Hudson are an international recruitment business with offices in over 23 countries who specialise in talent selection and employee training, as well as the management of out-sourced recruitment, redeployment and outplacement programs.

The challenge

Several years had passed since Hudson’s previous brand refresh, and as a result, the Hudson brand was looking tired, stale and old fashioned. Internally, a lack of process, governance and engagement meant that their marketing material was being created ad hoc, with little consistency between divisions, channels and global markets. Their business performance was also waning, having slipped from first in the market five years prior, to third in the Australian market by 2015 — further enhancing the general disengagement within the organisation. On top of this, they were unsure on how to use their tag line of ‘From great people to great performance’ which felt ‘empty’ and lacked buy-in from internal stakeholders. As a result, it was used inconsistently throughout the business.

Graphically, Hudson were using over 100 colours, that were generally dark and ‘muddy’ and reproduced poorly — particularly in digital. By 2015, over 80% of Hudson’s communications were delivered via digital channels, however there were minimal resources to support this growth.

Internally, the systems and tools used to govern the brand were out of date and not widely adopted. This resulted in documents being created haphazardly, using off-brand templates, with little understanding on how best to appeal to all global markets and all lines of business.

The brief

Adopt a ‘digital first’ mind-set to create a consistent and coherent brand that is simple to manage, and relevant to all divisions and global markets. Drawing from Hudson’s core brand promise of ‘From great people to great performance‘ the design and tone of voice should reflect Hudson’s competitive differentiation and ‘feel’ modern and fresh.

Our approach

Meeting twice a week, we worked hand-in-hand with Hudson’s local and global marketing teams to firstly define the problem, then build a set of strategic solutions aimed at meeting the project’s objectives.

Our first task was to fully immerse ourselves in the brand by conducting a thorough audit of Hudson and their competitors’ marketing material.

Next we ran a series of workshops with their executive team where we mapped out some high-level brand principles that were used as inspiration throughout the project.

Using these brand principles, we created a series of prototypes that demonstrated our intended direction. These prototypes included all the key ingredients that would make up the new Hudson brand toolkit — including a new way to view their logo, a new brand tagline, a new tone-of-voice, colour palette, brand device, imagery (including photography, illustration, infographics, and iconography), and typographic styles. Although not part of the original scope of work, Hudson also asked us to create detailed templates for their company reports, PowerPoint presentations, stationery, brochures, eCommunications and social posts.

Next we packaged it all up into some easy-to-read, yet highly-detailed brand guidelines. We also ‘on-boarded’ all their internal marketing teams, and external agencies to ensure everyone was up-to-speed on the new brand.

Lastly, Hudson asked us to act as a co sign-off for all their marketing material during their rebranding process to ensure everything was a success.

The result

Over a period of eight months, we delivered a brand new tonal direction for Hudson that was launched internationally throughout 23 countries.