“Repositioning ALN as a dominant player, the task was to visually harmonise each 15-member firm’s brand with the overall alliance”
The website was the new window to the business, allowing all of the alliance companies to pool all of their knowledge and expertise in one place. This allowed everyone to have a consistent way of communicating under one singular vision.
Creating a custom supergraphic from the identity allowed the design of collateral a simple and effective way of using photography, graphics and illustrations that would be consistent no matter what the touchpoint.
Africa Legal Network (ALN) is an integrated alliance of pre-eminent full-service corporate law firms across 15 African countries and the UAE. The pan-African alliance was founded in 2004 by ALN Kenya | Anjarwalla & Khanna, a tier-one law firm established in Kenya in 1954, by one of the lawyers who worked on the post-independence constitution.
By 2020, the 15 member firms of ALN had amassed an unparalleled level of experience and know-how across a full range of legal industry and service areas, both locally and internationally. At a time when African economic growth, challenge and opportunity are at an all-time high, we needed to reassess ALN’s visual brand’s effectiveness and design ability to reflect merits as an alliance, across the multiple markets the alliance serves.
Our previous brand identity and tone of voice felt like a reflection of ALN’s past, not its present and future. The use of the brand and style was inconsistent with no uniformity across the member firms. As the ALN team becomes increasingly united operationally, what the brand conveys and how we communicate must match this pioneering approach. True collaboration is what leads to success, which is why we looked outwards for partners to bring in a fresh perspective to the ALN brand. Bringing together one unified brand for existing and potential clients to recognise and relate to was central to the project’s objectives. Only with this in place could we start to re-imagine how the African legal sector communicates with the world - and prove ourselves a leader in the field.
Our brand refresh and redesign of digital assets and communications included the logo and tagline, an entirely new website, brochures and brand video. We also completely overhauled our tone of voice, replacing legal jargon with a more friendly, human voice, telling the story of the alliance and ensuring the culture of each member firm came through.
2022 has seen the redesign lead to incredible successes, including new flagship client projects, greater internal collaboration and an industry-leading staff retention rate.
Project Brief
To reposition ALN as a dominant player, the task was to visually harmonise each 15-member firm’s brand with the overall alliance, reflect a change in the overall strategic vision, and demonstrate ALN’s capacity to lead transformation within Africa’s legal industry.
A brand audit was the first step toward repositioning and rebranding. Research methods included online surveys, in-depth interviews, secondary market research, and competitive analysis. The research helped us understand how the branding was perceived by our clients, target audience, and general market. The key findings revealed that, although brand recall was high and overall perceptions of the business positive, clients did not see the alliance as having a continental reach and network. Secondly, the differentiation between member firms and the alliance needed to be clarified.
Design Solution
Design solution
With the market research findings and our five core objectives at the forefront of the project, we identified four principle design areas to focus on. Authenticity, connectivity, strength and consistency. The alliance’s identity was already highly recognisable. Therefore, we opted for an evolution rather than a revolution in our brand identity, enhancing it to be more balanced and powerful.
Identity
We refined the brand icon to be a consistent size, shape, and weight – this also allowed us to include every aspect of the alliance and create a better balance with the wordmark and the brand icon. The range of colours in the logo was expanded from red to red and grey, resulting in a stronger refined identity with a greater sense of modernity.
The refreshed nomenclature allows each local firm to continue using its name but with the ALN brand now the first recognisable asset since the brand is more powerful as a cohesive alliance than a collective of its member firms.
Following a workshop with the alliance member firms, we produced a tagline which positions us as a cohesive group of experienced practitioners who are connected and integrated, regardless of location or firm. One Region, One Vision, One ALN.
Look and Feel
The brand look and feel was updated to reflect the new modern direction. To achieve this, we created a set of super-graphics that can be used in several ways. The larger version lends itself to incorporating images and the thinner version is used as a graphic device that creates a more substantial visual connection to the identity and alliance.
We adopted a modular grid system that has allowed us to create different layouts depending on our objectives for the assets. This type of layout centres the image as the main focal point rather than having the many words associated with lawyers and the legal industry.
Illustrations and photography were essential to get the right tone for the brand to deliver our intended message to our audiences. They have added character, personality and depth to our design. We also support up-and-coming local artists by using their art pieces for our collaterals.
Solidifying Brand Guidelines
To keep communication consistent across member firms in multiple countries, we held multiple training sessions with staff members on what the brand refresh meant to the alliance, its importance, how it would change current operations and best practice applications of the brand guidelines. We also ran writing workshops to help staff apply the new tone of voice to their everyday communications.
Results
Increase awareness of the alliance in Africa and expand its reach
The launch of the new brand has led to significant and positive change within the alliance. In the last six months, several firms across Africa (from Ghana, Malawi, and Sudan) have reached out with the request to join the alliance.
Recognition from the media of ALN’s rebrand
“The African continent is an undeniably dynamic market and a springboard for real development opportunities for many domestic and international companies. ALN’s model uses common branding and a central management team to ensure operational integration among member firms, so clients get a seamless, consistent experience across jurisdictions.” – The Global Legal Post.
Increase Engagement of All Member Firms
Close collaboration between ALN members is at the heart of everything we do. The development of a new website for the alliance exudes the integration between member firms and prioritises friendlier and more collaborative content over legalese. Members still collaborate on providing content and guidance for the website. We now see longer time spent on the site and higher engagement with the organisation’s newsletters compared to the previous website.
Achieve Recognition Resulting from Better Client Service
As part of the brand refresh, several international legal directories and award-giving organisations have recognised the alliance’s services.
Awards
The alliance and member firms received several awards at the Africa Legal Awards and IFLR Africa Awards. The IFLR1000 is the guide to the world’s leading financial law firms.
- Africa Legal Network of the Year
- Law Firms of the Year in Kenya, Mauritius and Tanzania
- Project Finance Firm of the year, Nigeria
- Capital Markets Deal of the year, Nigeria
- Private Equity Deal of the Year, Kenya
- Lifetime Achievement Award, Co-founder and Former Chairman- Nigeria
- Women Dealmakers Hall of Fame, Nigeria
- At the Africa Legal Awards
- Best Use of Technology, Kenya
- Partner of the Year (Mid-Large Sized Practice), Kenya
- Private Equity 2022 Decade Awards
- Industry Contribution award, ALN
- Local Legal Advisor of the Decade Award, Kenya
These remarkable achievements demonstrate the strength of our alliance built on shared values and joint emphasis on excellence, as well as the exceptional talent of our lawyers who work on complex cross-border transactions to positively impact every deal.
The results solidify the overarching design strategy and tagline of
