Founded 25 years ago by Rita Oliveira, the agency now known simply as Shift has clients like BP, Banco Carregosa, Jerónimo Martins, HBO, and Navigator. The goal is to grow by 50% in three years.

Shift Thinkers, a branding agency marking its quarter-century this year, will be called Shift from this Thursday onward. This rebranding project, which lasted six months, involved more than 20 people and took up over 1,100 hours, began with a study of the brand among six of the agency's key clients, explains Rita Oliveira, founder and CEO of now Shift, "the name by which clients call us."

"Your branding agency," is the new tagline, which aims to "go straight to our positioning" without mincing words. The close relationship with clients seems to be key to the process. "The trust in the relationship makes us a comfort zone where the client likes to challenge creativity. We find that when a client feels very comfortable, they end up challenging creativity more," says Rita Oliveira, explaining that the idea for the rebranding – which originated before the pandemic and was subsequently delayed – was mainly to adapt the brand to the digital transformations of recent years and to update its own manual. "We work with brands, and our own manual had some standards that needed updating," she comments.

With a team of 10 people, the creative direction is led by Miguel Reis, who joined the agency 15 years ago from Brandia. "Miguel loves talking to clients. Creative direction is involved in meetings from the very beginning," the head highlights.

Launched 25 years ago, the agency was initially called Shift Design and Communication, then became Shift Design, "because communication was too closely associated with public relations," and for the last 15 years, it has been known as Shift Thinkers, the professional recalls, working with companies such as BP, Banco Carregosa, Jerónimo Martins, HBO, The Navigator Company, among others.

"BP was our first client 25 years ago, and we still work the brand. With HBO we started by working on the launch in Portugal and now we are one of the agencies that manages its social networks for almost all of Europe, for The Navigator Company we do work for several markets," the head describes.

Growth has been organic, Rita Oliveira remembers. "We work with marketing. Fortunately, when the people in charge change, we keep collaborating with the new leaders of the companies and continue working with our contacts on new projects," she says.

Marking the quarter century, Shift aims to reinforce the motto "Familiar yet new," which translates to a balance between being familiar in the relationship and new in the solutions, points out the CEO, noting that the summary of these 25 years can be seen in work across 100 markets and four continents, in collaboration with more than 150 companies, and about 5,000 projects developed.

With a turnover of about 800,000 euros, Rita Oliveira states that "in 25 years the agency has never had negative results, which is most important." The ambition, in three years, is to increase the turnover to 1.2 million euros.

"We believe it is feasible. We plan to increase our work in digital and work with clients on branding," she explains, downplaying economic uncertainty. "Times of greater economic uncertainty have never really been a crisis for us. Companies are currently focusing a lot on their brands, they don't have much money to spend on advertising, but they have to look at their brands and products," she concludes.

This article was published on Sapo.