The industrial manufacturer used inspiring creative to help its brand stand out in a crowded market
Franke Holding AG, based in Aarburg, Switzerland, is an industrial manufacturer with companies located around the world. It has 8523 qualified employees working in 68 companies in Europe, South and North America, Africa, Australia and Asia. The business is split into five divisions: kitchen systems, foodservice systems, coffee systems, beverage systems and water systems.
Being replaceable
Before the campaign, all of its industry-leading businesses were marketed separately. However, in order for Franke to move forward collectively as a brand, this needed to change. The trading environment had become tougher, with lower competitor prices and volatile raw material costs becoming more of a challenge. As well as this, nearly all products could be copied by other companies. Franke was losing its uniqueness and becoming replaceable. The brand, therefore, needed to stand out more strongly from its competitors, to distinguish itself from the mass at all levels, from advice to sales, the quality of the products, the delivery and installation through to after sales services.
Franke decided to appoint an agency who would create a strong go-to-market brand proposition that centered around one coherent idea. Furthermore, the chosen agency would need to drive brand awareness among Franke’s customers, while distinguishing the brand from competitors by approaching customers in a fresh, inspiring and emotional way.
As Franke is not a typical brand, it needed an agency that understood it as a B2B2C brand, while having the ability to establish brand awareness in an emotional, creative and inspiring environment. As a renowned B2B agency, Gyro specialises in establishing brands for business partners by taking consumer brands as examples and transporting emotion to a B2B2C level.
The magic touch
Nowadays it’s no longer enough to simply sell products along the lines of ‘we have this gorgeous looking, highly functional sink’. Brands need to be inspiring, creating worlds of experience. They must offer products or solutions with added value, by making something ordinary a little less ordinary. Franke’s business partners and end consumers, therefore, needed to be shown all the things they could do with the products, and not what the individual product could do. Consequently, the campaign devised needed to focus on the customer benefit and the customers themselves showing what is really relevant for them. This meant moving away from technical product details.
Bearing that in mind, the creative minds at Gyro decided to focus on the magic that Franke products bring to every environment. At its core, Franke makes products for people, and with equal doses of imagination, creativity and inspiration, the ‘Make it wonderful’ platform was born.
Illustrating the point
As this was such a large step for Franke to take, the roll out of ‘Make it wonderful’ was a gradual process, beginning with any marketing collateral due for renewal/update. The rollout began in October 2014 and the entire process will take up to two years.
To bring the ‘Make it wonderful’ vision to life, eight internationally renowned artists – Victo Ngai, Shan Jiang, Ilovedust, Amaia Arrazola Otaduy, Steve Simpson, Am I Collective, Gabriel Picolo Bertasoli and Christopher Martin, were commissioned to create inspiring illustrations that demonstrated key values of the Franke brand. These hand-drawn illustrations would also show how Franke products directly inspire everyday moments by turning them into something wonderful.
From the eccentric visual of a family baking gingerbread cookies using a Frank Crystal Oven, to the buzz of a fast-food restaurant, each illustration successfully captures the essence of how even mundane moments can be made wonderful using Franke products. The illustrations are now being used across Franke’s digital properties, corporate design, packaging, print ads, trade shows, shop displays and more.
Results
After a successful and overwhelmingly positive internal launch, the Franke campaign was released into key Swiss and German markets.
Having been readily adopted internally, ‘Make it wonderful’ is now visible at trade shows, on vehicles and in offices. It is being supported with the launch of a brand ambassador campaign and a brand portal and, externally, with redesigned consumer websites, packaging, POS, PR, social media, promotions and sales training.
“Too often emotion is ignored in our space, but our products exist in some of the most intimate of spaces,” said Renato di Rubbo, chief marketing officer at Franke Group and Kitchen Systems. “We are encouraging our customers, big and small, to make those spaces wonderful.”
