Type | Wholly Owned Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Brand consultancy |
Founded | London 1965 |
Founder(s) | Michael Wolff Wally Olins |
Headquarters | London, New York City, Dubai |
Key people | Brian Boylan (Chairman) Karl Heiselman (Chief Executive Officer) |
Employees | 150 |
Parent | Omnicom Group |
Website | http://www.wolffolins.com/ |
Wolff Olins is a brand consultancy, based in London, New York City and Dubai. Founded in 1965, it now employs 150 designers, strategists and account managers, and has been part of the Omnicom Group since 2001.
The company specializes in developing brand experiences, creatively-led business strategies, and visual identity systems and has worked in sectors including Technology, Culture, Retail, Energy & Utilities, Media, and Non-profit. [1][2]
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Wolff Olins was founded in Camden Town, London, in 1965 by designer Michael Wolff and advertising executive Wally Olins. Wolff left the business in 1983, and Olins in 2001, though both are still active in the field of branding. Over the years, Wolff Olins has opened offices in Hamburg, Paris, San Francisco, Madrid and Lisbon, all of which subsequently closed. In 1998, the company opened an office in New York, and ten years later in Dubai.
From 1965 to the early 1990s, Wolff Olins developed corporate identities for various large European companies. During this time Olins published The Corporate Personality (1978) and Corporate Identity (1989).[3] Olins defined corporate identity as "strategy made visible", and the firm worked with companies including BOC (1967), Apple Records (1968), Bovis (1971), Volkswagen's VAG (1978), 3i (1983), Prudential (1986) and BT (1991).
During the 1990s, Wolff Olins focused more on corporate branding. The company's work during that time includes First Direct (1989), Orange (1994), Heathrow Express (1998), and Tata Group (2000).
More recent work has included Tate (2000), GE (2004), Unilever (2004), Sony Ericsson (2006), (Product) RED (2006), London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (2007), New York City (2007), Mercedes-Benz (2009), Tata DoCoMo (2009), AOL (2009), Target (2009), PricewaterhouseCoopers (2010), Asian Art Museum (2011), and the Smithsonian (2011)
Throughout its history, Wolff Olins has presented controversial work.[4][5] Its piper design for BT in 1991 attracted a great deal of opposition.The company was also responsible for the short-lived $110m (£75m) re-branding of PwC Consulting to Monday in 2002. The launch of the London 2012 brand in 2007 was met with widespread public derision in the UK, being called anything from a colossal waste of £400,000 to a pornographic representation of the character Lisa Simpson.[6]