Experience

CASE STUDY

Multinational Manufacturer

Modernizing customer engagement through digital selling

Challenge

Our client, a large global manufacturer, sells a wide range of materials used in consumer products, medical devices and more. As a top-200 private U.S. business, this company had achieved a great deal of success by driving product innovation founded on scientific excellence.

Although the company’s seasoned team of field sales representatives had historically driven solid performance results, the global health crisis (COVID-19) severely impacted its access to key buyers.

The business was in urgent need of a new approach to selling and hired Prophet to modernize its digital experience and the engagement capabilities of its salesforce.

Solution

As Prophet’s team of Marketing & Sales consultants dug into the issues facing this organization, they uncovered that by taking a digital-minded approach, our client could:

  • Better reach its core target audiences
  • Develop content that was more engaging to its customers
  • Leverage engagement data to inform offline sales interactions
  • More efficiently orchestrate the sales process

To get started, our team focused on how sales and marketing could partner to improve its digital selling capability through digitally-powered content, stronger messaging effectiveness and the use of data and platforms to improve the sales experience.

Prophet delivered a compelling business case for change and proved the value of evolving its digital selling capacity against a defined set of use cases with pre-post-defined outcomes. The business case was supported by a new operating model which detailed the requirements for developing, maintaining and optimizing the proposed new digital selling capabilities. Our consultants partnered with the client’s marketing, sales and customer experience teams to roll out the new digital selling capability, including new digital tools for frontline sales teams.

Results

Our work for this client extended beyond strategy to provide a detailed, sustainable operating model to deploy and sustain its digital selling transformation. We helped to accelerate this client’s vision, maximize its investment and ease the implementation of its new digital selling capabilities.

Following this project, this manufacturer observed a direct lift in sales, improved customer satisfaction and increased sales associate productivity.

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

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

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

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

CASE STUDY

M Passport

Designing the first signature family program for Marriott Hotels

Challenge

To capture a greater share of the growing leisure market in APAC, Marriott Hotels needed to shift its reputation from being viewed as reliable business travel accommodations, to desirable family-friendly destinations.

Through research, Prophet found that parents highly value the options for daily activities on their vacation. Even though Marriott Hotels across Asia were offering great activities for kids, the Marriott International brand wasn’t getting credit due to guests not attributing the programming back to the master brand. So, to win with families, Prophet needed to help Marriott Hotels boost its family hotel activities offerings and develop a clearer connection between kids activities and the Marriott International brand.

Solutions

We created M Passport, a program designed to engage and support children as they grow up while giving parents peace of mind that their children are having fun and learning along the way. M Passport is a kids-focused program that provides children with three key benefits – Brilliant Body, Brilliant Mind and Brilliant Heart aligning with the Marriott Hotel brand positioning of “Inspiring Brilliance”.

M Passport comes to life in a gift children receive upon arrival, a “passport” booklet where they collect stamps for completing activities that stimulate Mind, Body and Heart. Activities are categorized under each of the three key benefits, which have a corresponding stamp design. Stamps can then be redeemed for rewards, such as ice cream, cookies or a local souvenir. In addition to the booklet, children receive postcards to draw on and fill out stickers, and buttons to serve as souvenirs of their Marriott stay. The program is available to guests in both resort and urban properties, where the kids’ activities are customized accordingly. In resorts, many activities are done on-site, while urban properties offer a map of the city to allow exploration on property and immersion in the city around the hotel.

We designed a unique visual identity system for M Passport based on its key benefits and Marriott International’s brand positioning ‘Inspiring Brilliance’. The M Passport word mark, combined with the brand font, creates a ‘light bulb moment.’ While staying consistent with the Marriott International master brand, Prophet’s design teams added playful and fun elements through simple line illustrations that showcase local animals, icons and sceneries. The illustration style is based on the simplistic lines of the M Passport logo.

