For the biggest energy company of The Netherlands I helped developing a new brand DNA for its full brand portfolio. With multiple sub brands “Company x” has branches in both The Netherlands and Belgium. In a dozen co-creation sessions a new overarching brand purpose, multiple brand positionings and corresponding brand personalities were co-created. This was done together with a team of core stakeholders from the client side and a few (senior) colleagues of mine.
All outcome is protected by a NDA. For that purpose the client name and outcome will remain confidential, and only a part of the process will be elaborated.
“Develop new purpose, brand positioning and brand personality for “Company X” and all of its sub brands.”
A brand new brand DNA
For all of the brands together we organized a co-creation session starting with an overview of — technological, societal, and economical — future trends based on research from our in-house think tank. Also internal and external analyses of the companies were made and presented back.
After this kick off, multiple interactive co-creation sessions were designed and facilitated for each of the brands, separately. In these sessions we elaborated on the overall brand purpose, brand positioning, brand personality.
One of the various co-creation sessions we facilitated
The brand DNA triangle
Now what? Translating the new brand DNA
After creating a new brand DNA, a translation should be made for employees to be able to work with the new brand DNA. In this phase we translated the brand DNA to the brands core values, design principles and other marketing communication guidelines like tone of voice and imagery guidelines. Naturally, we repeated these co-design sessions for each of the sub brands.
A translation to a practical adoption of the brand DNA
Brand DNA activation
A new brand DNA, design principles, core values tone of voice and imagery guidelines were wrapped in a brand book with all brands in it. In order to make the employees more familiar with the new DNA, a brand activation session was designed and facilitated. This teambuilding day involved various playful aspects to get familiar with all the newness in a fun way.