We are very proud of our long term relationship with Gumtree. In very close collaboration with the team there, we have been designing the primary platform (and many of the native apps) for over six years. Whilst we’ve enjoyed helping to evolve the brand into the vibrant classifieds marketplace it is today, there comes a time when you feel you’ve pushed the green and pastel yellow pixels to their limits and the time has come to move on.

2016 saw the UK Gumtree launch a new logo under the guidance of branding agency Koto, this modern interpretation of the tree logo attracted the usual amount of critique for digital rebrands but overall was seen as a success, so our friends at Gumtree tasked us with the job of localising the brand.

Gumtree has a long heritage in this country and research showed that people still connected with the old brand, so the challenge became how do we reference our roots but modernise to evolve with the times in an increasingly competitive landscape.

It’s all about the experience, and the brand plays a pivotal role in helping us connect, so we set about creating a brand that puts digital first.

Having worked with the old brand we wanted a brand that had stretch, it needed to be able to support new colour palettes for Cars & Jobs sub-brands but still be instantly recognisable as Gumtree in all scenarios, the brand also had to be accessible for our diverse audience of 7 million+ users and adaptable to any device now and in the future

Digital brands live in a dynamic environment, so we took the opportunity to consider how the brand would move, as this is a key part of creating engaging online experiences.

The brand also needs to speak to people in the right ways so we engaged with Gumtree’s copywriter to ensure tonally it was hitting the right notes from welcome messages for new users to system generated emails the brand now speaks to it’s users in a consistent and personalised way.

These new features included a new help desk offering with 24/7 support and a new payments system, allowing users to finalise their transaction on the platform via PayPal. The features were designed to support our community of users and help them transact online with additional peace of mind.

We accomplished what we set out to achieve, the new brand has modernised Gumtree but remained true to its roots, maintaining the focus on community and making an already vibrant marketplace even more vibrant. However as with all things digital we continue to work closely with the Gumtree marketing and product teams to ensure a consistent and smooth rollout as the product continues to evolve and grow.

Gumtree.com.au