Brand

CASE STUDY

The Wharton Center

Defining brand purpose for a performing arts center

Challenge

The Wharton Center at Michigan State University (MSU) is an important asset to the Lansing community. While its well-known for providing entertainment, its purpose is elevated by its support for the performing arts in the local community. The organization brings a unique spirit to Lansing but has recently struggled to demonstrate value to its constituents. While embarking on new programs poised to improve engagement and relevance within MSU, The Wharton Center found that its brand lacked focus – it needed to redefine its role at MSU and within the greater community.

Solutions

The Wharton Center looked to Prophet to help define its purpose and better position it within the extended local community. The Prophet team found that the brand’s purpose and promise were rooted in its core beliefs and reason for existing: to inspire the mind and move the soul by sharing stories, celebrating differences and creating a community through performance and education.

To demonstrate its newly discovered and defined purpose through its visual assets and media, Prophet created a new visual identity for the brand and an implementation plan. The brand evolution focused on the concept of putting “Art at the Center” – it reflects both the variety and dimensionality of the performing arts by using a dynamic logotype. Prophet also introduced representational shapes to add a unique flavor to the graphic system. These shapes represent that performing arts are always alive, moving and evolving through music, dance and variety.

Results

The revitalized brand purpose and visual identity helped The Wharton Center define and express its role within the MSU community. Each year, the Center impacts the lives of more than 30,000 young people, to help them find courage, foster boldness and embrace diverse perspectives. The organization is committed to shaping the world through performing arts and arts education; and sharing stories of its community–of dreams, heartbreaks, struggles and triumphs– and heritage for future generations.

This work received a gold award for key art and a bronze award for print collateral at the 2019 International Design Awards.

CASE STUDY

Equality California

Helping a civil rights organization evolve

Challenge

Equality California had achieved major state policy victories but faced a fraught national political climate and persistent disparities in health and well-being. The organization needed to reframe its ongoing mission for California’s LGBTQ community, and beyond.

Solutions

Prophet helped Equality California think through fundamental questions about its purpose and brand story, helping the organization think about the strategic considerations behind ambitions such as broadening beyond California or doubling down on intersectional advocacy.

Leveraging input from a rigorous qualitative and quantitative research process, Prophet developed a 5-year plan to transform the brand. This strategy laid the groundwork for the new Equality California brand to come to life physically and digitally, through new brand identity, tagline, messaging and mission statement.

Results

Equality California’s refreshed strategy, brand identity and brand assets launched to great celebration. Its new direction set the organization on a path to become an even more inclusive, disruptive and enduring agent of change for years to come.

Impact

40%

increase in monthly Twitter impressions

27k

new members since the rebrand

CASE STUDY

Hikma

Building a brand as big as its business

Challenge

Following years of tremendous organic growth, Hikma, the multinational generics pharmaceutical company, soon realized the scale of the business had become far greater than the scale of the brand.

It had also made a number of acquisitions, but this was having a detrimental effect. Having such a fragmented brand was limiting Hikma’s brand strength and ability to build a powerful reputation as a global company among external stakeholders and employees alike.

Solutions

In a complex generics environment, Hikma needed a simple, unified brand that would help to set it apart on the global playing field. Reducing the complexity and confusion created by its current portfolio of multiple brands, Prophet worked to consolidate under one, global master brand to build consistency and drive impact.

A brand positioning was also developed: ‘Better Health Within Reach’, which successfully anchors Hikma’s core fundamental belief that good quality medicine should be available to anyone, anywhere. This has been brought to life with a differentiating digitally-enabled visual identity system that clearly signals and supports a new chapter for the business.

Results

Winner of the coveted Grand Prix at the 2019 Transform Awards Europe, along with Gold awards for Best Brand Architecture Solution and Best Brand Consolidation, the new Hikma brand is getting remarkable recognition and seeing results both inside and outside the organization.

