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Argano
Bringing a new kind of digital consultancy to life.
Overview & Background
Argano, a next-generation digital consultancy, began with a simple belief: there had to be a better way to build a consulting company.
For CEO Chip Register and Trinity Hunt Partners, the Dallas-based private equity firm backing the venture, the opportunity was clear. Organizations had invested heavily in digital experiences, yet many continued to struggle with the systems that make businesses run.
Planning, finance, commerce, supply chains, workforce management, and enterprise performance often depended on fragmented technologies, disconnected processes, and operational complexity that limited growth and adaptability.
Chip Register brought decades of leadership experience in digital consulting, including his tenure as co-CEO of Publicis Sapient, along with a conviction that the market was missing something important. While large consulting firms offered breadth and scale, specialist firms provided deep expertise and close client relationships. Each delivered value. Each had limitations.
The question became: What if a company could combine the strengths of both? What if specialist firms could retain their expertise while contributing to a larger enterprise capable of solving complex business problems?
Three companies, Keste, interRel Consulting, and United Virtualities, formed the initial foundation. More than 30 acquisitions would follow. New capabilities would be added around the core. The organization would evolve organically.
BrandingBusiness was brought in at the outset to help define, name, and launch the new enterprise. Our challenge was to create a brand that could capture an ambitious vision, unite a growing platform of specialist firms, and provide a foundation for long-term growth.
The Brand Opportunity
NewCo was a new company with a bold ambition. The challenge for BrandingBusiness was to create a brand ethos around Chip Register’s vision of a company that would be genuinely new, different, and better.
The driving idea behind the company was Register’s belief that the consulting industry had become, in his words, “a giant pile” of similar firms. The founding premise was simple: there had to be a better way.
Rather than creating another consultancy, the company set out to build a new model, one that combined the depth and entrepreneurial spirit of specialist boutiques with the breadth and scale required by global enterprises.
“There were plenty of people doing the work,” Register says. “There wasn’t a parallel organization dedicated to the Digital Operating Platform.”
Creating the Brand
There was no legacy to inherit, no category to emulate, and no accepted wisdom that could not be challenged.
BrandingBusiness began exploring a broader idea that could capture the company’s ambition of “powering the digital renaissance.” The work called to mind another period of invention, integration, and human ingenuity applied to complex challenges. Like the master builders, engineers, and visionaries of Renaissance Florence, NewCo was setting out to challenge accepted assumptions and create a fundamentally different model for the future.
The foundational brand attributes became:
- Inventive: how the company thinks.
- Transformative: the impact it seeks.
- Collaborative: how it works.
- Adaptive: how it behaves.
- Enterprising: its energy and ambition.
Together, these attributes established a brand rooted in invention, enterprise, and possibility, designed to help clients achieve what others believed could not be done.
The challenge then became expressing those ideas through a single, memorable brand concept.
The answer emerged through the name: Argano.
The name traces its origins to the construction of Florence’s Duomo, one of the most extraordinary engineering achievements of the Renaissance. To build the cathedral’s vast dome, architect Filippo Brunelleschi had to invent new methods, materials, and machinery. Among those innovations was the argano, a revolutionary hoisting mechanism capable of lifting massive building materials hundreds of feet into the air.
As a corporate name, Argano captured the essence of the company: inventive, enterprising, and dedicated to helping clients achieve what had previously seemed beyond reach.
For Chip Register, the metaphor resonated immediately. “We’re inventors. We’re designers. We’re craftsmen. And we’re here to support our clients’ vision of innovation.”
Argano’s intended role was not to define a client’s vision, but to create the capabilities, systems, and connections required to bring that vision to life. Just as Brunelleschi’s invention enabled the construction of the Duomo, Argano would help organizations overcome complexity, accelerate transformation, and achieve ambitions beyond the reach of conventional approaches.
Visual Identity
The Renaissance metaphor extended beyond the name into the visual identity itself.
The Argano logo is based on both a stylized “A” and a subtle reference to the architectural profile of Florence’s Duomo. Its layered arches evoke the ingenuity and engineering mastery that made the cathedral possible, while reinforcing the brand’s central idea: helping clients build what others believe cannot be built.
The identity connected the company’s purpose, name, story, and visual expression into a coherent system. The Duomo, the argano, the Renaissance, the “new, different, and better” mandate, and the visual identity all point to a single organizing thought: making ambitious visions possible through ingenuity and invention.
Results
Launched in 2020, Argano integrated more than 30 acquisitions over the following six years, growing into a global digital consultancy with nearly $1 billion in revenue and 3,000 employees.
Throughout that growth, the brand provided a common language for the enterprise. It gave diverse specialist firms a shared sense of purpose while preserving the entrepreneurial energy and expertise that made them successful.
As Chip Register later reflected: “The brand helped me explain it to myself. It helped me answer the question: What are we trying to do here?”
That clarity helped transform a collection of acquired businesses into a company with a common culture, direction, and ambition. What began as a belief that there was a better way to build a consulting company became one of the industry’s fastest-growing digital consultancies, supported by a brand designed from the outset to enable growth, integration, and transformation.
Like the great cathedrals of the Renaissance that inspired its name, Argano was built to endure.
Click here to listen to the latest edition of Expert Opinion, in which Alan Brew sits down with Chip Register, CEO of Argano, to discuss one of the more remarkable growth stories in professional services.