NPM
Brand and identity | Website design | Sales collateral
Problem
National Project and Maintenance (NPM) was a fast-growing design and construction focused on office and commercial fitouts. Having grown rapidly across Australia over ten years, future growth plans including further international expansion into Asia and America. The existing brand was very dated, dark and heavy, reflecting the construction origins of the company and did not align with the current client portfolio of blue-chip office development companies including Dexus and CBRE.
An added complication was the separation of the design studio CREO, which sat under the NPM umbrella but needed to be able to independently tender for design only projects. The two brands needed to compliment but needed to stand out against direct and indirect competitors.
Process
Working as part of the internal marketing team, I undertook a brand audit of direct and indirect competitors of both brands to identify visual space in the market and how the different sectors of construction, projects and design portray themselves.
The audit identified the possible design directions the rebrand could take and where they would fit within the sector ecosystem. After consultation with the Executive Leadership Team and the Board, a design direction was chosen and brand directions were developed.
Comprehensive brand audit of direct and indirect competitors reveals the visual space for the NPM rebrand occupy
Four design directions were identified for more exploration
Barriers to growth were flipped to create the brand pillars that the strategy and creative would rest on
Brand direction 1: Make it happen A solid and straightforward direction that reflected the construction origins of the business and project strength as NPM moved into new growth markets.
Brand direction 2: Designed, Delivered, Different Breaking from the construction and design mould with bright colours and organic shapes.
Brand direction 3: Places for people Focusing on both the client and end user of the projects, this softer and humanistic reflected NPM and CREO's brand purposes.
Three brand directions and what they present to the market
Solution
The new brand was rolled out over website, business collateral, social media strategy, content and visuals along with internal and external sales documents.
We achieved huge success in leading brand indicators with growth outstripping many well-established competitors, including a year on year increase in LinkedIn followers of 87% and 194% respectively.
