AmplifonCopied

Amplifon, which describes itself as the world leader in hearing solutions and services, announced its new global brand identity on 6 June 2016, together with a new logo and consumer website. The company's release set out the new payoff, Hear, Feel, Live, as a summary of the brand and a commitment to give people back the joy of hearing well and living fully, surprising them with a hearing experience beyond their expectations through knowledge, technology and attention to the customer.

Chief executive Enrico Vita placed it in a wider strategy: the group wanted to drive a genuine cultural change in its sector, redefining how customers relate to their hearing and how they are informed, involved and served. As the market leader, he said, Amplifon wanted to anticipate the needs of customers who were increasingly younger and connected.

YouMark, reporting two days later, explained the reasoning further. The project aimed to change the approach to the category for a market with new generations of customers whose needs differ sharply from earlier ones, opening a dialogue with baby boomers, described as the next generation of Amplifon customers and influencers of current ones. The resulting positioning and identity were both based on the emotion connected to sound, moving the focus from the hearing problem to the benefit of the solution.

The visual centre is a single letter. YouMark reported that the a of Amplifon becomes a generative element containing the whole identity in one point, present and recognisable but constantly changing across every application of the brand. The system also includes a sound logo to signal Amplifon's presence through hearing itself, plus a multichannel brand language of visual, sonic and behavioural elements spanning traditional and digital media.

Shifting from problem to benefit is the right instinct for a category people avoid out of embarrassment, and speaking to baby boomers rather than the elderly is a shrewd commercial reframing. A sound logo for a hearing brand is so obvious it is almost a joke, but it is also correct. The weaker part is the generative a. Letters that constantly change are a familiar trick of the period, and for an older audience a stable, legible mark is worth more than a clever system. Hear, Feel, Live, meanwhile, could sell anything from headphones to holidays.