OLX

Challenge

OLX is one of the world’s most successful online classifieds businesses, operating in over 40 countries. Despite huge growth and dominating many of the markets it operated in, it was facing pressure from both domestic and international competitors.

Facebook’s rapid growth into community classifieds and Amazon’s dominant position as ‘the cheap option’, meant OLX needed to create a new experience and connect with people around a new sentiment – something that took them beyond classifieds.

Immersion

To truly understand the challenge first hand, we embarked on a round-the-world immersion to visit three of OLX’s key markets: Argentina, Ukraine and India. We worked with their teams, heard from customers, and spoke to locals to understand the cultural contexts of each place and its people.

It was clear that from saving money to saving the planet, using OLX makes sense. But one consistent theme was clear: there was huge stigma around buying and selling second-hand — it was seen as shameful, unhygienic or uncool.

Brand strategy

To create a positive sentiment around second-hand trade, we tapped into the practical side of OLX’s offer. It makes it easier for people to sell almost anything, and make some extra cash. It saves money, keeps it in local communities, supports small businesses and saves the planet. Ultimately, it’s the smart thing to do.

Our strategic proposition ‘We exist to empower everyone to make smart choices’ puts power in the hands of buyers, sellers, businesses and employees, positioning OLX as the savvy way to buy and sell almost anything. ‘Smart Choices’ became a way for us to connect buying and selling second-hand to a new feeling: one of savvy confidence and pride.

Brand identity

From this foundation, we created a visual design system that represents the idea of making choices — flexing and shifting between options. From the logo to graphic elements, it’s dynamic, confident and bursting with energy — expressing all the optimism and eccentricity that’s true to OLX.

Brand expression

Distinctive custom typography and a vibrant colour palette helped OLX launch the refreshed brand in 16+ languages, across 40 countries. Photography shows off savvy local users, and tone of voice principles inject a healthy dose of attitude. We took our collaboration one step further and created marketing playbooks to help local teams capture the OLX spirit in colloquial ways.

With the new brand established, the digital platform was key to living up to OLX’s new promise everywhere. We worked closely with OLX’s central product teams, establishing a new digital vision and creating an exciting new design system, product features and an extensive component library.

The final challenge was building tools that supported consistent localised execution and allowed global teams to collaborate. We built a bespoke brand hub that helps every team in the business understand the spirit of ‘Smart Choices’ and encapsulates every tool needed to launch the brand around the world, including brand guidelines, digital guidelines, articles, voting mechanisms, an avatar generator, a layout generator and plenty of visual inspiration.

“Smarter consumption is at the heart of classifieds - being able to own that and take it up a notch, defining the future of trade through the strategic and visual platform that DesignStudio created, is nothing short of awesome.”

Alex Hutley
Global Brand Director, OLX

Impact

Since launching in 20+ countries, the new brand continues to imbue the spirit of ‘Smart Choices’ and inform bold and brave new campaigns in every local market, making OLX more distinctive, tangible and inspirational. We’re proud to have helped OLX find its point of view and become a leader in shifting the negative perceptions of second-hand trade around the world.