About

Unisono is a strategic branding agency in Bahrain. Since 2006 we’ve helped regional and global clients build market-defining brands through strategy, identity and creative communication.

Our story

We’re Amy Morgan and Liam Farrell, two British business partners who studied in Manchester, England: Amy at Manchester University (Philosophy & Politics) and Liam at Salford University (Design Practice). We met in Europe before starting our first agency in London. We left London to make the island our home in 2003, and Unisono was founded three years later, in August 2006. Being Brits in Bahrain gives us a distinctive outlook: an outsider’s perspective and an insider’s understanding of regional culture. That is essential for building culturally relevant brands.

We started out sharing an office with a marketing firm in Um Al Hassam. In 2007 we took our small but growing team and made the brave leap into our first studio space in Juffair. In 2010, after winning STC’s VIVA brand with a team of 18, we moved to Exhibition Tower in Sanabis, which has been our home ever since.

Together with a dedicated local and international team, we built what has become one of the Middle East’s most successful and influential creative businesses. To this day we are both personally involved in every project. We find our passion and the root of our concepts in the deep collaboration our process promotes. We can’t do what we do without the highly collaborative clients we work with.

The brand that defined us

You could say our defining moment, the one that made the majors pay attention to us, came when STC entered Bahrain with its VIVA brand. It was one of the largest brand localisation projects ever undertaken. Our team won a six-way agency pitch, took on a global operator and made it feel unmistakably local. In under three years VIVA went from new entrant to the Kingdom’s leading mobile operator. It became the most profitable brand in the global STC stable and our work together won awards at the Crystals.

We handled everything for them, from advertising and IVR to youth events and web portals. Every VIVA thing you touched in those three crazy years was the product of our studio. It was an amazing challenge and learning opportunity, and we made them highly successful.

After we parted ways with VIVA, we pitched for and won Batelco, VIVA’s main competitor. We rebranded it into a brand that could go head-to-head with VIVA and win back the youth it had lost over the previous three years. Our work with Batelco won Best of Show at Transform, along with a slew of Golds and other awards. We were constantly up and down on the stage; it was quite an event for us.

Recognised for our strategic creativity

We love branding and creative awards. They’re our industry’s way of recognising strategic and creative brilliance, and they give our team a well-earned boost. Our work has earned 157 international awards, ranking Unisono among the world’s top 25 rebranding agencies and making us the Middle East’s most highly awarded, independent branding agency.* See the full list of our awards and clients.

Milestones

• 2003Business partners Amy and Liam arrive in Bahrain.
• 2006Unisono is founded in August, sharing an office in Um Al Hassam.
• 2007They move into their own studio in Juffair.
• 2008First international awards: Best of Nation at the World Logo Design Association for BNI. They also win at the Banker Middle East 100 for Ijara (KFH) and the Middle East Real Estate Awards for Majaal.
• 2010They move to Exhibition Tower in Sanabis and launch STC in Bahrain as VIVA. Amy chairs the regional Brand Leadership Summit.
• 2011First major international award at REBRAND: a win for BFC (previously Bahrain Financing Company).
• 2013VIVA is named Best Brand at the Telecoms Middle East Awards. Their first work is published in the Design and Design Annual.
• 2014Unisono is inducted into REBRAND’s inaugural Hall of Fame. They win their first Gold at the Transform Awards MENA, for Seef Mall, and their first Transform Europe award: a Silver for Al Wa’ab City.
• 2015Their Batelco rebrand wins Best of Show, along with Best Overall Brand Identity and three Golds.
• 2016Unisono’s first decade.
• 2017EO Global award for Best External Awareness for EO Bahrain.
• 2018First IVIA awards, including Visual Identity of the Year for Al Nooh.
• 2022Liam is invited onto the judging panel of the REBRAND 100.
• 2024Unisono wins 10% of all REBRAND 100 awards, including Best of Show for Zohoor.
• 2026Unisono begins its third decade.

*Unisono is the only branding agency in the Middle East in REBRAND’s Hall of Fame and one of only two in Asia.

What do we mean by ‘strategic creativity’?

Strategy is knowing where you are, where you want to be and how to get there. Creativity is the work of bringing new, unrealised things into existence. Strategic creativity is the science of bringing the right things into existence to help you get from where you were to where you need to be.

We believe branding is a mix of art and science; one can’t exist without the other. This is why we get the strategy right before anyone gets creative. Clarity of purpose and a shared vision mean everyone on both sides of the relationship is working towards the same successful end. We bring strategy, visual and verbal identity and creative communication together under one roof. That means one partner and one proven process that delivers every time it’s followed. We don’t deviate from the path, and clients who don’t want a strategic approach tend to work with another agency.

Our proprietary brand engineering methodology starts with insight born of research and business intelligence. It reveals a client’s innate brilliance and distils it into a core, differentiating brand philosophy. From there we build compelling brands and integrated communications that capture mindshare, create distinctive customer experiences and grow brand equity.

All of it is driven by a deep love of the craft of design. Our strategic creativity discovers the source of your brilliance before we help you share it with your audience in delightfully compelling ways. When a brand expresses its true brilliance, people want to get involved, and that leads to outstanding market performance.