Kumu

The brief

Kumu exists to champion the digital creativity of Filipinos everywhere through its app and web platform, a positive and authentic space that connects Filipinos around the world with home. It is a big, bold goal, and exactly the kind we like to work on.

With more than 10 million downloads and a successful Series B behind it, founder Roland Ros saw the brand had reached a new level and asked us to help it compete with TikTok, Facebook Live and Instagram. The product and the fanbase were there. But the fast-growth tactics that got Kumu this far did not add up to an international brand.

We built a full brand strategy: where things were out of line, a clear roadmap, and one vision and purpose for the whole team, plus guidelines covering every subsidiary and contributor. The result is one consistent look and feel across the "Kumuniverse", and the tools to keep it that way as the company grows.

Challenge

Our first digital workshops uncovered more than 26 subsidiaries, campaigns, shows and products, all spun out of the Kumu brand. Untangling that architecture would have taken years, so we recommended a fresh start: a completely new look and impression for Kumu.

Research

We analysed four years of data and ran group research sessions to find the values that drew millions of people to Kumu. Hundreds of responses later, we had the base for a flexible, modern and simple identity, eventually more than 300 designs built for app, marketing and web.

Solution

With users and content growing more than tenfold in a few years, everyone in a key role needed the same picture of where Kumu was going. After a series of energetic sessions we delivered a brand strategy summary and new visual guidelines that give designers freedom while keeping work fast and consistent. We then ran our largest design rollout to date, training more than 100 members of Kumu's design team on the new identity.

What we delivered

The outcome

Nearly every department reported time saved in hiring, onboarding, client communication and design, enough to make the partnership worth it on its own. Scroll back through Kumu's Instagram and you can see the exact moment the new core elements, like Kumu blue and the rainbow bar, went live.