Interview with our Rebranding Team

Who is being interviewed?

Bianca, known as Binci, is responsible for email marketing in the Marketing & Communications department and also works as a content marketing hybrid for both text and graphics.

Melanie is the Content Lead in the Marketing & Communications team and oversees the content strategy as well as our company’s corporate wording.

Michael is the Team Lead for Frontend Development in the E-Commerce team at world4you. He played a decisive role in the technical implementation of the new branding.

Nina is the Head of Marketing & Communications and thus one of the leading figures in the strategic planning, development, and implementation of the new branding across all platforms.

Beate is the Product Owner in the E-Commerce team and served as the central hub for the planning and implementation of the new website, as well as the rebrandings in the customer area and numerous other systems.

To start things off, the question of purpose: Why did we actually do a rebranding? And why exactly now?

Nina: world4you has been on the market for 25 years. In those 25 years, the brand and the brand image actually changed relatively little. We decided it was time to reflect our corporate values. We tried to make the brand younger – more techie, more innovative – and to prepare it to suit our target group.

Binci: A lot has simply changed in the last 25 years – in the market and also within the company. We wanted to communicate that change to the outside world as well.

Beate: The old branding had clearly aged, just like people do. It was naturally time to do something about it.

Melanie: We have a completely new product portfolio with new WordPress packages, WooCommerce packages, and performance upgrades. We have constantly worked on improving usability, and eventually, our Corporate Identity (CI) simply didn’t match what was behind it anymore because it was outdated. We decided that we wanted to take this step and present ourselves with a new and modern design.

Michael: I also believe that with the new branding, we can present our brand much better than with the old branding, which had quite a few years under its belt. And generally speaking: purple is the new black. \*laughs\*

You will likely have different answers to this one. What unique or unexpected challenges did you face during the rebranding process?

Melanie: I am proud of the team because there were no unexpected challenges – on the contrary. I think we prepared ourselves quite well. We all sat down together and looked at everything that needed to be done. We divided it into manageable packages and then executed them well. Perhaps one positive thing that emerged along the way was that the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence actually suited us perfectly. We made a few textual changes: we now address our customers using the informal "Du" and use gender-neutral language. We were able to use AI quite effectively so that we didn't have to manually adjust all our existing articles, emails, etc., ourselves.

Michael: The biggest challenge we had technically in the rebranding process was that none of us knew how much work it actually involved. I roughly had the systems in mind that needed to be adapted, but it turned out during the process that many systems were not prepared for a rebranding. They had to be completely rewritten to make it technically possible at all. That was the biggest challenge from a technical perspective.

Nina: It was certainly difficult because the rebranding and the Brand Book were actually finished in June 2022, but the whole thing then sat in a drawer for a year. We had to find a way and a process to evolve the brand while still sticking to its core.

Beate: We had the basic concept ready at the beginning. However, we then further developed this branding in various areas, for example on the website in the form of a design system, but also for all marketing channels. This means that parallel developments emerged that we had to merge at all times to find a good solution together. That was definitely a challenging time.

Binci: For me personally, from a graphic design perspective, it was the outline icons. They are very pretty, and it’s great that we chose them, but they are not so easy to implement. The line thickness scales up and down with the size of the icon. So, if the icon is scaled quite large, the line becomes very thin. And if you scale it very small, for example for a smaller medium, the line thickness becomes very thick, and it’s hard to recognize what the icon actually represents. You only notice something like that in practice when you work with it. But we have now found a way to adjust it so that it looks harmonious in the overall picture.

We all deal with feedback from various sources in different ways. What role does feedback from employees and customers play in the changes we see as part of the new branding?

Beate: Both are, of course, very central aspects of a branding. On the employee side, it is very important to reach a point where people say: "Hey, I’m proud to show this off; this is where I work." That was the goal we wanted to achieve, and I think we achieved it well. On the customer side – that is the most central point. Why do you do a branding? To provide an authentic image for the respective target group and to be a credible brand.

Binci: I know from other companies that working with a creative agency is often left only to the management level. With us, employees from all sorts of team constellations participated. It was very nice that we developed this together. Especially after the launch, feedback is constantly coming in via our social media channels. Anything concerning functionality is being incorporated ongoingly. And when positive feedback comes in, we are happy about it too, because we really like the rebranding as well.

