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

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

Formula E

Reframing a racing championship for an electrifying future

Challenge

The brainchild of Formula 1 supremo Alejandro Agag and John Todt, FIA Formula E is the world’s first fully-electric, single-seater racing championship. Developed as a means of accelerating the transition to sustainable mobility, its inception was splitting opinions across the racing world and beyond. Formula E engaged Prophet to creatively reframe the series, requiring a more relevant and distinctive proposition and visual identity to help widen the sport’s fan base and distance this progressive world player in the electric revolution from traditional motor racing.

Solutions

The answer was to stop trying to compete with Formula 1 and move the goalposts completely. By conducting extensive primary research, and specifically talking to fans, we honed in on the single big idea to make Formula E distinct and famous: electric street racing. “It was about taking a perceived shortcoming – the lack of noise and lower speeds – and turning it into a differentiator: being able to race in the heart of a city!” said the responsible partner at Prophet. “It’s bold, innovative, and highlights boundary-pushing electric performance in a way that better connects emotionally with mainstream and younger audiences who are attracted by this new, gritty form of motorsport and digital interactivity of the race.”

We then translated the spirit of the evolved Formula E brand into a more contemporary visual identity. Inspired by urban visual cultures – fly posters, street signs, road markings – we dramatized this gritty edginess by layering elements within the identity to create interruption, dynamism and energy, whilst a refreshed color palette moved away from the dated and expected toward one imbued with confidence and the power of electricity.

Results

This identity was the winner of two Transform Europe awards, two Transform APAC awards and was recognized within the Creative Review Annual as one of the best brand identities.

Beyond the clear positioning, smarter and sharper visuals and modernized logo, the award-winning new brand shed any outdated perceptions and helped Formula E to tell its story –  what Formula E is and what it stands for – in a distinct and exciting way.

Not only has the more compelling proposition drawn new spectators but it’s also attracted leading car brands to join the series, including BMW, Mercedes and Porsche, as well as iconic cities such as Hong Kong, New York and Rome, with more hotly anticipated in the coming year. With such established companies committing to the Championship, in the future city street racing won’t be perceived as a curiosity sport but a mainstream spectacle.

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