Building on the feedback and learnings from the proof-of-concept program at resorts, the visual identity system has recently been expanded to showcase a broader array of designs for urban properties, including imagery of Owen the Owl, the M Passport program mascot, on location at various historic APAC sites – from Sydney to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and more.

Results

APAC became the first region to fully roll out this global program, beginning with a proof-of-concept in 2018, and now expanding to over 20 properties across APAC. The program has distributed over 15,000 copies of M Passport to Marriott’s little guests, generating 6,210+ M Passport package room night bookings, and driving more than 137.4 million total impressions and over 18.7 million reach. M Passport plans to roll out further across additional urban properties in 2021.

Impact

15k

Copies of M Passport delivered

6k

M Passport package room night bookings

CASE STUDY

Suning International

Creating an immersive social commerce experience

Challenge

Best known for their mass-market electronics stores, Suning’s brand was limited in terms of its perception and stretch. They saw an opportunity with their Suning International group to create a new innovative brand that would not only be attractive for their new customer but also help to elevate perceptions of the group itself as being more pioneering and innovative.

The company approached Prophet to define a clear brand philosophy and retail experience concept for Suning International’s O2O offering. The concept would be launched as a pop-up exhibit for Salon del Mobile Milano Exhibition in Shanghai, debuting the upcoming store concept.

Solutions

Prophet worked closely with Suning International to help develop an innovative experience and optimize its brand strategy towards the global market. We created a philosophy around a global community of curators, who believe that life should be culturally enriching, openly inspiring and actively shared. The exhibition design brought this idea to life as ‘Issue:01 – Found goods from Italy’, a lenticular hallway of inspirational products, curated video and multi-sensorial experiences, which documented a day in the life of two global citizens and their daily experiences in Italy.

“We’re responding to a new generation of consumers who love to discover and experience new things and share their finds with others. With the rise in global travel and access to more products and experiences than ever before from around the world, we want to create a brand and platform that empowers this global community of curators. We are bringing together select items of substance, from around the world, that will bring small moments of joy to everyday life,” said Young Kim, partner and executive creative director at Prophet.

Results

Within the exhibit, visitors could collect and share their own personal online journal of products and stories through a WeChat mini program that showcased the seamless O2O journey that Suning International offers.

The Suning International concept debuted in November 2018 in Shanghai, generating significant media interest and visited by over 22,000.

Our work with Suning International was awarded bronze for ‘best brand experience’ at Transform Awards Asia-Pacific 2019.

CASE STUDY

COLMO

Designing a simply extraordinary brand of smart home appliances

Challenge

Midea Group approached Prophet to create a new premium home appliance brand for an upcoming range of smart, connected kitchen products. Planned as a standalone brand, the opportunity was open to create a new name, strategy, story and visual look and feel.

Solutions

Prophet defined the essence of the brand as ‘Simply Extraordinary,’ a big idea that captured the philosophy of highly crafted products that are effortlessly simple in delivering an extraordinary user experience.

With this idea in mind, Prophet created the name ‘COLMO’, derived from the Italian for ‘summit’ or ‘crown’ to highlight the ambitions and quality of the brand and to add some international, European flavor.

The visual identity is also born from this idea, with an abstract crown symbol and elegant matching wordmark. Color is used sparingly to create a modern, sophisticated look with contemporary iconography and typography to support product descriptions and features.

Results

COLMO was unveiled in October 2018 on Mont Blanc and launched its first range of beautifully designed, award-winning products in December. It was launched at AWE 2019 (Appliance and Electronics World Expo) in Shanghai, showcasing a full new range of 13 Kitchen appliances.

Our work with COLMO won four awards at Transform Awards Asia-Pacific 2019, including Gold for ‘best visual identity’, Silver for ‘best strategic or creative development of a new brand’, Bronze for ‘best naming strategy’, and a Highly Commended award for ‘best creative strategy’.

