Brand development and marketing for an industrial manufacturer with 100 years of history.

With a history that can be traced back to the 19th century, Chloride is a global leader in manufacturing Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) systems for industry.

They have extensive design and manufacturing facilities at their head office in Lyon, France, and employ over 350 people at nine offices worldwide, with operations in 150 countries through a network of official partners.

A management buyout saw Chloride return to its roots as a standalone company, having been part of the multibillion-dollar US industrial conglomerate Vertiv following an acquisition many years earlier. Operating in the energy sector, innovations to support customers on the journey to energy transition are at the heart of the R&D strategy and had to be central to the new brand.

To launch the new company, a brand identity was required that would maintain the values for which the business was renowned while reflecting the vision of the new management team. 

Comprehensive and versatile, a new brand design system would manage implementation across an extensive suite of multilingual communication assets, digital channels and properties.

The showcase for the new brand would be the corporate website optimised for Google, which should be built on a Content Management System and include an industry-segmented and fully searchable product portfolio. The website would be the focus of an integrated and measurable go-to-market launch campaign that would be rolled out across PR, digital and social media.

Several workshops were held with Chloride. These addressed the four core aspects of a brand’s DNA:

Brand Fundamentals: What do they do and what problem do they solve?

Points of Difference: How do they solve this problem more easily, better and differently from the competition?

Personality: How do they make people feel?

Values: What is their purpose, vision and mission?

Throughout these workshops, 4 brand pillars emerged: A long history, safety of people, business continuity and energy transition.

Following the workshops, an internal design brief was shared with the Creative Team to provide a clear direction for collaborative research, ideation and the development of initial scamps.

These initial ideas were then curated and refined by the Head of Design, production standard artwork was created, and a brand presentation was produced. This included value propositions, brand voice, creative identity options – logo sets, typefaces, colourways and supporting graphical devices – and demonstrations of how the brand would be used across different applications.

Chloride stakeholders were invited to provide their feedback on the brand presentation through a points-based scoring system. This led to a clearly favoured option, which was then modified according to feedback over several further rounds. The complete Design System, Brand Book and launch assets were then finalised.

The new brand launched Chloride as a standalone company and has delivered on the brand essentials of recognition through consistency, raising awareness at every opportunity, and impact through adaptability to remain fresh but always on message. It has been successfully rolled out across all digital and print communications – in multiple languages – product marketing, exhibitions, investor presentations and the client’s property estate.

Chloride's favoured customer outreach channel is LinkedIn, and its company account has grown from zero to 10,000 + followers.

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