Prophet

CASE STUDY

Nam Nghi

Defining the brand story and experience for a Vietnamese luxury resort

Challenge

Nam Nghi, a boutique resort on the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, is a beautifully designed hotel that is built on a secluded peninsula and with a private island. Despite its unique geographic assets, the property had difficulties standing out in the increasingly competitive hotel market on Phu Quoc island due to its inconsistent customer experience across touchpoints.

Nam Nghi engaged Prophet to closely examine its brand portfolio, develop a refreshed brand positioning and narrative, and ultimately completely redesign its identity system to fit the reimagined approach for the brand.

Solutions

Prophet’s experience in developing luxury hotel brands in Asia and around the globe has led to an understanding of key experience trends that are shaping the travel and hospitality category: hyper-local, eco-consciousness and bespoke experiences.

Prophet identified Nam Nghi’s unique geographic placement as the resort’s clear advantage in the market. The unspoiled Phu Quoc island is a hidden paradise; it boasts of colorful coral reefs, lush jungles, turquoise waters, white beaches and true Vietnamese hospitality.

As a result, we defined a unique and strong brand story for Nam Nghi – “Nurtured by Nature.” We positioned the property as a destination for eco-luxury travelers who crave world-class quality hospitality and authentic, one-of-a-kind experiences with minimal environmental impact.

Centered around the positioning, we further explored how we could bring the story to life across existing touchpoints, including gastronomy experience, hospitality services, range of activities and its signature private island. Moreover, we helped the client to create signature moments that enhance the brand positioning. For example, using reusable bottles filled with filtered water and electric cars for pick-up.

We then designed an identity that conveys the idea of “immersion in nature” using patterns and hand-drawn illustrations. The lush foliage and vibrant corals that surround Nam Nghi served as inspiration for a rhythmic pattern design that is artistic and hand made. Using icons that represent the local flora and corals, we designed bespoke illustrations that are used in the framing device design, pattern design and on-site offerings. Aside from comprehensive guidelines, we delivered designs and ideas for touchpoints ranging from in-room amenities to wellness outlets, as well as digital apps.

Results

Phu Quoc Island has become one of Asia’s most talked-about destinations and an international hub for luxury and eco-friendly tourism. We brought Nam Nghi to life through an immersive visual identity that conveys premium options, while telling a story about local culture and its commitment to nature. The brand rejuvenation appeals to the young affluent customers – fashionable, luxurious and eco-conscious, through a distinctive brand positioning and visual identity that is true to the hotel’s strengths.

Our work with Nam Nghi was awarded Silver for best visual identity at Transform Awards Asia-Pacific 2019.

CASE STUDY

GARDENA

Growing a brand through a customer-centric transformation

Challenge

After years of steady growth, GARDENA – a brand of the Husqvarna group – is the leading pioneer of high-quality garden tools in Europe and is represented in more than 80 countries all over the world.

While its focus on engineering-driven innovation and revolutionary design is an immense asset, GARDENA realized that it needed to deepen connections with current and future customers to continue its success story. Prophet was tasked with transforming GARDENA into a customer-centric organization, with a focus on evolving its approach to marketing and go-to-market strategy.

Solutions

Collaborating with marketing teams across key regions, Prophet established a uniform approach for GARDENA’s marketing community to think beyond product launches and selling. Prophet encouraged the adoption of an ‘always-on,’ customer-centric mindset that focused deeply on customer retention and value creation.

We instilled processes and systems, supported by easy-to-use tools and templates, to drive marketing effectiveness. The initiatives laddered up to GARDENA’s goals and were tracked to prove maximum efficiencies.

Together, with the marketing leadership, we defined the capabilities and operating model required to deliver against GARDENA’s customer-centric targets. The new operating model was designed to align capabilities along the entire consumer journey, emphasize digital effectiveness and ensure that a consistent, purpose-led brand directs the activation across traditional and digital channels. The target result was a seamless omnichannel customer experience.

A learning program was also developed to ensure the marketing community was inspired and empowered with the right skill set to make GARDENA’s ambition a reality.

