Car subscription service Roam has adopted a new look to go along with its new name
The Twitter-esque blue hue and car logo that it used when it was known as Curbo is gone, replaced with a purple and pink scheme and an “R” made to look like a winding road.
Roam is a car subscription service focused on longer-term rentals, letting users get makes and models from over 14 auto brands, for terms beginning at one month.
Toronto creative agency Good&Ready designed the new logo and brand for Roam. Because car subscription services are still a relatively new idea for many Canadians, the agency created a positioning line to help explain what Roam is to the uninitiated: “The obvious way to get a car.”
“Our starting point was recognizing that the experience of getting a new car is just miserable for most people,” says Alan Madill, founder and creative at Good & Ready. “This service makes it so frictionless that it’s a whole different feeling – it can even be enjoyable.”
According to Madill, hitting the curve of an open road is the best part of driving, hence incorporating that concept into the logo. “Plus, the word ‘Roam’ connotes the open road [and] we wanted to capture that in the logo design as well,” he adds.
Duncan McCall, GM at Roam, tells strategy its old Curbo branding had more of a “big tech” feel, perhaps too much so for a company that aims to have mass appeal. It is carrying forward some of its tech positioning, but with Roam, he claims it has a bit of a better balance by being playful too.
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Besides, as McCall explains, there was a branding conflict with a South American firm who had filed for a trademark to use “Curbo” in the U.S. After an internal risk analysis, the company decided said it would brand-build with a new name, and began working with Good&Ready late in 2021.
According to McCall, a lot of rental companies have conservative, boring branding. “We’re definitely trying to do something a little bit different,” he says. “For a lot of people, it’s not about the car, it’s about what they want to do with a car.” The brand direction will focus on the car as a vehicle, so to speak, for having different experiences and visiting different destinations.
McCall says the brand will come to market in Q1 2023, collaborating and supporting other brands to build community. It is planning on incorporating a lot of user-generated content, informed by people’s trips.
The brand has already wrapped some of its cars, and people can see some vehicles in purple and pink on the road.
Roam wants to be a replacement for long-term ownership, leasing, financing and buying. Many new Canadians also see Roam as a great way to get started with their own vehicle, especially when accessing financing can be a challenge.
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McCall also sees opportunity for businesses, as it’s a great option to have a vehicle off a balance sheet and onto an income statement, so they can offload the behind the scenes admin and hassle of vehicle management. It also appeals to urbanites who are preferential to public transit but need vehicles for errands and impromptu travel.
“There are tonnes of different people coming to us, with some coming to test driving vehicles,” McCall says, especially EV models.
