IPG’s Octagon sponsorship consulting and talent representation agency has completed a rebrand, yielding both a new logo and a new positioning.
“We wanted to tell people that we are in the business of the future,” said Rick Dudley, Octagon Worldwide chairman and CEO.
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Octagon’s old logo (left) is being replaced by one in all red, with an emphasis on “go.”
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Fellow IPG agency FutureBrand assisted on the project. Associate Strategy Director Alicia Fowler said around 50 stakeholders were interviewed while developing a “brand synthesis,” which led to the new corporate mark.
“In the end, we wanted something more indicative of prediction and performance,” Fowler said.
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Octagon’s new logo is red instead of black and more angular, to represent change and forward motion. The red “G” in the old Octagon indicia, interchangeable with an 8 to signify the number of divisions, has been eliminated. The letters “go” in Octagon are now emphasized.
“We wanted to stay with our heritage but show we’re thinking about the future,” said Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Murray, who has been with the agency since 1989.
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Octagon’s last rebrand was in 1999, two years after it was acquired by IPG.
“This was about identifying what we have that the marketplace is looking for and how we can best communicate that,” said Phil de Picciotto, Octagon founder and president. “That hasn’t changed from 17 years ago, but the addition of digital, social and mobile has, and we wanted to show that.”
The new logo and brand strategy comes about two months after Jeff Shifrin, Octagon president of marketing, Americas, left after 18 years to join CSM as CEO, North America. However, Octagon officials said they’ve been working on a new image and an accompanying new narrative for more than 14 months. In the wake of Shifrin’s departure, a new management structure sees 20-year Octagon employees John Shea and Jeff Ehrenkranz promoted to president, marketing and events, and president, marketing international, respectively.
Additionally, because of recent growth, Octagon is taking new or adding around 30 percent more office space in its headquarters location of Norwalk, Conn., along with offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles (Century City), Charlotte, London and Sydney.
Octagon, which has roots in the seminal ProServ agency, founded by Donald Dell, Frank Craighill, Lee Fentress and Ray Benton in 1970, now has more than 900 full-time employees across 50 offices in 22 countries.
The talent side, headed by de Picciotto, has clients including Steph Curry and a group of Olympians who won 24 medals in Rio, like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Nathan Adrian and Aly Raisman. Octagon’s list of consulting clients features heavy sports spenders like Allstate, Bank of America, Cisco, Delta, MasterCard, Sprint and Taco Bell. Many have been with the agency for decades; the same is true about much of the agency’s senior talent.
Now, with a new identity, Octagon is trying to show that it has kept pace with the multitude of recent changes wrought by technology.
“The choice that technology enables is great if you’re a fan and scary if you’re a rights holder or brand,” said Simon Wardle, chief strategy officer.
Among the new research tools in Octagon’s possession is a standing panel of millennials and an updated version of the agency’s Passion Shift research, with which Octagon says it will provide social media monitoring in close to real time.
“When I walked in the door, ‘Passion, Engagement, Results’ was on the wall,” Wardle said. “Now it’s more about what your next move should be in a world with so many choices.”
