Building a united brand identity for a national property services group

The merger created a complex brand landscape with two established businesses, audiences and visual identities. Both Axis and CLC had strong recognition within the sector and established reputations with clients, stakeholders and communities.

The key challenge was to create a cohesive parent brand that could unify both businesses without diminishing the equity built within the existing brands. The identity also needed to work across a broad range of environments, from corporate communications and tender documents to vehicle liveries, uniforms, digital platforms and internal communications.

At a strategic level, the group needed to position itself differently within a crowded market dominated by highly corporate, process-driven competitors. The new brand needed to communicate operational excellence and national capability while reinforcing a more agile, collaborative and people-focused proposition.

The project began with extensive competitor analysis, stakeholder discussions and brand positioning research across the property maintenance, facilities management and social housing sectors.

The research revealed that many competitors positioned themselves around scale, infrastructure and technical capability, often communicating in highly functional or corporate ways. This created an opportunity for Axis CLC Group to differentiate through responsiveness, long-term partnerships, social value and a more human approach to service delivery.

Research into Axis and CLC highlighted several shared strengths across both organisations:

• Strong customer relationships built on trust and reliability
• Agile, responsive service delivery
• A values-driven culture
• Long-term partnership and collaboration
• Commitment to local communities and social impact
• Operational expertise combined with flexibility and collaboration

These insights formed the foundation for the new group’s positioning and brand narrative.

Firebrand developed a brand strategy centred on preserving, protecting, and enhancing the UK’s critical property infrastructure while improving lives and communities.

The new brand purpose became:

“To transform the UK’s critical properties into places that enhance lives and communities.”

This was supported by a strategic framework built around four mission pillars:

• Delivery
• People
• Collaboration
• Purpose

The positioning focused on balancing operational excellence with a people-first mindset, creating a brand that felt both capable and approachable.

A scalable, endorsed-brand architecture was developed to allow Axis and CLC to retain recognition in the market while clearly connecting them to the parent group. This included the creation of a master group identity alongside a supporting endorsed-brand system used across sub-brand communications.

The visual identity was designed to reflect strength, collaboration and forward momentum. A dark teal and orange palette conveyed trust, professionalism and energy, while layered gradients and interconnected graphic forms symbolised partnership and integration across the group

The new identity system was designed to work consistently across every touchpoint while remaining flexible enough to support multiple businesses and communication types.

Firebrand created comprehensive brand guidelines covering logo systems, endorsed-brand usage, typography, colour palettes, photography, iconography, layout principles and standards.

The endorsed-brand system gave both Axis and CLC the freedom to retain their existing identities while clearly linking them back to the wider group. The aim was to create a sense of consistency across communications without losing the individuality and recognition each brand had built over time.

The new identity was rolled out across a wide range of touchpoints, including printed collateral, digital communications, presentations, recruitment materials, email signatures, social assets and internal templates, helping create a more joined-up and recognisable brand experience across the business.

Photography direction focused on authenticity, people and real working environments, helping reinforce the group’s human and community-led positioning.

The result was a confident, scalable and strategically aligned group brand that successfully united two businesses under one cohesive identity while preserving the strength of each organisation’s legacy.

The new Axis CLC Group brand positions the organisation as a leading UK provider of essential property services with a clear point of differentiation rooted in partnership, responsiveness and social impact.

The endorsed-brand system provides long-term flexibility for future growth and acquisitions, while the broader identity framework ensures consistency across every customer, employee and stakeholder touchpoint.

Most importantly, the project helped unite the organisation behind a shared vision, creating greater alignment across teams, culture and service delivery.