NEW YORK, 4 APRIL 2018 – Voya Financial, the New York-based financial, retirement, investment and insurance company, recently launched its Chinese brand identity, including a Chinese brand name and a bilingual brand signature created by Labbrand New York, to cater to the growing Chinese community across the U.S.

The Voya Financial brand was established in 2014, evolving from ING U.S. With the vision of becoming America’s Retirement Company™, Voya helps some 13 million customers become financially and emotionally ready for retirement.

Labbrand, a global brand consultancy with strong expertise in Chinese brand naming, worked closely with Voya to create a Chinese identity for the brand that is optimistic, approachable, and relatable to the Chinese-American community, who are in need of smart and professional financial planning and management. Labbrand created the Chinese brand name 沃雅 [wò yǎ], conducted linguistic tests in major Chinese dialects, and designed the bilingual brand signature.

The Chinese brand name 沃雅 [wò yǎ] envisions a rich and happy journey towards and through retirement, while maintaining similar pronunciation in Chinese to the original name “Voya”. 沃 [wò] stands for richness, implying an aspirational life full of joy. 雅 [yǎ] means elegance and peace, reflecting peace of mind and assurance for the future and life during retirement. The name has an optimistic and trustworthy tone, resonating with Voya’s brand image and customers’ expectations. This name was linguistically tested among speakers of Mandarin and two major Chinese dialects spoken in the U.S. – Cantonese and Minnanhua. Additionally, the two characters chosen for the name are readable in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

Labbrand also designed the bilingual brand signature for Voya, maintaining a strong resemblance with the distinct traits of Voya’s original visual identity. Voya plans to utilize the Chinese brand name and visual identity for various marketing touchpoints including website, social media, TV ad, print media, video, and other collateral.
 

“We are very thrilled to work with Voya Financial on this naming and design project,” said Ying Mu, Vice General Manager of Labbrand New York. “What makes the U.S. market so special is its diversity. And as a growing segment of this market, the Chinese-American community is definitely one that has many opportunities for brands. We are happy to provide our multi-cultural knowledge and approach to help our clients to achieve consistent growth.”

About Labbrand

Labbrand is the leading China-originated global brand consultancy with a rapidly expanding global footprint that includes regional operations in APAC (Shanghai, Singapore), Europe (Paris), and North America (New York, Vancouver). We lead branding journeys and facilitate implementations to light up companies and products with the power of your brand. Through brand innovations, we steer brands towards unrivalled brand space. On our journeys we Create, Grow and Disrupt to build resilient brands in dynamic markets. Our cross-disciplinary approach in research, strategy, naming, design and digital gives us the foresight and ability to guide brands beyond the status quo.

About Voya Financial

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA) helps Americans plan, invest and protect their savings — to get ready to retire better. Serving the financial needs of approximately 13.6 million individual and institutional customers in the United States, Voya is a Fortune 500 company that had $11 billion in revenue in 2016. The company had $541 billion in total assets under management and administration as of September 30, 2017. With a clear mission to make a secure financial future possible — one person, one family, one institution at a time — Voya’s vision is to be America’s Retirement Company®. Certified as a “Great Place to Work” by the Great Place to Work® Institute, Voya is equally committed to conducting business in a way that is socially, environmentally, economically and ethically responsible. Voya has been recognized as one of the 2017 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute, one of the 2018 World’s Most Admired Companies by Fortune magazine and one of the Top Green Companies in the U.S., by Newsweek magazine.