Unlike the other two projects, in which Lenzing sought to extend brand awareness into the end consumer market, LENZING™ Industrial took a predominantly B2B approach. In other respects, the approach taken was similar to the other brands: to re-examine, standardize and verify all product claims with a strong focus on Lenzing’s powerful commitment to sustainability, refine the brand identity and visual presentation, and produce a range of updated marketing materials to activate the brand and its various branded offers across multiple touchpoints. As before, we worked closely with Lenzing’s Global Brand Marketing office in Hong Kong and their Head Office in Austria to fulfil the project objectives.
The project required us to understand the brand and the business segments as well as the goals of the business unit heads and the company’s sustainability positioning. As compared with TENCEL™, this required a deeper technical understanding and insight into the applications to which each fiber is applied.
On reviewing the Industrial portfolio, it became clear that offerings could be divided into three major categories:
• Fiber-based offerings, to be branded as LENZING™ for {application category}, e.g. LENZING™ for Protective Wear, LENZING™ for Agriculture.
• As an exception to this rule, TENCEL™ for Footwear, which falls under the management of the Industrial segment, but retains its existing TENCEL™ branding and largely follows the TENCEL™ guidelines. This was the only category for which B2C claims were developed as well as B2B, and which is featured on the TENCEL™ website.
• LENZING™ for Biorefinery and Co-Products – these non-fiber products produced in the course of Lenzing’s manufacturing processes are documented in a separate case study.
Each of these three groupings follows its own individual strategy and has its own set or sets of claims – each of which had to be and verified as accurate and free of legal risk – and marketing materials based on them. As compared with TENCEL™ and VEOCEL™, claims were more diverse and often more technical, making claim definition a substantial task. Furthermore, claims for some segments had to be defined down to the level of individual usage areas. Technology claims were also developed or adapted from those for the textiles segment as needed. As with TENCEL™, the objective throughout was to narrow down claims to the benefits that mattered to customers, cutting away distractions from the key message. In using these claims to copywrite all the subsequent collaterals, a key challenge for Base Creative was to create writing that balanced technical precision with broad customer appeal.
For LENZING™ Industrial, no single brand story could address all segments, but an insight-driven overarching theme, the origin of solutions, was developed, indicating both the botanic origin of the products – and thereby emphasizing their environmental sustainability – and the fact that customers can look to Lenzing as a source of solutions to their business needs.
Most visual elements developed were closely aligned with those for the TENCEL™ sector, giving a cohesive look and feel focused on nature and sustainability. These included a brand grid incorporating Lenzing’s Thread of Life motif to ensure continuity, complemented by a green-based color scheme and appropriate fonts to reflect nature and gentleness, with a recurring forest theme and visual portrayals of how wood is turned into fibers and then to other products. An uncluttered minimalist aesthetic and “everyday epic” photographic style kept the focus on benefits of the brand across a wide spectrum of marketing materials for the brand as a whole and for individual branded offers. Icons developed to symbolize key benefits for TENCEL™ were used for industrial segments where applicable, with additional icons for segment-specific benefits being added as necessary.
We applied the marketing claims and defined visual style across a remarkably broad range of marketing collaterals – eight separate claim books for internal reference by each segment, brand and segment brochures, leaflets and videos, a new LENZING™ Industrial website, a trade show booth design system, and print advertising. We expanded the original photo library with dedicated shoots, particularly for Protective Wear.
As the customer bases of each LENZING™ Industrial segment are quite discrete, we did not propose a unified launch event. Other than the launch of the new website and making brand materials available, rollout of the rebranded offerings has largely taken a staged approach, with trade shows playing a major role in introducing the new offerings to the market. Base Creative continues to work with the segment heads to help them reach potential customers and key influencers across numerous touchpoints. This includes refining the marketing materials based on feedback received, as well as developing collaterals for new products and branded offers.