In the six months following the new brand launch, the share price has increased by 130% – tracking well above its competitors. Not only have Prophet helped to position Hikma more prominently in the competitive marketplace, but internally the feedback from employees and leaders across the globe has been overwhelmingly positive. Pride in the company has grown, the primary benefit being the unifying sense of ‘One Hikma. One Culture,’ that has worked to bring those sites that were previously under a legacy brand or sub-brand name into the embrace of the unified Hikma family.

‘The move to a single enterprise brand, paired with the new positioning and visual identity, has been truly transformational for our company,’ commented Brooke Clarke, VP Corporate Affairs at Hikma. ‘Employee feedback from across the globe has been incredible. The new brand has created a real momentum and focus on being more connected, finding efficiencies and better ways of working together, and building our ‘One Hikma.’ It has really set us up well for the future.’

“The move to a single enterprise brand, paired with the new positioning and visual identity, has been truly transformational for our company.”

Brooke Clarke
VP Corporate Affairs at Hikma

CASE STUDY

The Water Trust

Building a brand strategy and visual identity for a unique nonprofit organization

Challenge

The Water Trust is a nonprofit organization that teams with communities in the developing world to create sustainable, effective water hygiene and sanitation systems. Their operating model educates East African communities about proper sanitation practices and empowers them by providing access to freshwater. The Water Trust envisions a world where access to water, sanitation and basic hygiene knowledge is universal. But what makes their organization unique is how they pursue their mission. We wanted to help The Water Trust build a brand strategy that mirrored not just what they provide but how they provide it, and more importantly what it means for the people they help, their staff on the ground, partner organizations and donors.

Solutions

Prophet volunteered its services and expertise to help The Water Trust clarify its distinctive brand positioning and attributes, which emphasize transparency, empowerment and delivering measurable, lasting results. The accompanying visual system was chosen to reinforce this spirit; putting water at the center while implying that it is shared, reinforcing the collaborative nature of the organization. The visual identity we developed is a clean, strong wordmark featuring a blue droplet symbol at the center, underscoring the central role that water plays in the organization’s mission. The visual system and renewed brand positioning will support the organization as it explores new technologies and geographies in the future.

Results

The launch of their new website combined with the renewed visual system will enable The Water Trust to provide better education and drive awareness about the need for clean water and sanitation in East Africa.

“As a small and growing nonprofit, first impressions matter a lot. The Water Trust brand strategy and visual system has been instrumental in getting us conversations with granting organizations we typically wouldn’t.”

Chris Prottas
Executive Director, The Water Trust

CASE STUDY

Alteon Health

Creating a customer-centric healthcare brand

Challenge

In 2017, New Mountain Capital, a private equity investment firm, brought together Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) and Island Medical Management (IMM), two U.S.-based leaders in outsourced healthcare practice management services, to create a best-in-class organization focused on delivering the highest quality healthcare. Prophet helped New Mountain Capital and IMM/EMA executives create a new brand—including the brand strategy, name and visual identity, as well as a dynamic website to act as a recruiting tool for the new organization —in only five months’ time.

Solutions

We began by articulating the brand’s strategy. The positioning needed to speak to the positive impact the integrated organization creates for its patients, physician employees and hospital customers, while reflecting its core differentiators — most importantly, the passion, loyalty and expertise of its physicians and medical professionals, as well as the use of cutting-edge data analytics to empower them to be at their best. Reflecting on these strengths, we articulated a simple, compelling positioning: “Positive Outcomes, Powered by People.”

We then translated this positioning into a new name. We explored around 1,000 name candidates across territories and styles, but one name stood out from the beginning: Alteon Health. A coined name, Alteon brings together “alta,” speaking to heights, and “eon,” which signals constant or continuous forward momentum, telling a story about the relentless passion of Alteon’s people and partners in delivering better outcomes for their patients.

Our next step was to bring the name to life visually. We created a graphic logo mark with a horizontal notch in the “A”, creating an upward arrow that reinforces the meaning of the name. We complemented this mark with a bright color palette and graphic system that uses neon concentric circles, which suggest the organization’s ongoing impact and create a device for highlighting data.

