Prioritising ‘The Important’
Rapid Retail Brand Launch
How an innovative project delivery and a series of strategic decisions to prioritise the most important parts of the creative process led to the outstanding rapid retail brand launch of ‘HUSK’ for ADNH Compass in the UAE.
Brief
ADNH Compass is one of the largest facility management companies in the United Arab Emirates. The organisation provides a range of outstanding food services and employs over 15,000 people.
One of their core offerings is ‘Deli Marché,’ a high-end, boutique coffee shop, located in airports, hospitals, universities and other government buildings. In a pivotal 18-month period for the company, ADNH Compass were looking to replace the Deli Marché brand and rollout its successor ‘HUSK.’
They were looking for a company that could deliver a rapid retail brand launch. One that was modern, innovative and versatile enough to be applied across multiple retail touch-points. (Over 100 mini design-projects.)
Most importantly, with a scheduled ‘launch event’ rapidly approaching, the new premium brand had to be ready within 6 weeks.
Results
The results of our work with ADNH Compass was both immediate and impactful, our work helped the organisation to…
– Maintain the leadership team’s bold, ambitious and aggressive annual commercial targets.
(Abu Dhabi National Hotels (ADNH) increased their shareholding to 100% within 18 months and the newly created ‘ADNH Catering’ IPO’d in late 2024.)
– Quickly and promptly win over existing retail partners with the new ‘HUSK’ brand.
– Create a significant number of opportunities with new partners right across the UAE and in neighbouring states such as Saudi Arabia.
– Establish new quality standards to be applied to future brand rollouts.
How These Results Were Achieved?
Delivering such a comprehensive project, to the outstanding standards required, in such a short period of time was achieved by ‘prioritising the important.’ Carefully tweaking certain processes to give extra weight to what truly mattered. We had to make every moment count, in terms of our client’s time as well as our own.
Services Used
Brand Strategy | Brand Storytelling | Brand Activation | Creative Direction | Branding | Graphic Design | Digital Design | Design for Print | Packaging Design
Our Collaboration in More Detail
These are some of the highlights of our work together…
‘3D Mock-Ups’
We gave decision-makers (ranging from ADNH Compass’s own leadership, brand, marketing and retail teams to individual retailers and external suppliers) every opportunity to assess design options more easily.
This was achieved by developing a wide range of visual 3D mock-ups showcasing logo options in realistic settings, brand applications, etc…
Starting With The ‘Retail’ End In Mind
The project gained a lot of momentum with the creation of a few intelligently designed applications. These could be replicated across brand touch-points such as packaging designs, branded merchandise, uniforms, etc.
Starting With ‘Client Priorities’
A successfully delivered project was guaranteed with additional focus and time spent on several client priorities. This included specialist shelf illustrations and a very important ‘handover booklet’ amongst other items.
Maintaining & Expanding on ‘Key Strategic Activities’
We locked-in strategically important activities such as theme-generation. These parts of the process, actually, received extra time than normal despite the time constraints.
Creating a ‘Dual-Brand Mark’
We built greater flexibility into the branding process by designing ‘a dual brand mark.’ This was flexible enough to be used across each of the many retail touch-points.
Using ‘Hand-Drawn Sketches’
Various parts of the process were accelerated with our team’s use of hand-drawn sketches. These were used to quickly showcase important creative ideas.
At the time of writing, the new HUSK brand has been rolled out in 50 sites in just over 18 months with plans to double this figure over the next 3 years.
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