Careem is rolling out what its Global Head of Brand and Creative calls the “most significant since it was launched 10 years ago.”
Tom Sword and his newly formed in-house agency team have been working on the rebrand for around 12 months, which has almost entirely been handled in-house by the Careem Creative Studio.
“It works for us and allows us to operate at real speed and understand the business. It bridges the gap in execution and creates a community and culture fostered in-house,” he said.
The core green deeply associated with Careem remains, along with the wink, but expanded to ensure it has the breadth to communicate its growing list of categories and services,
When the rebrand was first discussed, the ground-breaking decision was made by Careem’s management to build in-house creative and design capabilities.
“Our first response was to build our own creative muscle. It was a unique trajectory building the creative team that now has such close proximity to the business”.
The rebrand was fuelled by the evolution of Careem as it has moved from a ride-hailing platform to become an ‘everything app’. “We need a brand that supports our new architecture. We want to be able to help customers navigate across our full portfolio of services under the categories of Go, Eat, Get and Pay”.
“We think of the product as the brand and vice versa. The brand is now set up for storytelling,” he added.
The rebranding was made more remarkable given the backdrop the technology sector has faced in the last year, with widespread job losses amid economic headwinds. “There has been a lot of turmoil in the tech industry but our objectives never changed”.
With the new branding being rolled out from today, Sword has had a chance to step back and look at the work his team has achieved.
“This is the proudest I have been when I think about this incredible team of 20 people that I consider to be the best creative talent in the region”.
While Careem’s Creative Studio collaborated with an external agency Design Studio at the start of the project, Careem built its creative team in parallel to take full ownership of the brand’s launch and future.
The brand architecture has been designed to support the growing list of services on the app, which now includes cleaning, laundry, ticketing events and dining out among many others.
“Careem is a fast-moving place and many more things are planned. Careem Plus (its monthly subscription programme) is taking on such a force. Creativity now comes from within, including proprietary icons”.
The brand saw a light-touch refresh around 2019/2020 but this latest rebrand is “the most significant since it was launched 10 years ago. 10 years may sound like a short period but for a tech start-up each year is like a dog year”.
Sword has been with the company for four years, initially joining Hala (Careem’s joint venture with the Road and Transport Authority in Dubai). “When I first arrived in Dubai, before joining Careem I was working with strategy consultants, and every entrepreneur or founder I met would have Careem in their pitch deck”.
The rebrand is being rolled out from this week on the app, the main touchpoint for customers, and then for the off-line world of delivery riders (known in Careem as captains) – with their uniforms and boxes.
As part of a comprehensive review, Careem also looked at the materials being used for the uniforms and size of bags among the proposed improvements. “It has been a hard 12 months of work but great fun.”
Careem has operations in more than 80 cities, covering 10 countries across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia regions.