We then coupled the visual system with the brand strategy and messaging to create a dynamic website that introduces Alteon Health to the world.

Results

The Alteon Health brand launched in October of 2017, and now supports 125 hospitals and facilities in delivering high-quality medical care to more than three million patients each year. With its new brand in place to unite, inspire and galvanize its people, Alteon Health is looking to the future, continuing to find new ways to help its partners deliver better outcomes to their patients and communities, every day.

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.

CASE STUDY

Indiana University Health

Creating a new hospital system brand

Challenge

Following a long series of mergers and acquisitions, Clarian Health had a vision. It wanted to become the most comprehensive and preferred healthcare provider in the state of Indiana and the most highly-respected and sought-out source for medical expertise on a regional and national level. A crowded and increasingly competitive local market meant that a stronger brand was critical. The organization needed a unified brand strategy, name and architecture that was grounded in stakeholder needs and could deliver a consistent experience across all member organizations.

Solutions

Prophet worked extensively with the marketing and executive leadership teams to develop and implement a new, system-wide brand and customer experience strategy to help achieve this vision. This work included qualitative and quantitative research across different stakeholder audiences as the foundation for strategy development.

Prophet focused on building a deep understanding of emotive drivers for patients and referring physicians and worked to understand how these groups accessed the healthcare delivery system. We also weighed the implications of engaging customers under a new brand strategy and name.

Results

In the end, we delivered a comprehensive brand strategy to the health system. This strategy involved a new positioning that highlighted the breadth and depth of the entire system, changing the name of the brand to Indiana University Health, defining the patient experience to be consistent across the system and activating key brand elements that help convey the new brand and deliver the desired patient experience. Five years later, a thorough customer and employee research project was undertaken to determine how the brand was performing and to realign the messaging. We found that the Indiana University Health brand messaging was still perceived as highly relevant, and highly believable by employees and patients.

CASE STUDY

Addiko Bank

Regaining brand reputation & customer trust

Challenge

How do you revitalize a bank that’s had serious reputation issues? Following the fallout from the financial crisis and being nationalized by the state, Austria’s Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank (Hypo Bank) was dealing with serious legacy issues. By the time Advent International, a private equity investor, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) acquired it in 2015, consumers’ consideration of Hypo was very low.

Solutions

The new owners knew it needed a brand-new bank, and in January of 2016, Prophet was enlisted to help rebuild it from the ground up. In a matter of weeks, we worked with bank executives to rename it Addiko. A clear signal of change, the new brand name gave the bank a blank slate and a second chance with consumers.

Our research uncovered a crucial customer insight that people in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia felt confused by overly complex banking products. We realized that while most banks pile on more products and paperwork, customers actually want less. They want a simpler, hassle-free way of banking. This led to Addiko’s new brand promise: Straightforward banking that focuses on essentials. That meant becoming more efficient, with shorter queues, and more digital and mobile options. And it called for communicating simply, eliminating jargon, shortening contracts and avoiding asterisks. A clever graphic character, cleanly drawn, walked consumers through the changes, as did a complete advertising campaign.

We also helped Addiko coach employees to “acknowledge and tackle” the challenges they faced. This approach to straightforward banking, which stands for a proactive, optimistic and down-to-earth way of doing business, has become the bank’s mantra.

Results

Since its launch Addiko has seen a robust turnaround, posting positive net results and a listing on the Vienna Stock Exchange, confirming the demand for a specialist player that challenges the traditional universal banks with a simpler and focused model.

Serving its clients with convenience and speed, not only is Addiko now a strong and profitable retail and SME bank, it’s an award-winning one too after scooping six Transform Europe Awards, acknowledging the brand’s transformational journey. The Financial Brand also named it among the most beautiful brand identities in banking.