Results

Prophet positioned GARDENA to become the world-class, customer-centric organization it aspired to be. A strong customer-centric mindset has now become part of the organizational DNA. The new marketing KPIs, metrics and purposeful processes deployed are boosting consumer engagement and powering a more digitally savvy GARDENA brand.

Staying in pole position requires continuous transformation. Thus, Prophet will continue its journey with GARDENA with ongoing learning programs designed to upskill its full marketing function. Additionally, Prophet will continue to build the long-term brand strategy roadmap for the business to keep customer-centricity firmly at its core.

CASE STUDY

Canoo

Jump-starting a new electric vehicle brand

Challenge

Canoo was founded to answer this question: How can we simplify urban life by reimagining mobility in cities?

However, as the demographics of America’s cities continue to evolve, Canoo’s innovative business model needed to target the right urban consumers directly. Prophet was brought in to lead an agile and iterative process before, during and after the initial vehicle “reveal.”

Solutions

Through thorough research into electric car marketing and customer subscription preferences, Prophet identified six potential customer archetypes.

In a 10-week span, Prophet tested attitudes on a yet-to-be-released product, leveraging its market insights and innovative strategy capabilities to develop a robust segmentation strategy.

With deep customer insights in hand, we prioritized a target – 6 percent of the market – with the highest likelihood to buy an electric vehicle subscription. This target was developed based on attitudes around technology adoption, car-sharing and the ability to pay, among other dimensions.

Results

The Canoo product launch was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews and press coverage, anchored by a deep understanding of the brand’s customer target and position in the mobility-as-a-service ecosystem.

Canoo followed this up by using our segmentation targeting and typing tool to gamify and fuel a dynamic waitlist experience.

This experience continues to build excitement for the brand, while informing key business decisions about vehicle design, membership features, pricing tiers and marketing strategy.

CASE STUDY

Walmart

Refreshing the retail experience to deliver “Modern Value” to Chinese consumers

Challenge

With over 20 years of experience operating in China, Walmart is one of the largest hypermarket chains today with more than 400 stores across the country. Walmart’s challenge today is how to evolve its offer and experience in response to disruptive shifts in shopper behaviors, as well as staying relevant with the emergence of new online to offline (O2O) competitors that are challenging traditional retail formats.

Solutions

Prophet worked with Walmart to refresh its retail experience in order to fuel Walmart’s next phase of growth.

Prophet’s research demonstrated that while Chinese consumers are digital-savvy and are open to transforming how they shop; they are still looking to “save money, live better.” This is, and has always been, Walmart’s key purpose. Supported by this consumer insight, Prophet saw an opportunity to create an experience unique to Walmart’s consumer value proposition. To articulate what the Walmart brand stands for and how it stands out, we defined the brand concept “Modern Value,” which set the foundation for the rest of the design and experience.

After defining what “Modern Value” should look and feel like, our team set out to develop a retail design and identity that delivers on value, confidence and simplicity that would resonate with modern Chinese consumers. The new store experience feels contemporary without being premium and alienating. We brought more ‘warmth’ and introduced signature experience zones to appeal to families with kids. The visuals were designed to be vibrant, injecting energy into the retail experience.

Results

The initial pilot of the “Modern Value” redesign in Shenzhen was highly successful, not only in terms of shopper feedback but also in “like-for-like” store performance. The new retail experience has since been rolled out more broadly across China to new store openings and store redesigns.

Our project with Walmart won two gold awards at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia in the categories of “Best Localization of an International Brand” and “Best Visual Identity” from the retail sector.

CASE STUDY

Polestar

Scaling and accelerating workforce training for rapid global expansion

Challenge

Polestar, an electric performance car brand, had set its sights on becoming global leader from day one. By the end of 2020, to compete with key competitor Tesla, the company is set to have a presence across 10 markets, with over 50 new spaces and 700+ new employees.

With its rapid expansion in motion and ‘go-live’ dates set across markets, the pressure was on to have all customer-facing staff equipped to deliver a consistent customer experience. Polestar tasked Prophet to build out a clear customer experience strategy that addressed training, recruitment, customer service, customer care, operations and data strategy.

Solutions

Prophet began by understanding the training needs and ambitions – both for the near term and beyond – to define the desired outcomes based on the employee’s level and role. The team’s also helped Polestar align on what ‘good’ training looks like.

