THE CHALLENGE
POSITIONING A NEW
BOUTIQUE COMPANY
IN AN INDUSTRY
OF GIANTS
Quodo was dreamt up by a small team of engineers working in energy consulting who knew they were doing things differently. They wanted to go further, but this is not an industry which welcomes young challengers kindly.
We were asked to help them create their new company and position themselves as a trustable brand in a complex market, whilst not sacrificing their virtues of youth and innovation.
THE LANDSCAPE
BECOMING A
SEED FOR
CHANGE
The landscape of business consultancy was forged by the previous generation and has grown into a somewhat rigid, slow-moving space. The industry’s belief in gentle and gradual evolution was effective for many years, but now cannot keep up with the speed of technological innovation and social change.
This has seen opportunities for improvement be ignored, with a general reluctance to embrace new and decisive action. Quodo wanted to address this close-mindedness and be a seed for change in a market which would definitely benefit from it.
STRATEGY
RESEARCH: A DEEP
DIVE INTO ENERGY
CONSULTANCY
We started by mapping the industry and studying how both main and fringe players had positioned themselves.
We asked:
> Who are the main competitors?
> How is the market evolving and how can we introduce innovation?
> What is the relationship between services, KPIs and how we want to tell our story? What role should each of these elements play in the strategy?
It was essential that we found clear answers to these questions, as well as many more, in order to position Quodo as a proactive, impact-driven new company.
Not all homework ends at school
We engaged our client both in workshops and “homework” activities which helped us define the company’s positioning. We decided to start with a Brand Sprint and a Positioning Framework and dedicated a session to in-depth analysis of the main competitors in the market.
Online workshopping and collaboration
Due to the lockdown, we ran all workshops remotely using Miro as a collaboration tool. For remote participative design and collaboration to be effective, it needs to consider different working patterns and environments. We therefore took a flexible approach to the timings of our activities.
The approach proved to be fruitful, as the company’s mission, vision and values emerged clearly. The team cited the activities as instrumental in helping them define their strategy.
The offering: make it bigger, make it clearer
Along with the positioning, the offering needed to be more clearly defined.
We decided to work on Customer Personas and Journeys to enrich the information acquired during the competitor/market analysis. After mapping out different scenarios, we led the team in re-organizing and redefining certain services and areas of business in a more customer-centric perspective.
This work allowed us to identify the potential productivization of a small set of services which could be offered directly as well as through business partners.
BRAND
NAMING: HOW TO
CAPTURE AN IDENTITY
IN ONE WORD
When naming the product, we wanted to represent the fact that this was a global company offering 360 degree services. Instead of focusing on the meaning of the word itself, which can lead to clunky, corporate sounding names, we presented a name which reflected the company’s identity in the sound and aesthetics of its lettering.
Quodo. As well as the sequence of letters being highly contemporary, smart and easy to recognise, the word’s rounded quality (in both sound and appearance) fits the company’s USPs. Finally, the brevity of the word conveys efficiency and speed of action.
LOGO DESIGN:
LET’S MAKE
IT VISUAL
The design of Quodo’s visual language and logo draws on the aforementioned ‘roundness’ which represents the brand. We worked on rounded geometries, simple lines, a fresh color palette and a clear typography.
BRAND IDENTITY +
BRAND SYSTEM:
FUTUREPROOFING
Thanks to the information collected during the Customer Journeys mapping, we knew exactly which touchpoints needed to be designed.
After covering the entire branding of the service, we also created a brand system and an array of brand identity tools. The system is a collated set of guidelines and formats which the team can use for any future designs/products/services, whilst the tools allow them to continue to build whilst remaining on brand.