Addiko’s CEO said, “Strategy is about making choices. It’s about deliberately choosing to be different and we decided to be straightforward. But the Addiko brand does not only represent a name change. It is our new business strategy, our unique positioning, our desire to introduce and implement new, higher business standards, and a new corporate culture. But first and foremost, it is our commitment to improving and changing the way we feel banking should be done. The Addiko brand and this transformation is the starting point for building a better bank. A straightforward bank.”

With brand recognition levels far surpassing that of its predecessor, as well as higher levels of employee retention and customer loyalty than its main competitors, Addiko is on a successful path toward continued growth, with a commitment to improving and changing the way banking should be done.

“The diversity of the Prophet team ensured a very vibrant creative environment, generating genuinely very different alternative creative routes, rather than variations on a single idea.”

Razvan Munteanu
CEO at Addiko Bank

Impact

48.6%

brand awareness in the market 3 months after launch

10.94%

customer consideration after 3 months in market

5x

increase in GAP compared to market average

CASE STUDY

Alight Solutions

Bringing to life a new company’s brand purpose and positioning

Challenge

Aon Plc, a leading global professional services firm, providing a range of risk, reinsurance and human resource solutions, decided in early 2017 to sell its benefits administration and HR BPO platforms. The new company had to determine how to define itself in a relevant, fresh and genuine way, in an ever-changing, tech-savvy and increasingly B2C world.

This task required balance: leveraging the incredible experience of the company and its people, while taking a fresh look at health, wealth, HR and finance solutions; harnessing the power of technology and data, while appreciating that they ultimately exist to take care of people and their families. The leadership team needed to preserve the things that made the new company special while pushing toward a new frontier. The new company needed to define its point-of-view and quickly align around the vision. With three and a half months to do what would typically take a year, it was a race against time, and Prophet and the leadership team needed to be in lockstep in every phase of work and decisive at every juncture.

The challenge was clear – how to articulate and bring to life the new company’s purpose and brand positioning with a new brand name and visual identity that reflected its spirit and intention.

Solutions

Prophet conducted a variety of research studies to inspire the development of the new company and brand. We interviewed stakeholders and customers, and looked at close competitors and emerging startups both inside and outside the category. The research pointed to one important insight – the new company wanted to not only provide security to people, but to leverage its technology platform, data and ecosystem of partners to make it easier for people and their families to thrive in work and life.

Prophet partnered closely with the new company’s marketing group to guide the executive leadership team in defining its brand purpose, values, positioning, new brand name, visual identity and brand voice.

Results

Within three and a half months, the new company defined its reason for being and aligned on how it would express itself. On June 6, 2017, Alight Solutions was introduced to the world. Reflected in its bold visual identity, Alight promises to simplify and enhance work and life by “reimagining how people and organizations thrive.”

By relentlessly focusing on the end-user, leveraging its strong heritage and expertise and creating inspired new ways of working, Alight is charting a course for business growth.

“The work we’ve done together here resonates because we didn’t let the truncated timeframe excuse us from the fundamental steps in the process. We committed to validating across all stakeholder groups: colleagues, customer-care representatives, leaders and clients. The enthusiasm and energy reflects the care we’ve taken to define this bold, new day for Alight.”

Maggie Lower
EVP, Marketing at Alight Solutions

Impact

275k

users of alight.com

18k

followers on social properties

1k

inquiries stemming from website since brand launch

CASE STUDY

Salt

A new name and brand for Orange Switzerland

Challenge

Fresh from success in the UK in the early 1990s, Orange entered the Swiss mobile market in 1999. Setting up as the third operator in the country, they grew to a 20% share, despite the market being renowned for extreme customer loyalty.

In 2012, Orange Switzerland (now Salt) was sold to private equity firm Apax providing the perfect opportunity to create a new brand aimed specifically at their Swiss customers and free from the constraints of the parent company.

