Oregon Employer Insurer Rebrands With Expressive New Logo

Oregon’s Saif Corporation implements logo and branding meant to express the market it serves In the state of Oregon, the leader in workers’ compensation insurance is the oddly-spelled SAIF Corporation (the name originating from the acronym for State Accident Insurance Fund), an organization which began as a state agency and, by the company’s own history, helped its first injured workier in 1914. (…)

Oregon’s Saif Corporation implements logo and branding meant to express the market it serves

In the state of Oregon, the leader in workers’ compensation insurance is the oddly-spelled SAIF Corporation (the name originating from the acronym for State Accident Insurance Fund), an organization which began as a state agency and, by the company’s own history, helped its first injured workier in 1914. The modern SAIF dates from 1980, when the Oregon state legislature chartered it as a public not-for-profit corporation, reportedly the first such entity in the United States.

It is still holds a unique position in Oregon as the state’s largest provider of worker’s compensation insurance, commanding approximately 44% of the market, protecting an estimated 500,000 workers.

For more than three decades, however, the company’s brand has remained static. Recently the company debuted new colors and, more importantly, a new logo meant to express the company’s relationship with its market at the people it serves.

The new logo of Oregon’s SAIF Corporation (courtesy SAIF Corporation)

From the company’s website:

A brand touches everything. It is owned as much by a companyâ€™s customers as it is by the company. As times change and companies evolve, itâ€™s a good idea to periodically reevaluate a brand. Knowing this, the most successful companies carefully manage their brands. At SAIF, we havenâ€™t evaluated our brand and brand identity for more than 30 years. A lot has changed since then in the industry, in Oregon, and at SAIF.

The new logo, according to the company, is pivotal in its branding. It defines and describes its relationship to its market and the people it serves. The new graphic component appears to be a cube in perspective view (see illustration above) but each face is a stylized icon:

A human figure: representative of the people the who are helped by the companyâ€“injured workers
A building facade: representative to the businesses to whom SAIF makes insurance available
The State of Oregon: representative of SAIF’s geographical market

When considered as a unit the three form a solid shape (given dimension by a stylized shadow), which seems not only to express that a foundation of protected, productive workers and the vibrant businesses they build support a state’s economy, but also the three components fitting together in SAIF’s brand express the position SAIF presumably feels in making that possible through effective provision of workers’ compensation insurance.

The new logo of SAIF, regardless of what one knows of the organization itself, demonstrates an essential element of effective logos and brands; that the graphically communicate, simply and effectively, the positive qualities a company feels it has. Importantly, note that the logo doesn’t say, per se, “insurance”, but transmits an appropriate message through the symbols it does use.

22 February 2007