Sberbank is now Sber, the brand uniting a universe of services

The company’s mission remains unchanged: to inspire confidence and reliability, making people’s lives better, helping them realize their aspirations and dreams.

The company’s mission remains unchanged: to inspire confidence and reliability, making people’s lives better, helping them realize their aspirations and dreams.

Today’s Sber is a whole universe of services for human life and businesses, which helps Sber accomplish their mission.

Only yesterday Sber was just a bank, while today they’re becoming an assistant helping people deal with their vital tasks. Every day. And that is why their widely known motto “Sber.Always there for you!” is relevant more than ever.

Why do they change? To stay close and useful, they need to do more than just respond to people’s current needs. They want to go where new needs arise. So that something that is not obvious today could become a daily habit tomorrow. And that is why they are entering new industries. They make them more convenient, more familiar, and more accessible. They strive for the comfort of every person, the success of every business that is theur customer. Therefore, yet another slogan of them and one of the pillars of their new positioning is also the motto “Sber.For life.”

They need a new brand for their new role in human lives. Sber is the one.

The Sber brand has evolved significantly. The ecosystem’s umbrella logo presented today had earlier been successfully used for services like SberMarket, SberCloud, SberAuto, SberHealth, SberLogistics, and SberFood to receive a warm welcome from their customers.

Thus, nearly all Sberbank ecosystem services are have been united under one recognizable umbrella brand, Sber.

The new logo reflects a certain continuity with the previous corporate identity. However, now the two main elements (the incomplete circle and the branded check mark) embody the idea of new opportunities, with the check mark symbolizing a radar, which stands for searching and creating new things, and a clock-face, symbolizing time saving and filling it with meaningful matters. At the same time, the logo is perceived as a sign of confirmation and task completion through the Check sign (“done”) that is recognizable in the digital world. The color gradient transition symbolizes the idea of diversity of the ecosystem offerings.

Sberbank embarked on designing its new brand and corporate identity in 2017-2018 when the company set course for building an ecosystem and faced the need to reflect the changes in its corporate design.

The rebranding has been done in partnership with international branding agency Landor & Fitch and with active participation of Russian design studios Shuka, Paratype, Superdesigners, Media.Work, etc.

Further injections into the new brand adoption will be made within the next few years. No radical investments for these purposes are planned. During phase one, all Sber's digital and electronic channels and web sites will change, ATMs will be replaced as they are aging, signs at branches will be replaced within a few years. The current plastic cards will be valid until their expiration date without additional costs. Printed materials will also be replaced with new ones when the need arises.

Even advertising will be focused on promoting Sber's new and current products and services as much as possible. Image advertising is not set to receive substantial injections. The only significant additional investment is the replacement of roof constructions across their key branches in large cities. Their rough estimate for the introduction of the new brand in addition to their regular efforts stands at about RUB2.5 bn within the next five to six years.