A part of BGC Partners, Inc. [NASDAQ:BGCP], Newmark Grubb Knight Frank is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms, with more than 11,000 professionals in over 300 offices globally. 

Until recently known as Newmark Knight Frank, the firm formed a new global services business unit to coordinate and enhance expertise delivery to multinational clients through three hubs in New York, London and Hong Kong.

The new unit needed a means of marketing itself beyond the range of services historically provided by the firm.

They sought to communicate:

"how we optimize real estate assets globally and the effect on corporate operations, while also demonstrating the difference in our methodology and our service delivery."

We began by performing a key message and symbology competitive analysis of the largest direct competitors of the Newmark Knight Frank business unit.

Beyond a recitation of functional services offered by the new unit, the client needed a verbal and visual expression of the primary benefit offered to clients.

Our work determined that leadership of the firm and the new business unit were expert at distilling clarity out of ambiguity, of effectively translating global conditions, and operationalizing client real estate assets into opportunity enhancing client margins.

We translated these smart capabilities into a benefit that no competitor verbalized or claimed, a benefit expressed in such a way that the expression itself could be owned as an intellectual property in the U.S., the European Union, and globally:

Property Wisdom

To extend the client's difficult-to-forget opportunity, we created a visual symbol for the new Global Corporate Services business unit - a well-traveled briefcase - drawing upon the primary color of the firm's existing visual identity.

Signaling to the viewer global coverage and over a century of commercial real estate experience worldwide, the case includes vintage luggage tags from a variety of global business centers.