Best Buy
Brand Extension through Innovative Customer Touch Points
The Situation
Best Buy has earned its position as the top electronics retailer in the nation by fostering a fast-paced, consumer-focused, entrepreneurial corporate culture where ideas are tested, evaluated and implemented in a matter of weeks rather than months. They partner with us because we inherently understand the Best Buy customer and business environment, which allows us to quickly scale interactive initiatives from prototype to pilot to national rollout.
Our Process
At a national level, Best Buy is continually seeking ways to increase customer satisfaction, reduce returns and demystify complex product and service offerings. Locally, Best Buy works to give individual stores more control to customize the retail experience based on their unique customer demographics. In partnering with Best Buy to create in-store and online interactive solutions, we apply our understanding of the company's specific challenges and goals within this framework. We are recognized for our inventive approach to delivering innovative solutions for applications that have never been imagined before. In the sometimes confusing and cumbersome world of consumer electronics, our goal on every initiative is to improve the consumer experience with simplified interactions.
The Solution
In over six years of partnership with Best Buy, we have created a variety of customer experience solutions that demonstrate our insight and responsiveness to consumer needs. Leveraging our highly disciplined approach to unique and creative applications of technology, we've developed both outward-facing tools that educate and inform consumers and internal solutions that improve customer support and operational efficiencies.
St. Jude Medical
Master Brand Identity Development and Launch
The Situation
We partnered with St. Jude Medical, Inc. to implement a strategic branding program that would solidify their position in the global medical device industry. For 30 years, St. Jude Medical has grown organically as well as through acquisition. They turned to us to help them unify the entire company under a cohesive message that would connect with customers on an emotional level and underscore St. Jude Medical's position as a provider of quality products.
Our Process
In the initial phases, St. Jude Medical conducted global research to gain a better understanding of the purchasing behaviors of physicians around the world. Through this research, it became clear that customers see little difference between the leading medical device companies. To be most effective, our positioning had to be clear, strong and emotionally motivated. We found, at a very high emotional level, that physicians are looking for more control over the risks associated with their procedures.
The Solution
Based on these findings, we implemented a master brand strategy that unifies all messaging under one compelling brand benefit: "More Control. Less Risk." To do this, we defined a strategic messaging framework for all customer-facing materials. The framework allows for unique, targeted messaging at both the product level and within each specialty medical practice the company serves. Where product messaging was once developed autonomously, this framework now provides a foundation for creative messaging while maintaining and reinforcing the master brand strategy. Through this process, we have implemented an exhaustive global brand standard and conducted an international brand launch advertising campaign. Today, we continue to work with this $3.8 billion company on furthering its brand, advertising and promotional strategies.
Empi Recovery Sciences
Strategic Brand Analysis and Power Brand Strategy Development
The Situation
After 30 years in the durable medical equipment industry, Empi had earned a solid reputation in the Physical Therapy market. But the brand was still lacking in perceived value. As part of their growth strategy, Empi needed to give more importance to their proprietary, innovative technologies and distinguish these from their more general catalog products. The company needed to create a brand strategy that would position Empi as the endorser of what would become their category leading power brands. Essentially, they were already holding the cards but it was time for them to up the ante.
Our Process
For us to develop a strong brand strategy and position in the marketplace for Empi, we first needed to dig below the surface with exhaustive research that would reveal existing perceptions of the company from an internal and customer point of view. Our ultimate goal was to determine, validate and implement a strategy that would propel Empi into a leadership position as a business-to-healthcare provider and help them build strong consumer brands through marketing of their core strategic products.
The Solution
Excited from the research and armed with extensive feedback, we looked at Empi's standing within the brand landscape of consumer healthcare products and services. And there it was, that powerful emotional motivator that would bring Empi to the leadership position it needed. We completely repositioned the company and created a strategy that would break Empi out of its traditional position in the durable medical equipment category and let it stand alone in a new healthcare category: Recovery Sciences.
To differentiate Empi's strategic brands from their catalog brands, we created two distinct names: Empi Recovery Sciences, supporting the five strategic power brands, and Empi Therapy Solutions, representing the catalog business. As a result, Empi Recovery Sciences is the endorser brand under which the company's long reputation for quality products and technological advancements lives. It is the recognizable name behind power brands such as Select Pain Control, the leading transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device in the chronic pain market.
