Engineering tomorrow

A strong international brand position was integral to Danfoss’ growth strategy

Following a turn-around period, Danfoss needed a strong brand position to accompany its ambitious growth strategy. Together we involved all corners of the business and with a deep analysis of the market to revamp all parts of Danfoss’ brand platform: from corporate concept and position, visual identity, redefined values to external roll-out and internal anchoring.

How it began

A quest to the core

As a large global organisation, maintaining a universal understanding of what the brand represents can prove challenging. Especially in a business as diversified as Danfoss operating in most industry verticals and with vast product portfolios. After many years of focus on business optimisation, Danfoss launched a major brand project in 2013. With stronger and more streamlined core objectives, growth was high on the agenda of Danfoss’ business strategy. The branding project’s goal was to create a strong, unified and well-aligned brand position across markets.

Developing the solution

A strong solution requires deep insights and buy-in

In collaboration with Danfoss, we engaged more than 80 management representatives in in-depth interviews, followed by a workshop with the top 240 managers. These established important insights, which were used as the foundation for developing a concept and story for testing. We tested with 3500 external and 600 internal respondents. The insights laid the foundation for the final solution. We found a critical divergence in the perception of Danfoss that was key to bridge. While its primary values – reliability, applied expertise and high quality – were strongly held in the market, customer insights highlighted a preference for a more innovative position, while employees aspired to make a distinct and positive impact on the world.

The outcome

Engineering Tomorrow

Engineering Tomorrow was born to bridge the quality engineering core with the innovative and aspirational drive from employees and the market. The next step involved defining the brand platform in detail and executing on it. We created a new core story and creative concept, defined four key growth themes integral to the brand, a new visual identity, a corporate film, corporate website strategy and design, an image brochure, assets to run brand campaigns, developed a brand tracking setup, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

A well-established platform by now

The new brand platform was launched in September 2014 with large-scale campaigns. Results from the research firm Reputation Institute demonstrated that, after just three months, Engineering Tomorrow was the payoff most associated with Danfoss, while awareness of Danfoss’ role within the four growth themes had risen by as much as 51 percent. The position has only been strengthened and cemented in the market since then.