Branding Case Studies - Meta
Brand Visual Identity
When the decision was made to change the corporate name from Facebook to Meta to completely separate it from the app, I became the head of the submission portal for every submission. Everything that had been branded Facebook now needed to be changed to Meta, which was not merely a logo replacement.
One can see by the creation of the logo and new brand identity, there is clearly no reference to Facebook so there is no chance of any confusion on which brand it is.
Brand guidelines
The brand guidelines, including the voice and tone, legal requirements, color palette, photography and illustration and design elements all needed to be reviewed before approval. This meant that the number of submissions swelled from under 10 a day to over 1000 as eager marketers throughout the company submitted their work for approval before publishing it. In addition, our agency partners also had to submit their work for approval. This brand oversight is necessary in every brand and is consistently vigilant to protect the brand identity and integrity as well as prevent misuse that can have legal consequences.
Project management
The work I did at Meta began in the Global Brand Management group, a small group of people who guarded the company brand, Facebook. The Facebook most of us know is the app, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, and others that are overseen as brands owned and managed by Meta. Even before it was renamed, Facebook, the corporate entity, was the brand that we, along with others on my team, were responsible for maintaining to ensure the brand was being used correctly and according to the brand guidelines, which are made available to anyone wanting to use the company logo and its brands. Knowing the brand guidelines thoroughly is essential. It means that every detail is scrutinized -- misspellings and grammatical errors, misplaced graphical elements or positioning of the logo can damage a brand.
There is an established portal for the brand identity and guidelines to follow, which requires review and approval via a submission hub, which was my responsibility during my tenure. I reviewed every submission and approved or routed it to the editorial, design or strategy SMEs on our team. Once the submission was approved, it was archived.
Photography
Photography is a part of the new guidelines and the existing photographs, most of them stock, were not able to meet the new guidelines. A portion of the budget was allocated to creating a bespoke photography section. As project manager of this important work, I planned the timeline to achieve the selection of the photographers, which turned out to be a stock photography house, and then proceeded to schedule location photography and select users in situ worldwide to populate the digital asset management system created to house the final selections.