The Bluon Brand

In 2015, I was helping a friend do some presentation work for his startup. Their innovation? An eco-friendly alternative to R-22. R-22, the workhorse of modern refrigeration, is unfortunately a major environmental hazard. Their company, Bluon, had a revolutionary replacement that was remarkably safe, supposedly non-toxic, even if ingested. To achieve nationwide distribution and scale up production, they needed funding. I suggested that establishing a distinct brand identity would be a significant help.

Defining Bluon’s brand values

Bluon had an amazing product, but they needed to communicate their value to the market

As I always do, I hosted a virtual session with as many executives as we could get together, where we explored a range of important questions, like: who are your customers? What do your customers care about? What problems are you solving for them? Who are you? What services do you provide? What are your differentiators? What are your values?

With all these questions answered, we picked a set of words:

Inovative

We are those really smart people who took an old technology and made it in to something amazing. If you had a hard problem to solve, we'd be the first people that you would want to ask for help.

Simple

Yes this is a new technology, but no, there's nothing complex or intimidating here. Just a simple, green product, with very obvious benefits. It's a great story, we'd love to tell you about it!

Real

So many companies are riding the coattails of the green movement — speaking to it's goals, but not actually achieving those goals. Bluon is the next step in the evolution of green companies. Green 2.0. Bluon doesn't need to yell from the roof-tops about how green we are. When you've invented a product that provides a real, energy-saving alternative to R-22, you don't have to tell people that you're green.

The Bluon Logo

A few details from the final Nicor Brand Guidelines