Even branding specialist Christine Brand was surprised by the response when 1,800 MS Teams backgrounds were downloaded within the first week of the brand relaunch. Her brand unit had been bang on target. The new brand image is a refreshing expression of diversity and creates a distinctive look for the company’s values. The severe rigidity of its previous titanium logo has given way to a dynamic and open symbol for the future.
Diversity with substance
Roland Berger has carved out an image as a multifaceted company that showcases the diversity of its employees. Founded in Munich in 1967, the company has long grown beyond its European roots and is now a global player. With some 50 offices around the world, Roland Berger generated sales of over one billion euros from its management consultancy services in 2023.
Infusing a brand of this scale with emotional charge is a bold enterprise. The partners demonstrated that boldness by placing urgent issues of sustainability, diversity, work/life balance, and personal development options for all employees at center stage.
The result morphed the once flat “B” of the logo into a vibrant three-dimensional symbol in a range of colors that allow constant reinterpretation without losing the connection to the overall image. It now stands for unity in diversity, or perhaps more accurately, “strength through diversity.”
More pace, more flexibility, more humanity
The new logo is the visualization of a broad corporate strategy centered around four future-facing areas: smart mobility, resilient organization, next-generation manufacturing, and sustainability and climate protection.
As early as 2021, Roland Berger launched a program named B&me that offered flexible employment contracts and temporary leave of absence options for employees seeking to take part in social projects. It was followed one year later by JustBe, a platform designed to raise the profile of diversity in the company and the global LGBTQ+ community. As these two steps toward the new brand strategy demonstrate, the previous titanium logo stood for engaged and diverse individuals, committed to working together on shaping the challenges of tomorrow.
Characterful brand
An inner transformation on this scale also had to be visualized in the company’s outward image. “It’s up to us to hoist the flag of credibility high and prove the importance of a unified image for the perception of our company, both in-house and externally,” explains Brand. This was the starting-point for the inward transformation, two years in the making and now visible to the outside world.
The monolithic severity of the logo evolved into a dynamic makeover of the brand’s elements. The new modular B concept is now omnipresent, from PowerPoint and Word templates, publications, and social media portals to information diagrams and trade show booths. Even wallpaper featuring the brand design on a large scale can be produced as instantly recognizable branding for offices. The new brand image serves as a flexible structure, a frame for the company: versatile, adaptable, yet conveying a clear message.
Sustainable design, smart actions
But what to do with the old office stationery and branded materials? Taking “refresh, not restart” as the watchword, the new branded items were introduced gradually and sustainably and the old ones used up instead of landing in the trash. This method chimes with a zeitgeist-appropriate brand strategy that credibly communicates the transformation at internal and external level.
The creativity and versatility within this process were already demonstrated by a Roland Berger campaign for COP28, the UN’s climate change conference in Dubai in December 2023, which announced ”We’re for: … yellow, … red, … blue“ in many colors. As Brand stresses, sustainability is “not all about green. We drew our inspiration from the entire palette of colors in nature, as the visual expression of our ambitions beyond the classic green.” The campaign was accompanied by the guiding principle of #ActForImpact.
Looking ahead
Roland Berger is striding out on a path shaped by change, diversity, and sustainability. With projects all over the world, with people who live and breathe their own uniqueness, and with the clear goal of turning the spotlight on both the environment and on society.
Those 1,800-plus MS Teams backgrounds were only the beginning. Design provides a face for this development, and demonstrates how diversity is truly brought to life.
The article on Roland Berger Holding also appears in mcbw magazine 2025.