How do you describe a diverse 70-year-old global organization which reinvents itself daily? How do you capture its constantly evolving personality, its customer experience – the way it makes people feel –and distil that into something visual, immediate, and impactful? And how do you do this while maintaining the familiar face of a company that organisations and governments have come to rely on, globally?
That was the challenge we faced when we were tasked with refreshing the brand of automotive development giant AVL, a global institution whose business is transformation. And with imagination, creativity, and a deep understanding of our client’s business, market, and activities, we created a metaphorical language to facilitate an emotional repositioning of their brand, and communicate the passion for change that pumps in their veins. And then we communicated this with a global audience using an innovative and engaging content marketing campaign with stunning visuals, videos, and dynamic targeting.
AVL has been a facilitator of change and innovation in the automotive industry since 1948. Now, as the industry undergoes its biggest transformation ever – from combustion to clean electric and hybrid power – AVL is leading the way, with a vast and diverse brand offering that reinvents itself for every unique customer, every unique project, and at every individual touchpoint. This constant rebirth means that no customer experience is ever the same twice, yet despite this constant evolution the organization’s visual identity has remained unchanged for years. With the dawning of clean mobility and new technologies such as self-driving cars, it was time for AVL’s visual persona to evolve alongside its dynamic brand experience.
We distilled AVL into two visual metaphors. The global organization has a vast
product portfolio, strong values, a multitude of R&D activities, and a worldwide
network of experts working in many domains. It constantly rearranges these elements
to provide tailored solutions for unique customer challenges.
In this sense,
AVL is just like a kaleidoscope that is made of many elements that rearrange
themselves every time you look through it. We chose this as a theme to represent the
brand and the customer experience. We then paired this visual metaphor with a
spectrum motif which reflects the vast and diverse ocean of solutions, products and
services that AVL offers.
These two bright, colourful motifs were then used to support an updated version of
the organisation’s original logo so that, despite constant transformation, customers
could feel reassured that it is still the same, reliable business partner they know
and love. This was accompanied by a new tagline reflecting Darwin’s theory of
evolution – “Adaptable to Change.”
The emotional rebranding was then
communicated globally with an innovative marketing campaign entitled The New AVL.
Because AVL is always new – it always has been, and it always will be.
We helped AVL redesign its website – a thick database of various products, events and
webinars, the latest news and downloadable publications – into a more responsive
environment that can be easily used with all types of devices. Relying on the
parallel design technique, our team developed multiple wireframes and blended them
together, providing our client with the best possible solution based on various
ideas.
Our team designed the relaunched website with a headless approach,
transforming the search function into a main component of the user experience. Now,
you’re guided organically through the website’s various sections and pages.
The site suggests pages that have similar content and could be of interest to you.
The images, too, now have the same aspect ratios, meaning image content no longer
has to be cut and look the same in all types of browsers.
The website shifts
colour tones on a daily basis, providing the user with an environment that reflects
the diversity and vibrancy of a kaleidoscope. This strong colour scheme is central
to the relaunched website. With less overall content, the colours can breathe,
giving important features more space and the website a balance. It’s now clean,
crisp and clear.
From the creation of brand codes, guidelines for the implementation, to the creation of a narrative brand story and emotional repositioning, marketing materials and viral videos, we took on every aspect of this brand refresh in order to maximize global impact.
A complimentary social campaign communicated the new branding from 20 February to 27 March 2020, and the results speak for themselves.
The New AVL landing page saw nearly 11,000 pageviews. 8,050 users came on board. We generated 176,668 video views with an organic watch time of 8,326.2 minutes. Such public engagement with the rebranding of an engineering firm exceeded our expectations massively, and resulted in excellent value for our client.