London-based independent creative agency Mr. President is working with Blackhawk Network to introduce new brand Yonda, a progressive financial service that flips the idea of cashback on its head. Yonda is a cash-forward service that helps people save more with a simple idea: with every purchase made now at more than 70 national retailers totalling over 16,000 stores, it gives you money to spend later.

Yonda has been developed and managed by Blackhawk Network Europe, a leader in prepaid gift, reward and incentive technologies and solutions. Mr. President was the lead agency for the brand development and identity, guidelines, giving direction on the overall product and user experience, communications, go-to-market plan and even the card design.

Nick Emmel, chief strategy officer at Mr President, explained, “There’s not a lot of love for cashback offers. Most are riddled with complex redemptions, tricksy offers, tonnes of fine print, and often teeny percentage returns. To position the new easily redeemed, simple offering as a cashback card would do it a massive disservice. So we flipped the idea on its head: This isn’t cashback, it’s cash-forward.”

He continued, “That’s what led us to develop the brand Yonda - a forward-facing name for the cash-forward service that gives you money that you look forward to spending. Our Brand Defining Idea went beyond the name. Integrating the idea of forward-facing into every facet of the user experience and product offer. This is how to build a financial brand for the Monzo generation.”

Yonda’s new brand identity features a logo of smooth flowing lines and circular letterforms with a curved underline, which is used as an illustrative device. The brand’s colour palette centres on Minted Green that appears as the physical card colour and throughout all brand experiences. The common brand visual is a horizon, created with tints of the brand colours, also commonly used with an animated dot in the app experience to show movement and adding character, further deepening the idea of ‘forward money.’ 

Stacey Richards, product director of Prepaid, at Blackhawk Network, explained, “We believe that Yonda is uniquely positioned to offer something completely different removing the barriers to the traditional cashback offering  - a cash-forward card that helps people save just by using it at some of the top national retailers. It was fantastic to be able to work with Mr President using their expertise in terms of developing our core audiences through research-led insight, and creating a brand that will help us stand out within the market. The Mr President team really understood our proposition and helped make it an approachable, understandable, fun and positive brand that helps bring freshness and forward momentum.”