U Group

The consumer data industry has a problem. AI, bots, broken forms and fraud have diluted data quality and built a culture of distrust, distancing brands from their most reliable data source: people. U Group want to shake up the data industry with a platform enabling brands to connect with people, delivering high-quality, highly equitable data, straight from the source. To do this, we first needed to help them reframe the story of data. The new brand strategy and identity repositions UGroup as the ‘authenticators of data’, drawing inspiration from the physical worlds of identification, authentication, and security.

Rather than just treating data as intangible code, we saw an opportunity to find the human meaning in the data point, and with this perspective, we created a strategy that placed ’People Before Data’. The brand voice places people first, revealing the human stories within the data points. The identity draws inspiration from the physical world of identification and authentication. Extrapolated from a Code-128 barcode, the logo acts as a symbol of holographic certification, stamped across; the bespoke wordmark simulates a tactile ink-bleed effect, a softer contrast to the data industries; and a punch-card device is used to anchor imagery.

The brand voice places people first, revealing the human stories within the data points. Language satirises the jargon and cliches overused within the industry, with disclaimers and t’s & c’s flipped to show transparency. And confident headlines turn impenetrable subjects into accessible declarations. By emphasising the very real people who give data meaning, and demanding an ethical data landscape, we helped U Group start a much-needed global conversation about what data is — and what it can be.

U Group creates direct, transparent exchanges between people and brands, resulting in high-quality, highly equitable data, straight from the source. We first needed to reframe the story of data — and quite quickly discovered that helping brands understand data really meant helping them understand people. Rather than just treat data as intangible code, here was an opportunity to find the human meaning in the data point. The strategic new framework will help U Group approach every data point, every conversation and every graph (and every bit of merchandise) through this people-first lens. The new brand voice and language satirises the jargon and cliches overused within the data and tech industry, with disclaimers and t’s & c’s flipped to hallucinate transparency. By emphasising the real people who give data meaning, and demanding an ethical data landscape, U Group are now starting to drive a much needed global conversation about the value and role of the data we own.