This led to the development of a curriculum plan, tailored to the needs and learning journey of each employee group. Working in close collaboration with various subject-matter-experts across Polestar, we created over 30 hours of training content including eLearning modules, live training events and self-study exercises. From how to tell the Polestar story and what differentiates Polestar products, to how to respond to various customer scenarios and role-specific do’s and don’ts.

We also developed a training template and style guide to ensure a consistent and professional look and feel for all content produced across the globe.

Results

Prophet equipped and enabled all customer-facing teams to deliver a distinct, deliberate and disciplined customer experience. The training curriculum developed has effectively enabled employees to consistently represent the brand and armed them with the confidence to guide customers when choosing Polestar cars across the globe. Feedback to date has been extremely positive, with high participation and engagement rates.

“Prophet helped us create a L&D platform that brings our brand and products to life. It translates our vision into tangible tools so that our employees across the world can learn and apply how to deliver a distinct and consistent Polestar experience to visitors and customers alike.”

Mona Abbasi
Polestar CXO

CASE STUDY

Colgate

Rejuvenating Colgate’s brand positioning to drive growth in China

Challenge

Colgate is a global leader in oral care with more than 40% share of the global toothpaste market. Having entered China in 1992, Colgate has become a household name with its slogan “No Cavities” widely known by Chinese consumers.

With the rise of China’s new middle class, the premiumisation trend has been growing in prominence in the personal care category. At the same time, the post-90s and 2000s generations have become the driving force of the category’s growth. Niche brands are increasingly sought after, while leading domestic brands are also gaining momentum. The Colgate brand was losing its vitality and appeal with young consumers in China.

Despite having a clear global brand mission “Everyone Deserves a Future They Can Smile About,” Colgate needed a better way to connect with China’s young consumers. To achieve this ambition, Colgate worked closely with Prophet to rejuvenate the brand with a distinct and vibrant positioning, anchored deep in China’s cultural and consumer insights.

Solutions

In just two months, we conducted comprehensive consumer research to gain an in-depth understanding of China’s new middle-class and the evolving needs of young consumers. Our insights showed that the new generation of Chinese consumers care more about the present and focus on near-term goals that move their life forward. However, for reasons such as lack of confidence, they often don’t take action against those goals.

Based on this key insight, Prophet worked with the Colgate team to dive deeper and define the positive role that Colgate can play in consumers’ lives. We developed the positioning, “Smile and Go for It” (放开笑放手做) – a proposition rooted in consumers’ desire to define a more passionate life, while anchoring on Colgate’s brand essence of smiling. It encourages consumers to smile with confidence and take action to pursue their dreams and goals, no matter how big or small, and to live out the life they want.

With the positioning identified, Prophet then facilitated workshops with Colgate’s marketing, innovation, e-commerce and design teams to develop the brand activation roadmap. Moreover, Prophet helped Colgate leverage the micro-segmentation work conducted by Tmall. By providing strategic analysis of the segmentation and identifying high-value customer groups, we were able to help the client determine the most relevant product innovations to bring to market. In addition, in order to strengthen the understanding of Colgate’s new brand positioning across internal and external stakeholders, we developed brand guidelines and provided guidance for Colgate’s communication with ad and media agencies.

Results

In July 2019, Colgate launched the “Smile and Go for It” campaign to activate its new brand positioning. Through a series of targeted marketing initiatives, Colgate built aspirational connections with diverse consumer groups who share different passions using film, TV, music, talk shows, workplace, beauty and ACGN (Animation, Comic, Game, Novel), encouraging them to tell their own “Smile and Go for It” stories. In only two months, Colgate’s campaign discussion on Weibo (a Chinese social media platform) had exceeded 420 million views.

Colgate has continued to draw inspiration from the brand positioning developed by Prophet, as well as the reset portfolio strategy, to carry out product innovations. In 2020, Colgate launched a new anti-aging toothpaste, an industry-leading move that created a new premium subcategory. At the same time, Colgate continued to reinforce its effort in building emotional resonance with young consumers. A recent initiative was its partnership with the top reality TV show “CHUANG 2020” as well as Chinese pop icon Wang Yibo.