Michael: Colleagues were able to give feedback very early in the development process, which they did. That was very important to us: being able to realize changes quickly. For customers, it’s still a bit too early to say, as the rebranding hasn’t been live for that long. That’s why we are still waiting for feedback and will, of course, incorporate it.

Nina: With the branding, we first did one or two internal rounds to be sure it was the right path. In the last six months, we also conducted three market research studies to gain the certainty that we are strengthening and rejuvenating the brand and moving it to where we want it to be.

Melanie: Of course, we didn't just do the new branding to have a new, pretty logo. We also wanted to further develop the user experience for our customers. To do this, we looked at the surrounding environment to see what is state-of-the-art and then, of course, wanted to set a new milestone in the history of world4you. We involved our employees throughout the entire process.

Beate: In both cases, the rule is that you shouldn't reject feedback. That would be the wrong way to go. But if you were to accept every single piece of feedback – that wouldn't work either. You can't please everyone. That’s why it makes sense to package and process feedback in a meaningful way. In my daily work, that means taking in feedback, getting to the bottom of the problems, seeing where different requirements arise, recording them, prioritizing them, and working through them in a targeted manner. Then you definitely achieve the best possible result to truly evolve a brand without going in circles with changes.

Is there a specific story or anecdote that best embodies the spirit and creativity behind the new world4you appearance?

Binci: As mentioned before, many employees participated. I remember: right at the beginning, we made a hand drawing and sent it to our creative agency. Everyone was asked what world4you meant to them personally. I drew a little house standing on a globe.

Nina: Maybe not spirit and creativity, but flexibility: our Head of E-Commerce, Alex, and I were tasked with the rebranding when I joined world4you. We looked for an agency and found one in *dotsandlines*, which has essentially become our go-to agency. We had already presented a very precise concept. They said: "That’s nice, but then you’ll look like everyone else. We propose this and that to you instead." We went along with it, and I think that was a very good decision.

Beate: We had a "Work Week" in the summer, right in the middle of the creation process for the new website. We stayed in a seminar hotel for a whole week. We worked a lot and found such good solutions that after a few days we realized: "Uh, we’ve actually outpaced our project organization in Jira." This means that after this project week, we sat there and realized: "Yeah, we’ve already done that, we’ve already done that..." It was so productive: everyone together, short distances, working on solutions together at any time. That was truly characteristic of the whole process.

I’m very curious about the next question. I’ll ask it to you independently and we’ll see how close your answers are: What surprising details or design decisions are hidden in the new website or logo that readers might not have noticed yet?

Binci: The logo consists of three specific parts. The first thing most people will have noticed is that it looks like a "w." The second is that the curve in the middle is a location marker, marking a point on a map. The third is that as a whole, with these two little arms, the logo is a cheering person, putting the satisfaction of our customers at the center.

Melanie: Our new signet doesn't just represent the small "w" for world4you; there’s a bit more behind it. We thought about it reflecting a home as well. This fits our slogan "At home on the web," and we also want to represent our proximity to our customers this way. We also have a small animation, for example, where the signet waves.

Michael: If you look very closely, it’s now purple. \*laughs\* I’m a technician, so technical details are more my field. For example, I can say that technical innovations that probably aren't as noticeable include the domain checker, which we rebuilt from scratch in the background. For performance reasons, it doesn't check domains twice, which saves bandwidth and preserves battery life on mobile devices.

Beate: In my role, I can best report on the website. You can definitely say that we built a strong design system. That means: it is very clear what elements look like. It is very clear which colors are used and how. This results in a very harmonious, uniform image when you use these elements. At the same time, we moved all logic technically to the backend. This means we are extremely stable and fast – also in terms of bug finding. In total, these measures result in a construct with which we can build pages extremely quickly, and we are proud of that.

Nina: In the logo, our purple tones actually consist of flower colors. That means: Muscari (a grape hyacinth), Lavender, and Crocus. For whatever reason – none of us are florists, nor is anyone at the agency. But we think it’s very beautiful, and it also fits the TV spot very well. And the second point: the signet of our logo consists of a house, an address pin, and a little figure waving.