Abel & Imray
Abel & Imray is a leading patent and trade mark attorney with offices in London, Bath, Bristol and Munich. Our remit included a name in Chinese, its graphic representation, a custom-developed flyer and business cards.

For the name, we used full transliteration to achieve resemblance in sound of the Chinese name to their English brand. We added “An Intellectual Property Firm” to spell out the expertise of the firm. Graphically, we used a font with a similar feel and placed the Chinese characters into the English name with the same split. We stylised one Chinese character to complete the visual integration with the English logo. For the flyer, we took the corporate colour, images and the copy, but added a map to show the coverage of the firm and the location of its Head Office in London. Copy text was reworded for China with a punchy statement on the cover to affirm their interest in serving Chinese clients. The flyer won compliments from their contacts in China.

Guernsey
Guernsey had an official transliteration in Chinese. But the characters used were meaningless. Our remit was to raise its profile through branding and a website in Chinese.

We kept the full transliteration but replaced one of the characters. The new name implied a sense of “integrity”. We used a Chinese font with a similar feel and placed it into the English name to create a bi-lingual logo. We dropped from their corporate website content irrelevant to China and redrafted the copy for each page to target a Chinese audience. We added a map to show where Guernsey was and a dual-time clock to facilitate communication. The result was a website in Chinese that looked totally consistent with the corporate website but with content and copy specifically for China.

ESPA
ESPA is a UK-based international brand in the design and supply of high-end Spas. The challenges were manifold - ESPA was not translatable directly; SPA was a new notion in China; ESPA was both the name of the company and of their products; its Chinese version had to work in each and every use that ESPA had; all names had to pass the acceptance test of the Chinese regulators.

The final choice was these three Chinese characters 怡世宝 . Together, they imply “treasure that brings pleasure to the world”. The Chinese phrase also sounds very close to ESPA in English.

Next, we named about 100 individual products (click here to read about our work in translating those names) from cleansing tonic, freshening spray to shaving balm and relaxation oil. Some of them contained notions that didn’t yet exist in Chinese. Many had names based on subtle choice of words in English – subtlety that would usually not be possible to capture in translation. The client liked our work so much that they have since asked us to deliver a similar project in Latvian.

Sovereign Partners China
Sovereign Parners China is an investment and business development consultancy with a presence in China, the UK and at the EU. The firm was launching within two weeks and needed a brand identity in Chinese and business cards for key partners for the launch event. The key to the success of this project was speed of creative work and concise advice in writing to help clients make an informed decision. Both depended on crystal clear understanding of the range of issues involved and highly efficient communication with the client covering branding, marketing, politics, language and culture.

Ferranti
Ferranti Capital is a private equity and advisory firm that aims at helping Chinese companies with acquisitions and consolidations in Europe and the US. Our remit was to develop their Chinese identity and a website targeting China.

Ferranti was both the family name of the founding Managing Director and the brand name of the business. It was crucial that the Chinese name must be capable of being used as both. The final choice was 费兰砥 . It sounds similar to Ferranti and looks like the Chinese name of a person. We structured the website to suit the needs of marketing in China. Mr Ferranti took our advice and wrote a one pager as if he was talking directly to a Chinese audience. We explained the firm’s business proposition from the point of view of Chinese companies with a flow-chart illustration. These were all features not on their corporate website but extremely effective in creating rapport and interest.