The freedom of control.
Brand repositioning to lead a new category while driving growth across existing markets.
Services
- Positioning
- Brand Strategy
- Messaging Platform
- Corporate Narrative
- Growth Manifesto
- Naming
- Visual Identity
- Brand Guidelines
Lookout helped define the Mobile Security category. But today, digital information moves without boundaries or limits. A hacked mobile phone can bring down a Fortune 500 company, while a corporate data breach can expose the private information of millions of people.
To address the convergence of devices, networks, applications, and clouds—and ultimately of life and work—Lookout extended their expertise to a market-leading Cloud Security solution designed to effortlessly protect individual users and large businesses alike.
While Gartner recognized Lookout’s offering as innovative and cutting edge, the Lookout brand hadn’t evolved to meet the moment. They needed a bold, new brand positioning and identity to communicate the business’s evolution—and to immediately stand out in Enterprise Cloud Security. They also needed a way to align the entire organization around a shared vision of the future—breaking into a new category while driving continued growth across existing lines of business.
What We Learned Along the Way
Establish a clear point of view.
Growth conversations typically begin in past actions, which are limited by strategies that communicate what you already know—or what you’ve already got—rather than how you intend to do business tomorrow. If you want to influence, guide, and help create your organization’s future, establish a clear point of view on how—and why—you want to grow.
Tie everything together.
All businesses, whether big or small, have multiple critical initiatives going on at any given moment. If the narrative about how they connect is haphazard or unintentional, people will start quilting their own. The result is multiple, individual narratives in pursuit of different end states—in other words, brand confusion.
Build structure, not stricture.
For employees to be truly invested in creating your future, you must invite some level of co-creation and adaptive thinking. You must give everyone the tools and direction they require to do their jobs well, without being so prescriptive as to limit their tactical freedom to execute. You must ask every employee to use their imagination as they help build and reinforce your brand.
Deborah Wolf, CMO, LookoutEmotive offers the right amount of pushback and strategy. If we need updates on our positioning, something changes, or we merge with another company, they’ll be my first phone call.”
Motion Inspired
Lookout believes that data security is not just about locking down sensitive information. It’s about setting it free. The Lookout Brand Identity brings this sense of possibility to life by alluding to dynamic movement in every moment. Whether it’s the implied sense of motion in the Lookout symbol—a wing appearing to undulate, even in its static state—the Data Flow Graphic moving across layouts and breaking frames, or the Lookout Gradient, which has a radiant energy that almost pulses.
Without Limitations
Each element speaks to the way data moves through the world—though our lives—without boundaries. They also speak to the way we want to live our lives: without limitations. Free to connect, live, and work safely, without worry. Partnering with a film + animation studio allowed us to bring the full design system to life in a brand video.
A Manifesto for Growth
Lookout’s Growth Manifesto is titled New Rules For a New World. It’s a call-to-action to a greater possibility. It asks something of employees—more like a movement than simply an inspiring story. It’s designed to excite the organization with purpose and meaning, pulling people into alignment and action towards opportunity.
Radiant Energy
The brand symbol—known as the Lookout Wingspan—alludes to the way data flows through our lives without hindrance, effortlessly crossing lines and blurring boundaries. Inspired by the Lookout Wingspan—the Data Flow Graphics symbolize Lookout’s flexible and innovative approach to data security.
Experience that Works
Cozy up.
To realize important outcomes, don’t be afraid to put leaders side-by-side, have them write down their respective visions for the future, and ask them to reconcile any differences. If executives can align around a shared story of what the future looks like, it can become a powerful tool for cutting through the noise of function-specific goals, objectives, KPIs, and OKRs.
Bust down walls.
Don’t undermine success by planning in silos. Make sure to clearly connect major initiatives—corporate strategy, product, go-to-market, brand, people & culture—in a single, coherent narrative that aligns everyone behind the promise of a brand and the actions required to support it.
Feel it. Do it.
Craft your growth narrative in as emotionally resonant a way as possible, engaging individuals in the organization to see their role in creating the future. When growth is a generic goal, people can assume that someone else is leading it. For companies to grow sustainably, positively, and strategically, people in the organization need to feel excited about what growth brings.
Act like an organism.
No matter where you are on a growth trajectory, success depends on behaving more like an organism than an organization—continually adapting to changes in the marketplace, the industry, the economy, and the culture. Your growth narrative sets a deliberate direction for your business at a given moment, but it should be revisited and updated over time.
