Brown Bread were engaged to facilitate the re-brand for Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Ngāi Tahu Holdings and its companies. Alongside McCarthy Design and other key consultants, our mandate was to ensure the entire process was iwi-led; a collective approach that called on whānau, key stakeholders, kaimahi (employees) and customers across the operations of the iwi to develop a new identity for the organisation.

We started with an engagement project, either in person or through Mā tātou, Mō tatou; receiving over 600 submissions. From there, a brief was formed, revealing that the brand needed to be truly ‘tahu’ to help lead the indigenisation of the corporation, 25 years on from settlement. Working with the tribe’s cultural leaders, Brown Bread then facilitated wānanga with senior Ngāi Tahu visual artists and story tellers to develop the initial creative territories. A typography was developed, and a narrative was written by senior Ngāi Tahu historian Michael Stevens. As part of this process, we also engaged kaimahi to develop a new brand architecture to unite all parts of the business and its sub-brands. Content was made to honour the whakapapa of the brand to date, and to prepare the iwi for change. 

The result? A fully developed creative solution for one master brand, alongside a proposed brand architecture framework, a narrative for the visual identity of the tribe, and a communications plan to assist the organisation to say goodbye to the current tohu, and welcome in a new identity when the time is right. Through it all, we learnt how to develop an identity process in a Ngāi Tahu way – innovative, adaptable and wholly grounded in relationships.