Solutions

We started working with Orange in 2013 to create the new brand. Through research and sessions with the executive team at Orange, we discovered three key tenants that the new brand was built upon:

  1. Sole focus on the customer, not itself, and communicated with attitude in order to stand out. Want the new iPhone? No problem.
  2. An understanding of the network’s predominantly young and urban customers. They are accustomed to great food in restaurants without stuffiness, the best coffee served in an understated and swift fashion and new digital services that measure success in as few user interactions as possible. Less is definitely more.
  3. The brand should communicate a sense of new Swissness. An alternative to the clichéd mountain top imagery.

This formed the basis of the brand personality. Instead of promising to save the world or make your day, this is a network that is there when you need them and not when you don’t. A network that doesn’t over promise and under deliver, that doesn’t distract and pitch upgrades but one that accepts and embraces their role as an essential ingredient in the lives of their customers. From this personality, we created the name — Salt. Short, but big on attitude and a world away from their rival networks.

Results

To bring the new brand to life, we worked simultaneously on advertising, digital experience, retail design, point of sale and employee engagement. We designed approaches for everything from above the line to point of sale, website and accompanying smartphone apps and retail design principles.

In January 2015 Apax Partners sold the company to Xavier Niel, the owner of French mobile phone company Iliad, for €2.3bn — an €800 million profit on their 2012 purchase. In April 2015 the new brand launched across all 200 retail outlets in Switzerland and online at Salt.ch. Click the image below to see a slideshow of our design work.

CASE STUDY

The Cosmopolitan

Launching a new brand in a commoditized market

Challenge

As a new player in an overcrowded, commoditized market, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas leadership team faced an uphill battle. Not only were they charged with bringing a new offer to market in the face of a severe global economic downturn, but they were also an independent single-property enterprise competing against a host of well-established companies possessing multi-property portfolios.

Further, time was of the essence. A new ownership group had recently taken over the development of the property and needed it to open in December 2010 – allowing only 15 months for the team to create a compelling new vision for the offer and in turn, translate that into reality.

Solutions

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and Prophet teams worked in partnership to transform the entire casino-resort experience. By challenging existing conventions, inspiring new ways of thinking and unlocking insights about what was missing in the market we were able to reimagine every aspect – restaurants, retail, casino, hotel rooms, pools and entertainment venues.

The key to success was the importance of redefining luxury for the Las Vegas market. By conceiving of an experience that would resonate with “people who feel at home all over the world” we created an offer that was contemporary, authentic, energizing and welcoming – setting a new standard for the category for years to come.

Results

The resort has launched to acclaim from hospitality experts and customers alike. The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has achieved the highest combined average daily hotel room and occupancy rates on the Strip. In addition, the resort has been named to Conde Nast Traveler’s global “Hot List Hotels 2011”, was featured on Travel and Leisure’s 2011 “It List” of the world’s best hotels, received the Design Grand Prix award from the Cannes International Festival of Creativity and in 2016 was named as the #1 “Most Instagrammed Luxury Hotel” by Bloomberg.

CASE STUDY

Novant Health

Transforming the patient experience

Challenge

Novant Health, an integrated network of physician practices, hospitals and outpatient centers, had the vision to provide remarkable healthcare and transform the patient experience. While Novant Health had started to deliver on this vision, the system was represented by over 400 local brands, leaving no way for patients to connect the pieces and really understand what the brand stands for.

Solutions

We worked alongside our client, using a combination of traditional research methods and creative ideation sessions, to help define a brand positioning that would highlight Novant Health’s unique strengths. We developed a master brand strategy, aligning all points of care across the system under one Novant Health brand.

Prophet then crafted a brand identity and visual system that reflected the new strategy. We brought the strategy to life through employee engagement tools and launch communications that shared the Novant Health story with internal and external audiences. We also recommended new ways to deliver the remarkable patient experience, including patient resources, digital tools and signature touchpoints.

Results

The end result was a start-to-finish brand strategy and identity for Novant Health, including a plan to launch the new positioning and visual identity and to compellingly communicate the brand story. Its brand awareness increased by 130% from Q3 2013 to Q4 2013 and has resulted in a steady number of online searches, and a highly positive social media presence.

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