CASE STUDY

FORA

From co-working to pro-working

Challenge

London is leading the global market in the co-working sector. With over 1,000 spaces, the competition is intense. After investing close to £400 million to acquire a number of striking buildings across central London, Brockton Capital, the investor behind Camden Lock, Curzon Street and Realpubs, was ready to bring something new and unique to the market. They engaged Prophet to identify a gap in the co-working space that Brockton could uniquely fill and to achieve new growth opportunities within an already crowded market.

Solutions

Prophet moved beyond the hipster, t-shirt and jean crowds of WeWork to a new professional or ‘pro-working’ space that goes beyond just supplying a desk. The spaces offer a more curated, members’ club approach to cater to a different kind of co-working clientele. The solution reimagined the brand experience and redefined what the term co-working could mean with premium hotel-style hospitality, destination restaurant, lobby bar, yoga studios and tech-enabled boardrooms.

“We started by speaking to the people that matter most – those potential customers who would be using the space – to begin the journey of developing the relevant value proposition and customer experience to address their needs,” said Gregg Finlay, Associate Partner and Creative Director at Prophet. “Extensive research and insights led us to the simple truth that became the core and driving force behind the brand: space to be brilliant.’’

From these insights came the inspiration for the name we developed: FORA. A Latin word and plural of ‘forum’- where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

Results

From developing the name to defining the brand identity and superior value proposition, the FORA brand clearly differentiates itself from its competitors by standing out as a working space for high-achieving professionals across industries. It has become the fastest growing player in the co-working space, expanding its locations in London and beyond as customers champion the premium experience.

CASE STUDY

Electrolux TasteOS

Creating digital product and service design for a best-in-class experience

Challenge

As a longstanding partner to Electrolux in their digital transformation efforts, Prophet introduced Electrolux to Innit, a San Francisco-based data food startup, as part of an annual event with Electrolux’s Digital Transformation leadership team. At the event, Electrolux was impressed with Innit’s scalable, software-based connected cooking platform. They decided to pursue a partnership to combine the data-driven world of taste and food (Innit) with physical moments of delight created by best-in-class appliances (Electrolux) that deliver an incredible cooking experience.

Prophet was brought on board as Electrolux’s ‘sparring partner,’ representing the interests of Electrolux and the target consumers’ needs in the design of the connected cooking service experience.

Solutions

Over the course of seven weeks, we did the following:

  • Identified consumer needs and innovation opportunities
  • Brainstormed use cases
  • Developed and prioritized concepts into one MVP experience
  • Defined features and requirements
  • Built storyboards and wireframes
  • Developed a business case and partnership strategy to support implementation.

First, we immersed in the core consumer insights, using existing insights and collaborative workshops to identify unmet needs and pain points across the cooking journey. From there, we turned to competitive analysis, surveying established and new players in the market and identifying where consumer needs overlapped with white space to prioritize innovation opportunities.

Armed with insights on consumer pain points and market opportunities, we brainstormed a series of specific use cases detailing the actions, interactions, and steps consumers want or need to take as part of the connected cooking experience. Armed with these use cases, we identified overlap and ways they might come together into distinct value propositions, bringing to light the offering from both Innit and Electrolux. This resulted in three core concepts, each with its own set of features and front-end requirement considerations.

We then developed sketches, wireframes, and full storyboards that detailed each concept. Two consumer co-creation sessions helped validate and refine our initial thinking around unmet needs and potential solutions in the cooking space.

Once we developed and validated experience concepts, we gathered with all parties for a week-long workshop to finalize the technical requirements of the ideal state experience design. As part of that workshop, we collaborated with the technical teams from both Innit and Electrolux to align on the product roadmap, functional and operational requirements, and necessary delivery capabilities, for the MVP experience. We then identified revenue streams, quantified top-line impact, and provided guidance on key elements of the partnership agreement (e.g. branding, data ownership, etc.) to bring the experience to life.

Results

The joint experience was officially announced in April 2018 at Eurocucina and will be available to consumers starting in Q1 of 2019.

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