Since August 2008, there has been a team fully immersed in creating the Symbian Foundation brand. We were a few recruits from Symbian (Patricia Correa, Thibaut Rouffineau and myself) plus S60 representatives (Esa Eerola, Minna Karvonen and Olli Sotka). You may already have seen a sneak preview of brand elements at Mobile World Congress but we’ve got a whole lot more to show over the next few weeks as we develop, refine and make a final choice on the exact tone of yellow – all the fun bits!
That’s not to say that it has all be fun. We had just three months to work on a brand strategy for the foundation. This involved some flying back and forth for intensive all day meetings and many long weeks but we delivered in time and with big smiles on our faces, because at first it had seemed impossible, impossible! In December, our team was joined by the experts at Landor, a first-class global brand agency (they created the BP ‘flower’), and together, we brought the Symbian Foundation brand to life.
So far we have had a lot of interest in the brand – it was a big talking point for us at Mobile World Congress, words like fresh, unconventional, human and playful were at the tips of the tongues of our critics. As I mentioned, there’s a lot more to come – take a look at this…Pat might just have a cult following after this home video masterpiece about a phone with a heart!