Colgate’s brand rejuvenation has seen monumental success, with its top-of-mind awareness among 18- to 29- year-olds increasing from 13% in 2019 to 17% in Q2 2020. Once again, Colgate is a key player and driving significant business growth in China.

“With a thorough understanding of the challenges we faced, Prophet unpacked the tension and passions of Chinese consumers. Through a meticulous validation process, they crafted a positioning that’s true to both the Colgate brand and Chinese consumers. In addition, they were very good at navigating multinational companies, and bridged that understanding to drive maximum impact.”  -Vicky Hu, Marketing Director, China Brand Marketing – Core Brands

“Through a meticulous validation process, Prophet crafted a positioning that’s true to both the Colgate brand and Chinese consumers to drive maximum impact.”

Vicky Hu
Marketing Director, China Brand Marketing – Core Brands

Impact

4%

percent increase in brand awareness amongst targets

CASE STUDY

U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT): OOSA

Creating a brand that pushes for progress on and off the field

Challenge

For decades, the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) has been leading the charge for equality, both on and off the soccer field. They’ve elevated the level of the women’s game on the global stage and fought for causes like gender equality, parity to the US men’s team in terms of pay, coaching and medical treatment, frequency of games, field quality, and even how they train and travel to matches.

Knowing that their performance at the highly anticipated 2019 FIFA World Cup tournament meant more than demonstrating athletic prowess, the USWNT needed a brand to bolster their equal pay and equality agenda on the global stage.

Solution

As part of our Prophet Impact initiative (formerly P4NP – Prophet for Nonprofit), a team of strategists, designers, copywriters and developers from Prophet partnered with USWNT players to create a new brand and digital experience that captured the essence of the team—both as world-class athletes and as passionate activists. All the spirit, hard work and positive energy were channeled into a new brand: OOSA.

The name OOSA is a nod to the team’s 20-year-long tradition of players chanting “OOSA, OOSA, OOSA-AHHHH,” as a rallying cry before they take the pitch. The OOSA brand capitalizes on the collective value of the players while providing an avenue for supporters to get involved in their efforts to push for meaningful progress. The brand provides something tangible to rally behind, while also helping to defray the cost each player incurs to lead the cause for change.

Results

The new OOSA website and brand video launched just before the 2019 Women’s World Cup, where the team became four-time FIFA World Cup Champions with their win over the Netherlands. Twenty-two percent more U.S. viewers tuned into the final match than the 2018 men’s final, with a total of 263.62 million unique viewers globally.

In Nov. 2019, the Prophet team won two SILVER awards for “Best strategic and creative development of a new brand” and “Best use of audio branding” at the North America Transform Awards. And in 2022, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won equal pay, eliminating a long-time pay gap.

Learn more about how we build brands and transform society through Prophet Impact.

CASE STUDY

AXA

Meet Emma, the future of humanized insurance experience

Challenge

AXA is one of the world’s leading insurance companies offering diverse financial services globally. To successfully grow its business in Asia, the client recognized the need to create a more consistent and human brand throughout the region.

On the back of a new global vision – from Payer to Partner – AXA partnered with Prophet to develop an Asia-specific solution that would deliver on their ambition to:

  1. create a more consistent customer journey and brand experience across the region
  2. develop a new customer engagement proposition that also humanize the experience through a new digital platform
  3. develop digital touchpoints to drive greater engagement with existing and potential customers.

Solutions

Through deep consumer research and segmentation, Prophet partnered with AXA to create a regional well-being strategy, develop a new customer experience, and run UX & UI sprints to design a new digital product.

We began by conducting a multi-country regional segmentation, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative research across five key markets in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand and Japan). Over 4,000 customers were surveyed to better understand what they wanted from an insurance company when it came to their health, well-being and mental health. This research created the foundation for the development of a value proposition that defined the future of digital customer experience (DCX) at AXA.

To bring the strategy to life, we set out to reimagine the customer experience, taking a fresh look at how to create a new insurance platform that combined insurance e-servicing, 3rd party health and wellness digital services and a new conversational chatbot and virtual concierge. Importantly, at the core of this new experience was an empathetic and human approach on well-being topics for customers, elevating the AXA brand on an experience level never attempted at the organization.

