How Do You Make 35 Offices Feel Like One Brand?

The challenge facing us ahead of the OBrien Real Estate brand refresh: how do you balance consistency with flexibility?

As a society, and as an economy, we love growth. It spurs on change, signifies success, conveys an element of rapid progress. That is to say: growth is a good problem to have.

But at a certain point, all good businesses need to shift away from the growth mindset. Hit the breaks, take a pause, and focus on quality over quantity. That was the challenge facing OBrien Real Estate.

Since their inception in 2010, OBrien had gained a reputation as the fastest growing real estate agency in Victoria. But somewhere in the move from one office to 35, the brand had lost its sense of purpose. It no longer unified the business and didn’t position them as an unstoppable force for excellence. Not to mention, the rapid growth had created a disjointed feel between offices.

When we began our work with OBrien, we knew straight away we weren’t rebranding for the sake of just a new flashy logo. It was about showcasing to the industry, to all markets across the state, that OBrien means a better way of conducting the business of real estate.

This became our starting place.

Discovering OBrien’s Obsession

We kicked off the project the same way we kick off every project. Discovery.

Through our sessions and workshops with OBrien’s leadership and marketing team, we drilled down not only on where OBrien wanted to head as a business, but what already makes them stand out from the sea of signboards across the Victoria’s metropolitan area. What makes them unique? How does this uniqueness feel? How does this come across in client interactions? Internally in the office? All valid questions we had to explore in-depth.

Time and time again one crucial idea just kept popping its head up. Obsession. OBrien was obsessive about its people, its clients, its ambition and its outcomes. And while obsession can sound like a negative, we saw something else in it. The determination to keep pushing until something becomes better.

That became the foundation for the new positioning. Then it naturally evolved into a tagline that would sit and the centre of the business:

That’s Obsessively OBrien.

It wasn’t just a tagline. It became a flexible messaging framework, capable of talking about everything from property management and recruitment to sales performance and business growth. While simultaneously conveying the essence of the brand. This then trickled down and became the basis for the brand’s new voice and secondary pieces of messaging.

Creating a Brand and Design System

The next challenge was translating that idea into a visual system that would work anywhere in Victoria. OBrien works with such a wide range of areas, demographics, and price points. So how do you create a brand that feels as at home out front of a one-bedroom inner city apartment as it does on out front of a five-bedroom villa in Brighton?

The answer was flexibility, modesty, and modernity. With a bit of fun mixed in for good measure.

A refined palette of dark forest green, off-white linen, moss green, and sky blue gave the brand a more elevated feel, while a modern lowercase logo and Saans typeface created a contemporary foundation. Saans Mono added another layer of distinction, helping the brand feel editorial without becoming overtly formal.

Another element of the new visual was the grid system. Simplicity mixed with consistency. Which, when you remove design jargon, means everything has a dedicated size, place, and space. Meaning you could apply the visual language to anything from brochures to signboards and easily give it the same look and feel.

On the flip side of this, we knew too much rigidity would turn off offices. Good design ultimately needs to consider the user above everything else. We could have put rules in place to stop offices picking which colours to hero, which signboards to use at which pricepoints, or which brochures to prioritise, but that would have come at the expense of flexibility, local relevance, and having the offices feel like they were part of bringing this new brand to life.

The result? Offices have the freedom to choose how they want to be OBrien, while still firmly and consistently expressing they are part of the network.

Taking Our Hands off the Wheel

Here is a truth no one in our industry will openly tell you. Every design agency is terrified of the moment they have to give up control of a brand. We spend weeks, sometimes months – and in rare cases, years – lovingly creating what we hope will be our (and our client’s) magnum opus. Then we finish it, hand it off, and sometimes (and let me stress, only sometimes) see our baby slowly morph into a frankensteined version of what they once were. And often, the bigger the business, the more likely this is.
What made us feel at ease with OBrien was their innate understanding of this dilemma. In fact, frankensteined is a term we picked up from them, because they raised concerns early in the process about not having this happen to a new iteration of the brand.

So, from the strategy through to the smallest listing template, every decision came back to the same question: will this work in the real world? And will it work when we’re not the ones managing it. The answer needed to (obviously) be yes.

“Rebranding a business of our size comes with plenty of moving parts, opinions and challenges, but they made the process feel collaborative and kept us moving in the right direction.”
– Gemma Mintern,
OBrien Marketing & Events Manager

Beyond the aforementioned design and messaging systems, it meant working collaboratively with OBrien’s leadership and marketing teams. The logic is simple, if they’re as involved, and as dedicated, to the new brand as us, they won’t want to mess it up. Safe to say, they absolutely haven’t.
The best part about this approach is that we’ve now been able to take our hands off the wheel. OBrien has a brand they can own, adapt, and evolve themselves, with the tools and systems to meet whatever comes next without losing sight of who they are.

For us, that’s the real measure of a successful rebrand: not creating something that needs us to protect it, but creating something strong enough to stand on its own. OBrien Real Estate firmly falls into this category.

Want to see the full project? You can learn more about the OBrien Real Estate brand here.