Crea International at Bocconi University: why not? - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

Crea International at Bocconi University: why not?

The Physical Brand Design idea and strategy approaching service design in telecommunication and retail banking field

Service design is becoming a driving element in defining a brand: the physical landscape in which company services are offered is one of the most important aspects able to communicate a company’s distinctiveness. The attention to the customer and his needs is an aspect which companies are more and more considering as essential in increasing their reputation because customer always expresses opinions and assessments firts of all trough the analysis of the touchable aspects of the service.

In this scenario it’s easy to understand the importance of projecting spaces that are strictly connected with the brand and the service model, that can fully embody brand’s values and spirit. That’s the first reason why, in her master’s degree in Bocconi University, Prof. Antonella Carù has invited Crea International to give a company testimony about service design.

Marco De Carli, strategy director of the retail design company, has held a lecture master to the last year Bocconi’s students, exploring how service design is the first step in retail concept innovation.

De Carli made an overview on Crea International’s way of working through the unique method of Physical Brand Design®: starting from exploring the different aspects of the process to define a service design strategy which lead to create an appropriate service model, retracing all the key points discussed with the client.

Most architecture and design projects are judged for their external aspect, but when it is the Brand that builds its space it is important to listen, to absorb its emotions, feelings and point of view.The aspect and form that will take its shape are the expression of its spirit and soul. That's PBD method, that’s the different starting point by Crea International from the others design studios. The brand identity is studied in every aspects, both digital and physical.Only by a careful analysis with the client a service model perfectly sewn on the brand can be created.

Marco De Carli during his speech focused on the steps which lead in creating an appropriate service design model, according to the brand’s values and expectations. He gave the example of Saudi Arabian Airlines,one of Crea’s important projects, to support this thesis : Crea's team spent 2 weeks in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, to try to understand how people live the spaces in places with different culture and habits.This period led to a better understanding of how starting in creating the space and experience and giving life to project.

Besides obviously thinking in creating an appropriate design it has been determinant to breathe the country, to observe people, to listen to their habits, to observe the landscape and, after that, possessing all the elements to start defining the layout. It's necessary to understand what kind of experience people will have within the space, what does the brand really want to translate in it to bring concept innovation to life, making the brand a unique one.

Service design must help to either innovate or improve services to make them more useful and desirable for clients, as well as more efficient and effective for organizations who are working to improve and innovate services. It is a very different way of approaching the way we think of the relationship between company and clients, through the creation of outstanding and innovative experiences, the tool through which companies can create competitive advantages and higher profit margins. But service design is not necessarily synonymous of innovation.

Before designing, a strategy must be put. And it is not always aimed to put high technologies, but sometimes the strategy is used to reinforce the brand’s mark. It must be said that surely technology has changed the relationship between clients and service providers, but it’s important to consider that clients are not so easy to understand, they have individual needs and expectations that are difficult to standardised. So Service design can really support the service market with new concepts, it can becomes the tool through which organisations can find a new way of standing out against competition and to offer new values. And there are a lot of ways of doing that: analyzing some distinctive projects of the retail design company as Air Bank and CheBanca!,Tim and Wind, Marco De Carli's presentation has focused on how service design gives a strong identity to the brand and strengthens its reputation and the relationship with the customer, aimed to make a client a faithful customer always according with the brand’s expectations.

Air Bank, basing on Agora model, is one of the examples where service design perfectly translate the relational model. Air Bank can be considered a store more than a bank, where the customer is free to do what he most desires: taking a seat and self-browsing, or being assisted by an attendant or just having a look to the new bank products. Whatever he decides to do he must feel free in a friendly and simply landascape, that wants to be noticed but be simply and fresh at the same time. A layout where feeling good and loose, easy to understand without renouncing to innovation, how the client who commissioned the project wanted.

CheBanca! instead is a start-up project that really wants to break down with the traditional bank patterns. It perfectly communicates through service design brand's values of a company that aimed to create a new positioning in retail banking field, without renouncing to simplicity, innovation, transparency and efficiency. A new concept which radically breaks down with the old bank rules, but offers a totally new landscape based on a opened and self browsing space in a friendly and intuitive layout.

Tim’s new layout instead was not so focused on new experiences for the customer or new technologies, but the brief of the company was to offer a space able to transfer to customers the historical value of the company, able to reassure the customer giving an accessible service model under a consistency of experience and language. The result is a highly understandable environment, emobodying brand's values, maintaining its colours and forms with the furnishing lines and the wall system all over the space reinterpreting the waves of the logo, symbol of technological and cultural evolution of a country which has always been accompanying the Italian customs and the trend and tastes changing.

Last, but not least Wind project underlines how service design has been able to reinforce the brand identity creating fashion oriented and glamour flagship stores, in Milano and Roma. Service design has been able, through the introduction of interaction areas through technology, to raise the brand’s identity and putting the company on a higher level among its competitors.

Marco De Carli comments below the importance of exchanging expertise beteween university world and company one : “ Generally speaking, service design is a strong asset helping the brand to reinforce customers’ relationship, reputation and distinctiveness versus competitors. We strongly believe that the uniqueness of a brand comes, beyond communication and branding, even from a strong experience within the store, in all its dimensions. The future of the brand is evolving and it ranges more and more among a lot of dimensions, between digital, physical and mobile ones.

Spaces can generate value, continuity and credibility within the dialogue between brand and customers.”

Crea International at Bocconi University: why not? - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design