Case Study
OpenText
Brand & experience evolution
Overview
As OpenText continued to grow through acquisition and expand its role as a global information management platform, the brand needed to work harder across more contexts, from enterprise decision-makers to everyday users, from product to campaign, and from digital to physical environments.
The work focused on evolving the brand in a way that respected existing equity while making it more flexible, more recognizable, and easier to apply across a wide range of touchpoints.
Context
The OpenText brand was operating at scale, but not always with consistency. Campaigns, product experiences, and regional efforts often solved problems locally, which often made the overall brand feel fragmented, especially as new audiences and use cases were introduced.
The opportunity and goal wasn’t to reinvent the brand, but to strengthen its core elements and give teams clearer tools to express it with confidence across channels.
My role
I led the brand and experience evolution from within the organization, working closely with executive stakeholders, marketing leaders, and creative teams. My role combined strategic leadership with hands-on involvement, shaping direction, making decisions, and staying close to execution as changes were rolled out.
This wasn’t a top-down rebrand. It was a collaborative customer-centric effort focused on making the brand easier to understand, easier to apply, and more reliable in real-world use.
Evolving the logo system
One of the key updates was the introduction and broader use of the OT brand element.
Rather than changing the logo outright, this work focused on extending the brand system. It introduced a flexible, recognizable design element that could be used across campaigns, digital experiences, and environments.
The OT element allowed the brand to:
- Maintain strong recognition at small and large scales
- Create visual consistency across diverse formats
- Adapt more easily to motion, digital, and environmental use
This evolution made the brand more usable without diluting its identity, and will continue to build the brand across global markets in a highly recognizable and memorable way.
Leading the work
Intent & approach
Evolving the brand required more than updating systems and guidelines. It meant bringing teams along in a way that respected existing expertise while creating shared direction.
The focus was on clarity over control. That meant making expectations explicit, reducing ambiguity, and helping teams understand how their work connected to a broader, coherent system.
How it showed up
I worked closely with designers, writers, project managers, and partners across the organization, staying involved as decisions were made and applied.
By staying close to both the people and the work, we were able to move forward without disruption, build confidence across teams, and establish a way of working that could scale beyond any single campaign or initiative.
Brand expression at scale
With a stronger system in place, the brand could show up more confidently across campaigns, events, and collateral.
Work spanned multiple initiatives, with a focus on:
- Clear hierarchy and messaging
- Consistent visual language across channels
- Flexibility to support different business units and audiences
Rather than designing one-off executions, the goal was to establish patterns that teams could reliably extend and reuse.
Out-of-home campaign (Canada)
The brand evolution extended beyond digital into physical space through an out-of-home campaign in Canada.
OOH presented a different set of constraints, including limited time, limited space, and high competition for attention. The updated brand system allowed the work to stay bold and recognizable while remaining clear and disciplined.
This campaign demonstrated that the brand could:
- Hold its own in high-visibility environments
- Stay consistent outside of owned digital channels
- Translate enterprise messaging into simple, confident statements
“Trusted by” campaign
One of the most effective expressions of the evolved brand was the Trusted by campaign.
Rather than naming customers outright, the work focused on association over attribution. Recognizable brands were implied through visual cues and context, without explicit logos or callouts. The goal was to make trust feel immediate and earned.
By referencing well-known companies implicitly, the campaign:
- Reinforced credibility without overt claims
- Let the audience connect the dots on their own
- Positioned OpenText as a behind-the-scenes partner powering brands people already know and trust
Rather than naming customers outright, the work focused on association over attribution. Recognizable brands were referenced through visual cues and context, without explicit logos or callouts. The intent was to make trust feel immediate and earned, not announced.
Outcome
Together, these efforts helped shift the OpenText brand toward something more cohesive, flexible, and confident. It can now support ongoing growth across products, regions, and channels without constant reinvention.
Reflection
This work reinforced a core belief of mine: strong brands aren’t defined by how bold they look at launch, but by how reliably they show up over time. Leadership in this context meant making careful decisions, building trust with teams, and focusing on what would hold up long after the initial work was done.
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