Thatcham Research Developing a fresh brand identity to coincide with a revised market position

Thatcham Research has been a custodian of new vehicle safety, repairability and security for more than half a century. But with the mobility landscape changing rapidly and the importance of data, knowledge and experience being at the forefront of its customers’ minds, Thatcham Research wanted to evolve its brand position to showcase its modern-day credentials and maintain its market relevance.

As the retained communications agency to Thatcham, GroupWhistle was tasked with taking the findings from a series of positioning workshops and translating them into an evolved brand identity that would speak to the company’s vision of delivering safe, secure and sustainable mobility by using data-driven risk intelligence and rigorous engineering-grade research.

Using Thatcham Research’s new brand position of ‘The Automotive Risk Intelligence Company’ as inspiration, we gave the Thatcham Research brand a comprehensive refresh.

This entailed selecting a new font with unique, intelligent and modern characteristics, making subtle amends to the company logo, and creating a library of distinctive data-inspired textures to help communicate the breadth of Thatcham Research’s expertise.

We also developed a new set of fine-lined icons to complement the new PolySans font, as well as introducing a light and refreshing colour palette and gradients – moving Thatcham Research away from the solid dark orange that was integral to its original brand.

To communicate the new direction for the Thatcham Research brand, we created a printed brand book document that was distributed to employees, telling the story of why the changes came into being and how they underpin the company’s bright future.