Inside ESMT Berlin’s Year-Long Quest To Rebrand Itself

After many agonizing months of work on a brand revamping for ESMT Berlin, Molly Ihlbrock opened her eyes on the morning of Nov. 4 thinking she was about to marry the wrong man.

Not literally, but figuratively. 

“I woke up early one Saturday morning and thought, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t marry this person,’ recalls Ihlbrock, director of corporate communications for the business school.

‘I FELT LIKE I WAS ENGAGED TO THE WRONG PERSON’

Within days of what was meant to be a final presentation on a new logo and tagline to ESMT’s management committee, Ihlbrock was having second thoughts about the three logos under final consideration.

“The logos we had to that point felt like I was engaged to the wrong person,” she adds. 

One of them was a black-and-white illustration portraying an open book with light emerging from the pages.

So at 6:26 a.m., she sent off an email to everyone involved in the effort,  including the outside marketing agency Anything Is Possible (AIP) in Brighton, U.K.  Ihlbrock felt like she would merely be settling if the school agreed to the current options.

Her colleague, Jeanne M. Gaebler, deputy director of corporate communications, agreed. “We were on the same page,” remember Gaebler, who led the refresh. “We weren’t happy.”

ESMT BERLIN’S NEW LOGO AND TAGLINE REFLECT A YEAR-LONG EFFORT

For a nearly year-long rebranding effort, it was the ah-ha moment. Almost four months later, ESMT Berlin on Monday (March 4) unveiled a new logo, color scheme, and tagline “Business as unusual”. 

This brand transformation replaced a stale and corporate-looking logo that had been adopted by the school a little more than 20 years after its founding.

The work to update the school’s brand began nearly a year ago with the less-ambitious realization that ESMT needed a new tagline to reflect its mission and purpose. Since its founding, the school used the phrase “‘The business school founded by business” in recognition of the 25 global companies that helped to birth the school in 2002. But the school abandoned the tagline about four years ago.

“Originally,” explains Gaebler.  “we just wanted to change our tagline because we feel we have grown out of our founders’ shadows. ”

TWO DAYS WORTH OF STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS AND FOCUS GROUPS

To do so, the school engaged the marketing agency it had worked with for many years. Among other things, AIP had helped to launch ESMT’s online MBA program three years ago in 2021. “They know the business school landscape, and we had a trusted relationship with them,” adds Ihlbrock. AIP staffers flew to Berlin for two days worth of focus groups and interviews with employees, faculty, students, and alumni. “They pretty much listened for two days and filtered everything they heard until they had the real pieces of what they needed,” says Gaebler.

The agency quickly came back with three different tagline options but one  stood out: “Business as unusual.”  It was, thought Ihlbrock and Gaebler, much better than one other option: “Ditch the uniform.”

In August, the pair presented the new tagline to the school’s Management Committee, President and Managing Director Jörg Rocholl and Dean of Programs Harald Hungenberg, along with the former editor of a major German newspaper who sat in on the meeting.

THE GOAL: TO GET A LOGO AND TAGLINE THAT WAS MORE PLAYFUL AND MODERN

They bought the new tagline but concluded it didn’t quite work with ESMT’s original logo which felt conservative and backward-looking, something from another era. “We have always struggled with the logo because it was very corporate and it was supposed to represent how serious we were as a business school,” says Ihlbrock. “But after 20 years, we felt we needed something that was a bit more playful and that looked toward the future. We wanted it to look fresher because our degree students are in their 20s, not their 70s. We didn’t want to completely disregard the old logo but move on from it.”

Back to the agency they went. Three weeks later, AIP staffers returned with a set of new logos.

“Some of the logos that were presented were horrendous,” laughs Gaebler. “But the options reflected the fact that the agency was comfortable enough to present them. We lived with the old logo for so long that we needed to get out of our comfort zone. We wanted to show that we have a foot in the past though we point to the future and the idea of bridging gaps was very important to us. Change is constant but we have this very tumultuous past to refer to.”

THE NEW LOGO SUBTLY INTEGRATES THE ICONIC BERLIN TV TOWER, A SYMBOL OF GERMAN UNIFICATION

When it was almost down to the wire, Ihlbrock woke up not liking any of the alternatives. The new logo came out of numerous back-and-forth sessions with the agency. It blends elements of the school’s previous design with the iconic Berlin TV Tower located five minutes from campus in what was once East Berlin.  It subtly integrates the landmark — a symbol of German reunification — into the design without relying on instant recognition. The TV tower, a product of East-West collaboration during the Cold War, was constructed using Swedish steel and with the assistance of Western engineers. This East-West cooperation mirrors the spirit of ESMT Berlin, situated at a historical site where socialism was once headquartered in Germany, and now uniting students from across the globe. By taking a window from the past logo and turning it to resemble a graduation cap, it retains elements of the past while signaling a clear, future-oriented direction.

What did the school learn from the effort? “I learned to trust the organization,” believes Ihlbrock. “We ran in a different direction from our original detailed briefing but came back to it and got the ideas we wanted.” The briefing–which came out of conversations with stakeholders–called for Berlin to be at least a subtle part of the new logo.  ” You need to trust your organization to know what fits for you.”

ONE LEARNING: YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO YOUR STAKEHOLDERS

Gaebler concurs. “I learned that you need to listen a lot to all stakeholders and get their input. At some point, you have to take off and fly. There will be a lot of strong opinions and every opinion is valued but you are never going to make everybody happy. So in the end you need to decide what you really need and go for it.”

The logo alternatives, moreover, were all presented in black-and-white, another important learning. Why? “Because if you present in color, people will get stuck on colors and not on the actual design of the logo,” adds Gaebler.

Aside from an anonymous Instagram post, the new logo and tagline have been well received. It was launched with a video (see below) that pays homage to the school’s past and its future. Gaebler’s post on LinkedIn, thanking her colleagues and the agency for the effort, says it all: “Big day today for ESMT Berlin and me personally as we roll out our new logo, tagline, and corporate color scheme. It’s been a complex and intense project and I’m so excited to finally reap the rewards and see this beauty launched digitally and on campus.”

“It’s been almost 99% positive,” says Ihlbrock. “People who have something to say generally like it. Some professors don’t like the tagline. But you can’t please everyone.” Indeed.