OMIFCO appointed Kenshō Mindful Communications to lead its communications for the IPO and subsequent listing on the Muscat Stock Exchange (MSX), covering strategy, brand repositioning, creative, film production, digital, paid and earned media, investor relations, media training, roadshows and listing-day activity.
The brief was to build awareness and understanding of OMIFCO among retail investors, while also establishing credibility with institutional investors, analysts, regulators and government stakeholders.
For Kenshō, that meant addressing a problem that went beyond the IPO itself. OMIFCO had never needed a public-facing identity in the way a listed company does.
“The core challenge was that OMIFCO had operated for over 20 years as a B2B industrial producer in Sur with no public-facing identity,” says Marise Assaf, founder and CEO of Kenshō Mindful Communications. “It converts Oman’s natural gas into ammonia and granular urea, essential inputs for global agriculture, but had never needed to explain that to a general audience. For the first time, it had to.”
Kensho had to accomplish two things. First, meet the business objective of the campaign to create a successful, well-subscribed listing and second was to overcome the communications challenge which was to build awareness, understanding and trust in OMIFCO as an investment and convert that interest into subscription, while establishing credibility with institutional investors, analysts, regulators and government stakeholders.
The first stage of the work was the rebrand.
OMIFCO’s existing identity had been built for its B2B business and joint venture structure. Its line, ‘Partners in Progress’, and aqua blue logo communicated the nature of the partnership, but did not necessarily give the company a broader public-facing narrative as it moved towards becoming a listed company.
Kenshō repositioned the brand around growth, food security and long-term national contribution, replacing ‘Partners in Progress’ with ‘Harvesting the Future’ and developing a new logomark.
“OMIFCO arrived with a 20-year-old industrial identity built for a B2B audience: the line ‘Partners in Progress’ and an aqua blue logo that described a joint venture partnership model rather than a listed company with a national story to tell,” says Assaf.
The rebrand was not treated as a separate project ahead of the IPO campaign. Instead, it was treated as the foundation for the overall campaign, informing the brand’s hero film, investor collateral, corporate website, IPO microsite and media activity that followed.
According to Kensho, it was also the most demanding workstream in the preparation period. OMIFCO is a 50:50 joint venture, so strategic, brand and creative decisions had to pass through three approval layers: OMIFCO itself, the OQ Group branding team as custodian of group brand governance, and the OQ Group divestment team overseeing the transaction.
“Each layer came with a different mandate and a different set of questions, commercial, regulatory and brand, which meant a single route could return for realignment several times before it was locked,” says Assaf. The listing date, meanwhile, was fixed by the regulator and exchange.
The new logomark and positioning therefore had to satisfy the group’s brand governance requirements while also providing the narrative for the IPO. Until the identity was approved, the wider campaign cou…