From this strategic foundation, Emma was born — AXA’s first humanized user interface, which became the core of the brand’s new digital customer experience. This seamless experience – from claims to servicing, health content, symptom checker, and more – was embodied in a single Emma ecosystem for current AXA customers as well as prospects.

With Payer to Partner at the core of its proposition, Emma’s persona was designed to be an Empathetic Navigator, helping individuals find the solutions and content most relevant to their well-being needs. Prophet further “personified” Emma, crafting a real-life avatar, her tone of voice, and the visual expression across a full identity system.

A key highlight of the process was a two-day Hackathon to create “Emma”. Over 70 global leaders and stakeholders across diverse disciplines gathered together to “hack” the Emma experience. It was the first time in AXA’s history and probably the largest cross geographic collaboration of its kind.

Results

Emma was piloted then launched in Hong Kong in Q4 of 2019.

Emma is bridging the gap between digital engagement and financial advisor partners. As of 1H of 2020, Emma’s launch in Hong Kong drew more than 2 million logins, exceeding expectations. Emma is now being rolled out across the rest of Asia.

The digital brand experience we created for AXA won the gold award for “Best Use of Digital in the Financial Services Sector” at the 2021 Digital Impact Awards Asia, as well as two awards at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia, including a gold award for “Best Brand Experience” and a silver award for “Best Visual Identity” from the financial services sector.

CASE STUDY

Ava

Elevating a FemTech start-up to become a bold brand

Challenge

Ava, a fast-growing FemTech start-up, is known for helping users accurately plan conception. The brand is expanding its services and is preparing to launch a contraception product. With so much momentum, and changes happening in their leadership team, the time was right to partner with Prophet to revamp the brand.

Solutions

The key was identifying their target customers and what the brand should stand for in a way that was sensitive, non-judgemental and empowering. Prophet conducted online focus groups in multiple markets to identify Ava’s target customers and better understand their needs. We then determined what space the brand should play in analysing conception and contraception competitors. Our research uncovered that Ava should be in the scientific, research-backed space (vs. lifestyle brands), highlighting its purpose to improve women’s health (vs. brands like Apple).

Our research also provided insights for Ava’s brand architecture, showing that we had permission to establish the Ava brand as one that went across conception and contraception – speaking to different product-level needs with tailored messaging.

Based on these insights we defined a bold new brand promise, ”Driving the progress women deserve. One cycle at a time.” It was brought to life with a new, more passionate tone of voice, messaging and visuals that demonstrate how the new brand shows up in a more inspiring way.

Results

Six months later, Ava has effectively rolled out the new tone of voice and messaging on key channels. Marketing budgets are better aligned to successfully reach the target audience.

“It was key for us that our partner would fully ‘get us’ and stand 100% behind our mission. We found that with Prophet and are super happy with the results.”

Lea Von Bidder
CEO and Co-founder of Ava

CASE STUDY

Medtronic

Re-organizing a marketing team to meet key business needs

Challenge

Medtronic, a global medical technology company, has been rapidly expanding through organic and acquisitional growth. As customer segments expanded, stakeholder expectations evolved and new business and product teams emerged. The company’s corporate marketing team recognized the need to rethink how omnichannel campaigns and content would support enterprise growth.

Solutions

Prophet worked with leaders across the global brand, marketing and communications teams to collaboratively define a new vision for corporate marketing. The new concept was designed to clarify priorities, set objectives and identify the necessary moves to both evolve and execute. We employed a mix of industry best practices and Prophet proprietary tools and frameworks to give Medtronic a custom-built solution.

A key component of the new vision was a framework articulating the role corporate marketing plays for the company as a whole, as well as its different businesses and regions. Prophet used its marketing archetypes to align on the right model for Medtronic.

From there, we outlined business and technology implications, key strategic moves and a transformation roadmap to support the new vision, so the Medtronic team could execute the strategy independently over time.

Results

As Medtronic continues on its mission to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life for patients around the world, the company’s corporate marketing team is now executing on a vision that is tightly connected with the enterprise business strategy. The team is well-positioned as the global driver of the Medtronic story.

