An end-to-end rebranding exercise helping a UAE workspace operator represent their unique qualities.

The challenge 

To completely overhaul Centrum Business Lounge’s brand following their partnership with infinitSpace to reposition the business as a leading flexible workspace within the international business communities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi

The outcome 

An entirely new brand image laid out in a cohesive set of brand guidelines that cover a preferred colour palette, logos, and tone of voice, along with support implementing the rebrand across Centrum’s website, social media pages, and physical media assets.

The results 

Our process 

Centrum launched as a new workspace operator in the UAE through a partnership between InfinitSpace and Sultan Holding Company, reinvigorating the latter’s existing Centrum Business Lounge concept. Despite two prime locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, they were struggling to make an impact in the local workspace markets.

InfinitSpace approached us with a request for help overhauling the Centrum brand to support the relaunch. Their aim was to more accurately represent the brand’s updated values and its relevance to the specifics of local workspace demand.

They were particularly interested in working with us as opposed to a generic branding agency because of our expertise in the sector and our deep understanding of what constitutes a strong workspace brand.

We’d recently carried out similar rebranding projects for several UK-based operators with outstanding results, so Centrum came to us with confidence that we could deliver on the brief.

Existing brand analysis

Before starting work on the rebranding project, we first got to grips with Centrum’s existing brand positioning and image to understand where it was working and where it fell short.

This involved holding a hands-on brand workshop with key members of the Centrum team where we discussed their business aims and how they felt their brand was letting them down.

We identified several key issues with the brand during this process, including poor positioning thanks to the ‘Business Lounge’ part of the brand name, a general lack of convincing brand personality, and a highly limited, sterile colour palette.

Brand strategy 

With an understanding of where the key areas of change needed to be, we could start work on putting together a cohesive rebranding strategy outlining how we would help Centrum overcome the challenges they were facing.

We wanted to transform the brand from the ground up to ensure it effectively conveyed Centrum’s own thoughts on their positioning. That meant making it representative of human-centric, community-oriented, and inspiring workspaces.

And, importantly, we developed a strong understanding of Centrum’s target market, made up of growing SMEs and especially those with an international focus. That helped us to refine our strategy, and we pitched our vision to Centrum.

Branding guideline production

After Centrum’s approval of our general strategy, we got straight to work on producing a complete set of brand guidelines that would act as the guardrails for the assets we produced and operate as a single source of truth for them to refer to in the future.

The brand guidelines document we put together included detailed guidance on brand assets including logo usage, typefaces, brand colours and variants, brand copy tone of voice, and more.

New brand asset rollout

Finally, after approval from Centrum on their new branding assets and having delivered the brand guidelines document, we helped them implement their new brand identity.

That involved rewriting their website to suit the new brand tone of voice, fully updating their social media platforms with imagery and branded copy, and providing branded document templates. We also produced a full brochure that highlighted their new brand position and showed their workspaces off in the best light.

At the end of the process, the new Centrum branding was fully implemented and the business was ready to capitalise on their new identity by taking forward steps in the UAE workspace market.

The Spaces to Places method

Our method on branding or rebranding projects like this one is to develop a full, well-rounded understanding of the business we’re working with and what they’re looking to achieve. This information helps us to ensure the brand assets and guidelines that we deliver are perfectly suited for the ethos of the brand we’re working with, meaning it ties directly into their objectives.