Retail giant Carrefour appointed us to launch it’s new mobile phone brand. Entering any commoditized market is always a risky venture, but Carrefour planned to capitalise on an under-served customer segment: bargain-hunters. Carrefour believed a ‘bare bones’ service would appeal to natural ‘born switchers’. The obvious choice for a brand was Carrefour’s budget private label, No.1, which already commanded a large consumer base. Our solution extended and streamlined the existing identity system to provide a more robust branding toolbox, communicating strong design and messages which would reinforce the quality of the service, without harming the ‘cheap and simple’ heritage.
‘We ensured the brand is recognised as a No.1 service, while warming up the communications to give customers a human feeling from Carrefour’s first ‘service’ offering,’ said Uri Baruchin, consultant at Brandinstinct.‘We designed the entire range of product-centred touchpoints. On every deliverable, out of nearly twenty that we had to create in approximately six weeks, we came up with practical solutions to the challenges of the quadra lingual Belgian market, going up to four languages in the user guide.’Launched as 1 Mobile, the revamped-for-services No.1 brand has been well received by Belgian shoppers and described by local media as causing ‘true market disruption’.
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We helped XL, the UK based travel and leisure group, create their repositioned brand. In an industry split between cheap fares with a travel experience that cuts every possible corner and expensive fares that include various perks that don’t justify the price-tag, XL offers an alternative. Holiday travel has gone through an accelerated process of commoditisation. Passengers are no longer excited by low fares as these are now the norm. Additionally, passengers are increasingly aware that a cheap airline ticket often comes with the expensive price of an experience so bad, it either brings you exhausted to your destination or eclipses any positive holiday memories on the way back.
“Having an aircraft as a canvas is a designer’s dream,” Says Niqui Harwood, who created the new identity together with designer Andrew Morris, “but when XL approached us, we knew we wanted to create something truly special. They have a great product, and a bafflingly dedicated team. We wanted to give them a brand that can leverage those invaluable assets, bring across who they are and help them stand for something.” + Read the rest of this entry
Repositioning Indian global luxury brand Saffronart ; A new retail experience for Say telecom stores in Romania ; Ian Dunlop on the origins of long-lived brands
Marketing plots - learning from the stories about the stories; The road ahead; A revolution in green labelling; alternative transport brand launched; sign up for engagement seminar
Alright, you have identified that you want to shrink the number of brands in your portfolio in order to gain cost efficiencies and create more clarity for the customer. Furthermore, senior management are on board and have given you the green light for the plan. How in the world do you sell this to the teams that gave birth to these brands without dashing their hopes and switching their emphasis to your parent brand.
Naturally, some of the brand owners expressed concerns over loosing what they have created in the market and felt somewhat threatened by the recommendations and international best practice that were reviewed. We think it would be very productive if we could also build confidence around the changes and demonstrate that the brand-owners have responsibilities for the changes that will take place in the portfolio of brands. + Read the rest of this entry
Presented on 12 December 2007, Hoxton Hotel, London
Uri focuses on Narrative Marketing: how brands tell stories, how those stories interact in the market and how you can differentiate your brand by using these understandings. It will be led by Uri Baruchin.
People often need more than instruction to make changes to their normal patterns and routines.Essentially what we are asking of people is to share our values, share our vision and act within it.Internal branding aims to develop this cohesion.I will discuss how we use appreciative inquiry to facilitate employee brand engagement, briefly discussing some theory and relating it to a case study.I would like to share this practice to emphasise that more is needed to create strong brands, than internal advertising and brand training.
Appreciative inquiry (AI) is an approach which can be utilised to maximise employee brand engagement, whether setting a new direction or needing to boost your current brand. The aim of internal branding is the adoption of shared and cohesive values, beliefs, purpose, and core behaviours across staff and stakeholders for all levels of the organisation. We see AI as a way to actively involve people across the organisation in exploring the meaning of the brand and collaboratively deciding the use of the brand strategy for individual and organisational benefit.Internal branding is an elusive yet important success factor in the building of brands.Common methods of internal branding currently fall into events, internal communications, and brand training, which although needed can fall short in developing a deeper connection for staff to the brand. + Read the rest of this entry
Advertising veteran Ian Dunlop has joined us. Ian was formerly Global Brands Director at Grey handling projects for multinationals in China. Ian has jumped all over the planet to grow great brands. His global view perfectly complements our highly international team and his advertising expertise will take us in new and exciting directions. Ian will join the Brandinstinct team in August and take on the role of increasing the agency’s profile among first tier clients across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
