Fresh From The Field: Novated Lease Australia — By Onfire Design

Fresh from the field

Fresh From The Field: Novated Lease Australia — By Onfire Design

Replacing unfriendly and generic with simplicity and a memorable ‘n’ monogram. Onfire Design take us behind their rebrand work for Novated Lease Australia

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The Brief

Car leasing for Australian professionals offers the opportunity to save them a lot of money over the car’s lifetime. Called Novated Lease, the principle is based upon a lease agreement between the car buyer (employee), their employer and the Novated lease provider; in doing so, the car owner can save the GST on a new car purchase and ongoing running costs.

Novated Lease Australia is one of several businesses offering this. Up against larger financial brands, NLA sees itself as the challenger brand in the market, marketing its services to the employee rather than the company. Essentially, they are a digital-first D2C offering in a niche financial sector. As a smaller but rapidly growing business, they aimed to become the top-of-mind for new car buyers. Their issue was that the brandmark and design assets were dated and limited for a digital-savvy customer.

animation of the n icon for Novated Lease Australia

Before and after of Novated Lease Australia's branding

The Design Response

Onfire’s response to the challenge was to focus on NLA’s proud Australian provenance and a design system that highlighted the ease and simplicity of the offering for all Australians – demystifying and democratising the idea.

Their previous brandmark was a hindrance to these ideas. An unfriendly acronym with a generic car icon is replaced by a simple and memorable ‘n’ monogram. The curves and movement of which add a sparky energy to the brand tone of voice; this is locked up with the business name in full using a bespoke font. As a legacy item, the existing purple stood out well amongst competitor brands; we tweaked this colour to be more vivid, especially in its digital-first formats. Added to this is a secondary colour palette of coral orange, bright yellow and green, adding energy and a straight-up ‘Australian’ owned and operated pride. In communications, these colours are liberally used, along with a bold font that is intentionally non-corporate. A full suite of Australians was created as a visual shorthand to the range of people that Novated Lease works with, used in conjunction with real car imagery. These show that by using the service, people can own the car they want and not what their employers allocate them.

Deliverables:
Brand Identity, New Brand Toolkit, Communication Suites and Social Media Assets.