The country’s largest sheetfed printer Blue Star will become part of a larger communications group in a major rebrand designed to reflect the diversity of its operations outside print and be seen as a one-stop-shop.
The new group – called ive – will sit above Blue Star, which will house the print and logistics operations and is now one of three operating divisions, with its print management and creative businesses spun off into iveo and Kalido respectively.
Geoff Selig will remain executive chairman of the whole group, with Warwick Hay serving as ive managing director, and former chief operations officer Matt Aitken as Blue Star chief executive.
[Related: Ups and downs of Blue Star]
Iveo will incorporate the former Blue Star IQ, and provide end-to-end multichannel campaign management and execution of design, print, web and mobile, and various consulting and advisory services.
As a ‘technology-focused creative agency’, Kalido will provide advertising design and copy creation, campaign development and strategy, mobile apps, websites, and augmented reality.
Blue Star is also reorganised into five divisions – Print handling commercial printing, Direct all print or digital direct mail, Webstar becoming Blue Star Web, Display for point-of-sale, and Connect for logistics and distribution.
Selig says the company is firmly of the view that its refreshed brand architecture better reflects the increased diversity of its offer.
“As we seek to grow our business across an increasingly broader set of capabilities and communications channels, it is important we communicate this effectively through how we present ourselves to the market,” he says.
Hay says the group's identity now reflects its changing value porposition and market position as it brings out new non-print services through the other two divisions.
"What we do now (in print) is important to us and we do it well, but we need to reflect where we are now and where we are evolving to in the future as we look to offer clients more," he says.
"Where clients know and trust us they give us business in other areas, and now we have more to offer we want them to know about it."
[Related: The future of print]
The rebrand follows a similar move by rival IPMG in December, which also aimed to present itself as more than a printer and also now calls itself a ‘marketing communications group’. In its case it kept its IPMG moniker but dropped any reference to print.
Chief executive Kevin Slaven said in December that IPMG’s non-print businesses had been growing with customer demand and it was time to acknowledge that.
“Customers are now taking an omni-channelled approach to their marketing, which means IPMG can engage a more extensive range of our services to the same customer,” he said.
Sydney firm OnePoint is another business to recently undergo a full brand makeover from printer Prografica to a full-service multichannel marketing company.
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