity, the spark of a new “mood” or tone among the people inside both companies, so that everyone works in the same direction — equal parts challenging and inspiring.
And so we built Norsum from the foundations up, creating a Brand Book that captures in its pages what the brand is and how it is built. It closes with a communication plan to announce the merger — first internally, then to the world.
Norgypsum, Diteknor. Thank you for trusting our team to build the story that unites and energizes yours.
"You have brought us real value, first with a strategic brand consulting process that stimulated and sharpened us. And then with the creation of a smart, inspiring brand with potential equal to the challenge ahead of us: leading the northern territory. Thank you Shernan."
