BrazilIn its 40th anniversary year, Horváth revamps its brand identity
In the year of its 40th birthday, international management consultancy Horváth & Partners has revamped its brand identity, adopting Horváth as its new name.
With over 1,000 consultants and staff in DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), Central Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the United States, Horváth is one of Germany’s largest home-grown consultancies. And thanks to its affiliation with Cordence Worldwide, the firm has access to another 4,000 consultants in 50+ offices providing for a global reach.
As the firm prepares for “further growth in the coming years” according to Michael Kieninger, CEO of Horváth, the consultancy has revamped its look-and-feel, including its company name, brand identity and logo. Most notable, the firm has dropped ‘& Partners’ and the sub-line ‘Management Consultants’ to shorten its brand to Horváth.
At the outset a major change, however for insiders not much new, contested Kieninger. “Many of our clients already refer to us succinctly as ‘Horváth’ and our people as ‘the Horváths’. This change led the firm to come up with a new logo (its previous one spelled out its full name with the & sign in between), with a double rhombus as a pictorial symbol emerging as the best fit with the firm’s heritage and culture.
“The two rhombuses symbolise cooperation in collaboration – with our clients and within the Horváth teams. They show a dialog and, at the same time, the transition to different states in the sense of transformation.” This is ultimately what Horváth is all about – the consultancy helps clients with some of their most pressing strategic and operational challenges.
Transformation consultants
From corporate strategy to the development of new business models, or the development of new operating models and digital-driven performance improvement to the adoption to emerging technologies as artificial intelligence or machine learning, Horváths’s portfolio covers it all. The firm has a broad management consulting proposition, and works across sectors.
Kieninger sums it as ‘transformation’, and positions the firm as the ‘transformation consultants of choice’: “Decision-makers must find the right strategic and operative responses to further develop their business model, organisational structures and employees, as well as processes and technologies, in a holistic way and align them sustainably. Horváth is a partner in this journey.”
Endorsing Kieninger’s words are those that matter most – clients and consultants. In a recent survey by Brand Eins and Statista of over 3,500 executives and advisors, Horváth was named one of Germany’s top consulting firms in eight categories, including strategy, organisation, operations, IT strategy and several functional back-office domains.
Meanwhile, the new brand has been developed in such a way that it is ‘digital first’, explained Head of Marketing Oliver Weber. “The design of the digital brand was based on a modular design system, which in turn was inspired by atomic design. This means we have the option to make use any scale.” In other words, the firm’s brand is suited to anything, from a website logo showcase to a large outdoor advertising campaign.
Concluding, CEO Kieninger said: “Our new brand will help us to further increase brand awareness.” Which will come in handy considering the firm’s ambitions.
