Transformation can mean anything. We made it mean something.

Lauren Dettloff, chief marketing and growth officer

When creating a new company, you have to get a lot of things right to achieve success.

You have to know exactly what market niche (and true need) you’re trying to fill, how you’re going to do it – and why you’re primed to do it. You have to hire the best people and build a strong culture. You need solid financial backing, and the flexibility to pivot as market and client needs demand.

Moreover, if you aren’t creating from scratch, but going through a merger or acquisition – that becomes more complex. When doing that across multiple companies and geographies – yowza.

And even if you can manage to achieve all of those things, your success is still not assured. You need to get your idea out there. Your customers need to know you’re ready to provide just the solution they’re looking for.

All of that informs the right brand – the right story, the right name, a strong visual and verbal identity that will pique the interest and engagement from those you’re most interested in serving.

Who we are

By now, you probably know: ST Telemedia of Singapore has envisioned Ollion through the savvy acquisition and merger of four cloud-native companies: 2nd Watch, Aptitive, CloudCover and Cloud Comrade.

They wisely saw that the consulting business was ripe for the disruption that accompanies digital transformation (more on this from my colleague and CEO Peter Wright).

What research revealed: Yes, they want expertise. They want consultants who are trusted and respected and can help them. However, they want to learn and be empowered to thrive on their own. They want results and impact, incrementally and quickly. And that's where this new global company comes in.

The heritage businesses are all born in the cloud with incredibly deep expertise in a specific area, whether it's strategy, digital transformation, engineering, application modernization, data insights or analytics. They’re experienced (even award-winning) partners with AWS, Google, Snowflake, Microsoft and other technology companies.

We brought these businesses together and coined a new name: Ollion.

The name is a play on the phrase “all in,” signifying the collective forces joining together – and signifying our commitment to never doing anything halfway, or halfheartedly. It’s driven home by our slogan: All in on your future.

Our attributes

We started with a purpose statement: Multiply humanity’s potential. That refers to how we treat our people – and how we treat our clients and partners. How are we multiplying their potential?

More importantly: How are we multiplying their employees’ potential?

And more boldly: How are we motivating and equipping them to multiply humanity's potential through their interactions with their customers?

Sounds aspirational, but this came through in our research – enterprises said this is what matters to them, and we’re listening.

We have instilled our employees with a general idea: Be generous. Ollion embraces the open-source movement. We not only contribute to open-source software, we also open source many of our ideas, putting them out in the world in hopes that others will use them, share them and add to them.

We have a related message: Be open, by default, internally and externally with our clients. We should give more than we take. This is a great concept for life, but it’s so rarely applied in business. Being open with our technology and our ideas before they’re “perfect” is terrifying, humbling and so incredibly valuable (but more on that to come from my colleague and Chief Digital Officer Vishal Parpia).

On top of that, we aim to embody four brand personality attributes. They may seem different, but we believe they’re by no means at odds with each other. Companies, like people, are wonderfully complex creatures who can embody a multitude of traits. Ours are:

Lively. You’ll never be bored when you work with us. We seek to delight and inspire our clients, our partners and our people.
Sharp. We promise to always have a point of view. You won’t get nebulous thought leadership from us, but advice that is practical and pragmatic. Transformation that can be achieved in increments.
Audacious. We’re bold, but with a point. We’re not provocative or disruptive for its own sake. We’re fearless. We master new technologies. And we’re confident we’ve done the work to back it up.
Nurturing. We help you grow. We’re collaborative. We don’t give orders from the top, but we come in alongside you, with generosity, helping with your development.

The look and feel

A company’s look also tells you a lot about who they are and what they stand for.

The wordmark and symbol: We designed a set of circles that look almost like dials facing each other. The psychology of the circle is very nurturing, signifying collaboration, togetherness and unity.

Conveniently, but not coincidentally, the circle also represents the “Os” in Ollion.

The overall visual identity – color, photography, iconography, typography – a company chooses tells you a lot as well. Industry research showed that so many companies try to lure you in with a cool blue hue. So cerebral. So safe.

Our brand has golds, reds, greens, even pink. It’s human – warm, modern and fresh, yet also manages to hint at retro – something intentionally very different from the rest of the industry, to match our differing philosophy.

The verbal identity – the headlines, copy – showcase those personality traits: a bit lively, a bit sharp, a bit audacious, a bit nurturing. We’ll be direct in getting our point across – no hiding behind overly complex language here. But we never want to talk down to our audience, either. The whole point in being a consultancy is consulting, which we believe also requires an open spirit, nurturing touch and patient guidance.

The secret is out

Back in March, when I joined this work-in-progress, it prompted a series of comical conversations:

“Congratulations! What company are you headed to?”

“...Well – it’s actually multiple companies in the process of becoming one company.”

“That’s cool. What’s the name?”

“...Well… it doesn’t actually yet have a name.”

“Right…well, are you excited?”

“YES.”

Now that you know: Am I still excited?

Heck yes. I’m all in on Ollion. And if you ask me about it now, I’ll happily talk your ear off about it.