The base of our entire pitch was the incredible heritage of the Olympus Camera brand, and our task was to translate its heart and story to the outdoors segment. 

The new OM SYSTEM drew on over 100 years of innovating and pushing boundaries, boasting larger than life innovators such as Yoshihisa Maitani. On top of this, Olympus has always taken pride in taking the road less traveled, and being the border pushing dark horse in an otherwise stagnant industry.

One of the big challenges had to do with launching a new camera brand into a world of decades of iconic household names. We started using the visual cues from different eras to begin a process of “iconification” that would help cement OM SYSTEM as an addition to the long list of iconic Japanese brands such as, Kodak, Fujifilm, Sony and many others.

Keeping the good
Because of a large former client base, it was important for the client to avoid the alienation of existing brand loyal customers. This meant that we needed to pick the right visual pieces from the history of Olympus that would make the new brand feel familiar whilst at the same time clearly pointing to the future.

The brand launch involved us putting together a new brand website, that included the reworking of the brand story, brand promise and brand visuals into a “Stage-1” format.

The website was accompanied by brand video, which used the history of the Olympus brand and married that with the OM SYSTEM.

Right now OM SYSTEM is going under a transfer process from old to new, that will continue well into 2025.  Many of the existing products are still under the old brand but slowly the company is transforming into bright new future we envisioned together. A future that we are supporting with continuous new brand actions, each of them bringing us closer to the full adoption of the new OM SYSTEM brand.