Kela is warmer than before – Drum renewed Kela’s brand together with the customer

Kela’s brand renewal started from a desire to renew and refresh Kela’s brand, which was perceived as somewhat serious and outdated. The renewal work started with an extensive staff survey, which received almost 1000 responses from Kela’s employees all over Finland. Based on the involvement of the staff and profound workshop sessions, Drum designed a clarified brand identity for Kela that better describes what Kela is like in this day and age: warmer, more humane and more connected to the customers’ everyday lives.

Kela’s brand identity was based on Kela’s strategy, with three key themes: trust, information and security. The aim of the brand was to highlight these three themes and what Kela stands for through them. In the recent brand promise, these three elements are clearly visible.

A strong Kela brand strengthens Finns’ trust in a society that provides security at every turn of life and makes decisions based on information. In addition, it was important for the brand to communicate how Kela walks alongside its customers throughout their lives.

Drum wrote a brand story for Kela that concretely opens up the important role Kela plays in people’s everyday lives and in society as a whole.

The brand attributes describe the key characteristics of Kela’s identity: warm, trustworthy, cooperative, knowledgeable, renewing, outward-looking.

The Kela brand book consists of three parts, the brand identity created by Drum, the visual identity and graphic guidelines created by the communications agency Miltton, and the brand structure created together by Miltton and Drum.

As part of the rebranding, Miltton worked on a light identity renewal, including an updated use of colours. Miltton also created a new brand imagery concept to express trust and security. Photographer Kasperi Kropsu shot brand images for Kela with the concept “A second of life”, which encapsulated the small moments that Kela relates to in the everyday lives of its customers.

There is a wide range of services under Kela and a number of partnership brands, perhaps the best known of which is Kanta and its interface for citizens, OmaKanta. The hierarchy between the brands and how they co-exist visually and in recruitment was previously unclear.

Drum was involved in the clarification of the brand structure, supporting the Miltton team.