In our rapidly growing world, food and energy supplies are under intense threat. Global insecurities and accelerating climate change have combined to leave the world looking for more secure and sustainable ways to grow crops, power transport and make essential products.

There is a way forward, a way to feed and power our world that’s less destabilising and less damaging, and OCI is leading that way.

As the world’s largest producer of green methanol, the fifth largest producer of methanol and
the third largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer, OCI supports food security and energy-intensive industries around the globe today, while leading the investment in, development and delivery of the most promising low-carbon solutions for tomorrow.

For OCI to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape a cleaner future, they needed to paint a vision of their impact to inspire their own transformation from challenger brand to industry leaders. They needed a brand that could match their ambition and help drive the change they wanted to make in the wider world.

Insight
OCI’s brand was a sleeping giant, 70 years old and key to global value chains – but little known and hard to understand, with a confusing architecture, conflicting naming, no clear narrative and unconnected communications.

The business was renowned for its fast-moving, entrepreneurial culture, but as operators in a commoditised market, this culture had organically evolved into an external brand.

After consulting globally with the internal team, a wide range of customers and investors, it was clear that OCI had an incredibly exciting story to tell, a history of success and of making a real difference to customers and communities alike. Surfacing that story and translating it into a powerful brand was key to unlocking opportunities to influence conversations, improve relations, build partnerships, and add value.

The recommendations were clear, to own their place at the front of the pack they couldn’t just talk like an industry leader they had to act like one. More mature, clear, confident, and focused. Able to reinforce everything they promise as a trusted, ambitious partner. Our challenge was to bring all this to the brand without compromising the uniquely dynamic, empowered and competitive culture that drives the organisation.

Ideas
The key to achieving this lay in the big idea that underpins everything OCI does. They believe the best way to make a positive change, is through value creation. If they can create value from lower carbon solutions, then they can invest more to drive those solutions forward. If that value keeps increasing, it will attract the attention of customers, competitors and regulators alike, it will accelerate change.

This hunger for better, quicker is the key ingredient that makes OCI who they are. Yes, they want to power a cleaner future, but they don’t want to wait for the future to get here, they want to make it happen sooner.

To be a true enabler for the business the brand would need to bring that acceleration to life, demonstrating the agility of decision-making, the dynamic skills and expertise of the team, and the confidence of a company with momentum.

Impact
We worked hard with the internal team to re-align every facet of the brand behind their new positioning as a global leader powering a cleaner future sooner.

We began with the brand architecture, transforming what felt like a disparate group of business units orbiting each other but never fully aligning, into a unified network with a new stronger ‘OCI Global’ brand at the core.

A new game-changing brand narrative and verbal identity cuts through the complexity of what OCI does to give a voice to their unique attitude and approach, driving rapid real-world progress in established, change-resistant sectors. This storytelling framework brings clarity and consistency for the team to engage with policymakers, regulators, investors and an ever-broader set of customers.

But this wasn’t enough, to ensure the brand would thrive in this fast-moving environment, we had to empower the team to activate the brand in a way that stood out and kept them ahead of the encroaching competition.

So, the new graphic language represents the cutting edge, always in motion, always accelerating, always growing. New photography and videography heroes the unique, status quo-smashing teams at work across OCI’s diverse facilities.

To enable the global organisation to deliver consistent communications at a local level, we created a host of tools including a digital asset management system with intelligent templates to propel OCI’s brand to the next level as they revolutionise the energy-intensive industries that shape, feed and fuel the world.