Rakuten rebranding marks 20th anniversary

Rakuten has unified its global branding, reducing the amount of Japanese characters for its non-financial services and giving the brand a bolder look.

The Japanese giant – which has e-commerce and financial services at its core and owns the Viber messaging system – celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.  It says the new logos better represent its core strategy of “building an ecosystem of diverse services that provide users with unique benefits”.

The revamp also coincides with the launch of a new global partnership with FC Barcelona, a football club which Rakuten says has one of the most recognised and respected global brands in soccer today.

“Providing a more consistent identity to each of the services within the Rakuten Group lays the groundwork for our 1 billion users across the globe to more easily recognise the benefits of using more than one service. It also allows the company to develop synergies currently experienced mainly in Japan, its home market, where Rakuten’s ecosystem is the most mature,” the company said.

“Rakuten will be better positioned to drive an increase in cross-use of services, increase the lifetime value of each member and drive gross transaction value (GTV) growth.”

Rakuten chartMickey Mikitani, Rakuten founder, chairman and CEO, says the new global branding includes a bolder and more compact execution for the Rakuten corporate logo and a more consistent and unified approach to the branding of services in Japan and around the world. That’s reflected in Roman alphabet logo executions and a colorful logo palette that allows each service to express their personality in a way that is respectful of their origins and of the existing user connection with the brand.

The new bright and dynamic palette of colors used across the family of Rakuten services also represents the inherent diversity of the group and the optimistic and innovative spirit at the heart of its corporate cultural values. As a core part of the new color scheme, the execution of the popular Circle R icon will appear for the first time in multiple colors, from blue to green to yellow.

The rebranding and logo changes were launched on Saturday July 1.

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