Backgrounds | 20.06.2021 |

Strategy is the beginning & the most important advisor.

Redesign, new development, service or product: To start a transformative process, it is necessary to survey the status quo together with the customer.

Our entry into a project starts with an inward look:

What are the customer’s requirements, what is the impetus or desire, or has the opportunity for change arisen, and what are the expectations. Subsequently, we try to match these wishes with the current status quo of the company. Does a company have the potential to develop the goals it has set itself, what are the desired results and are these in line with the planned measures, and which steps within a brand process can be realistically implemented for a company. Here, trust between customer and company is important, because only open and transparent communication leads to a functioning result.

From the outside, branding and transformation processes appear complex, lengthy and costly. However, the development of a corporate design is as complex as the desire “to buy a red car”. There are long-term processes that take years to complete and there are projects that need to be completed quickly and with minimal barriers. As far as deadlines and timings allow, we see it as our task to get to know a company as well as possible and are happy to take the time to do so. The agency & client relationship is an elementarily important core aspect in complex projects.

After the requirements analysis, a project starts with a joint workshop, in the best case with the previously established design commission.

(Example: branding process for Schwerte city marketing through citizen survey)

Frameworks & Methods

In advance, the objective of the workshop is discussed and desired outcomes are set. An agenda is then created, which includes various tasks and methods. An example of this is the creation of a semantic differential or polarity profile, in which the internal view of the status quo of one’s own company is ascertained through rapid associative selection of properties & pairs of opposites. The status is then subsequently compared with the desired result. At best, one’s own view can even be compared here with a renewed survey of stakeholders, customers or partners in order to determine the external image as well.

More frameworks for successful branding workshops:

– The Golden Circle, after Simon Sinek
– The “Northstar Metric” survey
– IDEO, Design Thinking Workshop, after Tim Brown

Results:

Often unexpected synergies arise during a workshop, because there are often topics and opportunities that were not in the foreground until then. Whether it’s combining old with new design elements, an opportunity for new acquisition opportunities, or a positive signal of change to existing customers. A workshop gives a team the time and opportunity to reflect on their own brand. As an agency, we accompany and structure the workshop, and at best the results are developed by the team itself, because in this way innovations are formed directly from within the company, which can be implemented more natively and in the long term.

“Corporate design” is a process and only one part of a corporate identity. Transformation must be anchored in the company in order to work, and the joint workshop is the starting signal for this.