Today we are visiting the beautiful country of Romania to look back at the branding Air completed in 2000, for the mobile telecomms company Zapp…..

Romania had only come out from behind the Iron curtain a few years earlier and was still coming to terms with the post-communist transformation. Our visits to Bucharest were fascinating, there was an underlying sense of wildness to the place. Uncompleted communist building projects sat like concrete skeletons aside beautiful, but decrepit, Parisian style villas which in turn sat next to modern facilities resulting from new investment into the country.

Founded in the late 1990’s and invested by Qualcomm using their CDMA technology, Zapp was a revolutionising company launching Romania into the next generation of mobile technology.

We were given a blank canvas to develop the brand – an exciting opportunity which gave us the freedom to create something unique. We remember the conversation with Diwaker the CEO when talking about names. When Zapp landed on the table we jumped, “perfect!” we thought. A cool name to effectively convey the lightning-fast connection speed and one that could be universally understood. The word Zapp is quite sparky so we counterpointed this with a softer, rounded logo and contemporary, high fashion brand language to ensure it stood out in its growing market and appealed to the needs and aspirations of the Romanian consumers.

We also ensured the brand guidelines were written in a non-prescriptive way, so local agencies had the latitude to be creative and easily evolve the brand as the company continued to grow.

Zapp started well with the company posting significant increases in turnover year-on-year following its brand development and launch. It is a nice example showing how brand communication is one of the key driving forces for business growth!