Client:
Gathern

Industry:
- Travel
- Tourism

Services:
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity Design
- Sonic Branding

Gathern required a significant transformation to change people’s perception of the brand and elevate its market position from a local, small-scale short-term rental accommodations provider to the top-of-mind choice for domestic tourism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The foundation of our strategy was a deep understanding of the brand’s audience. We invested time to learn who they are and what they value, enabling us to build a truly consumer-driven brand.

With this insight, we focused on highlighting Gathern’s scale and variety, projecting a bold promise the brand could confidently deliver.

By adopting a human and culturally relevant persona, we seamlessly integrated the brand into the Saudi communities it serves, while positioning it as a world-class provider of short-term rentals.

The brands essence was found to be “الضيافة، مننا وفينا” which translates into “Hospitality, from us and for us”, this statement helped us align the the interests of guest and hosts, thereby creating a brand that resonates with both audiences.

The strategy as a whole played a keyhole in transforming Gathern to the top of mind platform for domestic tourism.

Challenge:
Gathern’s primary brand challenge was its brand positioning. People perceived it solely as a provider of short-term vacation rentals for chalets and resorts, overlooking its much broader offering of rental accommodations and unique experiences. This was further exacerbated by the lack of a clear and consistent brand identity, resulting in fragmented visual and verbal communications across all touchpoints. Additionally, the brand faced pronunciation challenges, particularly emphasizing the letter “n” at the end of its name, which caused confusion among its target audience.
These issues collectively contributed to an undesired market perception of Gathern as a small-scale player in Saudi Arabia’s short-term rental market, rather than the leading industry force it aimed to be. To overcome this, we needed to align the brand with two seemingly distinct audiences—guests and hosts. Successfully bridging this gap was essential for building sustainable brand equity.

Solution:
We aimed to create a visual identity that reflected the newfound ambition outlined in the strategy. To achieve this, we opted for a dynamic yet simple logo that showcases the brand’s diversity and scale.
We also need to reflect the brand’s warmth and hospitality led to the development of a logo-mark inspired by the shape of a gate, symbolizing a warm welcome—just as people are welcomed into homes through our brand.
While simple in design, the gate is dynamic and adaptable, allowing it to represent various activities and accommodations. This flexibility helps visually communicate the brand’s diverse offerings. Additionally, the gate functions as the letter “n” in our word-mark, enabling the brand to be recognized even without the full logo, while also serving as a solution to the brand’s pronunciation challenges, as the stylized “n” helped people correctly pronounce the brand’s name by directing attention to it. Illustrations were instrumental in the identity as they complimented the geometric logo and elements with a lighthearted style. To reinforce the brand’s hospitality and warmth, we chose lavender as the primary color, while earthy tones convey authenticity and a sense of belonging. The secondary colors draw inspiration from Saudi Arabia’s diverse landscapes, enriching the brand identity and encouraging the discovery of various destinations.

This rebrand helped shape how people view Gathern today, resulting in a significant increase in the brand’s audience engagement across guests and hosts. This led to an increased amount of properties being listed on the platform and an increase in first time and repeat bookings made, signifying the increase in brand loyalty amongst its audience. In addition to the increase in bookings and properties, Gathern saw a higher level of diversity amongst the types of properties booked, as well as an adoption of the experiences the brand offers, indicating that people had begun trusting Gathern in ways they hadn’t before.
Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly we helped bring the brand into the conversation for the people it has always strived to serve, making it an essential part of the Saudi domestic tourism experience.