SomeOne has created a new brand strategy and visual identity for Maplin, the electronics retailer with 217 stores across the UK.
SomeOne has created a new brand strategy and visual identity for Maplin, the electronics retailer with 217 stores across the UK.
Maplin identified that they needed a new brand identity in order to connect with new customers while not alienating their core, loyal audience.
Today they face increasing competition from the availability of electronic components and peripherals online. As a result, Maplin needed to move on from being known just as an electronics specialist to be a more inclusive multi channel technology retailer offering broader services
Maplin has undisputed credentials in terms of expertise and trust, but which could sometimes be viewed as too specialist and even ‘daunting’ for a non specialist customer.
A commitment to focus on the connected home in terms of product curation, services and store design really helped bridge both these gaps by being a current tech trend as well as being more in tune with broader customer needs.
Working closely with the executive committee, we created the new strategic cornerstone ‘Connecting brilliant ideas’ – building on Maplin’s unrivalled heritage to encourage customers to ‘try’ and ‘discover’ more about how technology can improve their everyday lives supported by impartial expertise.
When it came to the visual identity, the brief called for an ‘evolutionary and transitionary’ approach, providing input for Maplin’s ‘Store of the future’ concept stores.
By far the biggest change was a brand world to help support what was familiar about Maplin, while also heralding a new direction.
We introduced the Maplin ‘wave’ – a constantly moving and evolving graphic property to represent the ease and fluidity of Maplin’s service and technology. This helped the communications flex and adapt for seasons and product ranges with the use of colour.
As part of the design process we improved the design and functionality of the word mark with screen-friendly kerning and detailing. We also scrapped the impersonal DIN corporate typeface in favour of a new, friendlier Proxima Nova.
In total, our rebrand covered brand strategy, brand architecture and visual identity. We also advised on uniforms, product and lifestyle photography, as well as motion graphics, signage and own label packaging guidelines covering hundreds of SKUs.
We are delighted with our new identity which we unveiled to the business at our conference in September 2016. This, coupled with our exciting plans for the transformation of our in store presentation, is critical in helping us to achieve our goals for Maplin. Our new identity gives us the visual embodiment of the dynamism, passion and credibility already alive within the brand, as well as providing us the modernity to meet our ambition to become the human face of technology.
The new brand identity is being tested in two concept stores and in some key communications, with full UK rollout expected over 2017/18.