KakaoCopied

Daum Kakao, operator of KakaoTalk, South Korea's most popular mobile messenger, carried a name built by a merger. A year later the company dropped half of it. Yonhap News Agency reported that on 23 September 2015 shareholders approved renaming the company Kakao and appointing nominee Rim Ji-hoon as chief executive, calling it a turning point almost a year after the merger. The decision came at an emergency shareholders meeting and was disclosed in a regulatory filing, and the board confirmed Rim as chief executive later that day at the company headquarters on Jeju Island, according to Kakao. The new name and new leader arrived together, which made the identity change read as a statement about direction rather than decoration.

Kakao announced the new corporate identity the same day. The company said the CI reflected a young and flexible corporate image and used a wordmark suited to global trends, and that it put yellow, the colour users already knew from Kakao's services, at the front. Telecompaper reported the same points, noting that the logo was designed to match the changed name and that the company expected it to strengthen Kakao's image and identity as a mobile lifestyle platform.

The new chief executive set out the strategy behind the name. Rim said he had spent about a month studying the organisation and talking widely with staff, and that Kakao would focus on mobile and connection, raising its speed to secure global competitiveness and building a culture that supports innovative ideas. The company said it would keep pushing change across communications, on demand services, fintech, the internet of things, content and commerce.

The logic of the rename is obvious in hindsight. Kakao was the brand people used every day on their phones. Choosing Kakao signalled where the company's future lay, mobile first, and choosing the brand's yellow made the corporate identity feel like the products rather than a holding company.

The design itself is deliberately simple, a wordmark built to what the company called global trends. That simplicity is both strength and weakness. It lets the familiar yellow do the emotional work, but a plain wordmark risks looking like any other app. For a corporate brand whose job is to sit behind many services, that restraint is defensible. As a piece of design, it leaves the colour to carry almost all the personality.