FC Search

The Brief

Frances Chang Sparling had the hardest part already in hand. She is an industry-renowned search specialist with the relationships and the reputation to match, working with clients across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. What she needed was a brand worthy of it.

The GCC is an ambitious, fast-moving market, and the businesses FC Search serves are growing quickly and hiring at the top. A brand speaking to CEOs, CFOs and CMOs in that environment has to carry real polish and real confidence from the very first impression. It also had to work across four quite different specialisms, from a payroll appointment through to a board-level search, and feel equally credible in all of them.

The other half of the brief was more personal. FC Search is Frances, and the brand needed to say so.

Our Actions

Gavin Cranshaw and Matthew Ley project managed the work with Chris Cranshaw, taking FC Search from a name to a live brand.

The identity was built with the Gulf audience firmly in mind: refined, confident and international, with the quiet authority that senior hiring conversations call for. It needed to sit comfortably in a boardroom in Dubai or Riyadh, and to feel like a firm that belongs at that level of the market.

The website was designed to do two jobs at once, showcasing the business and introducing its founder. The four specialisms each got proper space so a finance director and a chief marketing officer both see themselves reflected. Current opportunities give candidates a reason to return, and the testimonials were given prominence, because five-star reviews from senior clients are among the most persuasive things a search firm can show.

Halt also created the social assets Frances needed to launch and to keep the brand visible in her network.

A Founder-Led Brand

Plenty of search firms are built on one person’s reputation. Rather fewer are brave enough to say it out loud.

Frances is the reason clients call FC Search, and the brand says so plainly. Her photography, her background and her LinkedIn all feature prominently, and the site speaks in a voice that sounds like a person you could pick up the phone to. That personal warmth is one of the brand’s best assets.

The craft is in the balance. A founder-led brand still has to look like a business capable of handling a C-suite mandate, so the design keeps its composure while the content stays personal. Frances is the face of it, and the brand around her is built to grow.

It gives FC Search a real advantage in a market where the biggest names can feel a long way from the client.