“Modern marketing teams continue to evolve and stretch to meet stakeholder needs. Repeatable frameworks are helpful, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach that fits every organization. Prophet helped us think through a number of approaches and worked with us to create a vision and roadmap that meets our unique business needs.” -Greg McCullough, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for Medtronic.

“Prophet helped us think through a number of approaches and worked with us to create a vision and roadmap that meets our unique business needs.”

Greg McCullough
Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for Medtronic

CASE STUDY

MMRF

Developing a direct-to-patient engagement model

Challenge

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) is the largest non-profit in the world dedicated to finding a cure for multiple myeloma, cancer of the blood. To advance its mission, MMRF needed to collect more patient data to identify the right treatment options for each patient. This meant the business would need to build a new, direct-to-patient model, requiring a deeper understanding of their patients to create the right value in exchange for data.

Solution

We partnered with MMRF to launch the MMRF “CureCloud” – an at-home testing kit and digital dashboard displaying personalized treatment options for myeloma patients. We also developed an end-to-end patient experience strategy based on primary research, to identify the right moments to introduce the program, and build a relationship with them over time as patients undergo their journey from diagnosis to remission.

Customer research uncovered that the most important benefits to patients in a partner like MMRF is personalized communication and recommendations in exchange for their data, followed by the prospect of helping the entire multiple myeloma community drive toward a cure. These insights helped us build an engaging CureCloud experience and MVP and product roadmap for the future. As part of this, we refreshed the MMRF website, a primary entry point for patients to learn about their disease and become aware of the MMRF brand before becoming a CureCloud participant.

Going hand-in-hand with a patient-centric experience, the MMRF also needed a brand refresh. We developed a modern look-and-feel, bolder tone of voice and creative marketing platform – ‘Expect More’ – to signal to the market that MMRF has once again elevated expectations of the myeloma community, bringing the innovation necessary to find a cure.

Results

The MMRF CureCloud MVP launched July 14. The revamped website is live and has generated 29,789 unique users in the first month, a 22% improvement in bounce rate and a 6%  increase in SERP. It also won Web Marketing Association’s 2021 WebAward for outstanding achievement in web development. Through our partnership, MMRF has learned how to work in agile to create value through a direct-to-patient, experience-led model.

CASE STUDY

Emart

Driving retail growth through customer data strategy

Challenge

Over the past decade, Emart, the leading general merchandise retailer in South Korea, has been on an aggressive format expansion drive to address competitive and regulatory pressures on its core hypermarket business. As they have expanded into new formats and increased their licensed businesses, they have assembled a diverse portfolio of affiliate companies that fit into consumers’ lives in many ways.

With an over 90 percent penetration rate among South Korean shoppers, Emart was looking to improve current customer relationships and spend across all its affiliate businesses to fuel its next wave of growth. Emart needed to gain a deeper understanding of its customers’ needs and preferences, strengthening its ability to deploy a micro-targeted marketing approach. Emart engaged Prophet to define a comprehensive customer data strategy, as well as the roadmap for transforming their businesses to be more data-driven.

Solutions

Prophet defined a customer data strategy with a detailed roadmap of initiatives to help Emart drive impact across the business.

The Prophet team helped Emart uncover revelatory data that helped define new experiences along the customer journey. Then, Prophet identified the capabilities and organization structure needed to manage, analyze and act on these new data insights. Based on our detailed mapping of Emart’s current state and our knowledge of best practices in leading global organizations, we were able to design a future state model for Emart, as well as the roadmap to build the required capabilities and organizational model.

To demonstrate the value of data and justify future investments, we took a large sample of Emart’s existing transactional and CRM data to identify clear behavioral profiles that could be targeted in pilot marketing experiments. We were able to prove that targeted marketing could have an impact on two levels – increasing spending on the targeted category (e.g. increasing spending on health & beauty), as well as increasing total basket size (e.g. how much they spent on their weekly shop overall).

Results

For a duration of 6 months, Prophet supported the Emart team in conducting a series of test and learn marketing experimentations based on customer data insights with continuous proven success in driving business impact. Since then, Emart has established a dedicated team to run targeted marketing at scale as the full organization at Emart is committed to investing in becoming a data-driven company.

Impact

20%

Increase in sales by non-category

15%

increase in sales by targeting in declining categories

10%

increase in sales in key categories

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