Crea international host to a Travel Lab event, a symposium on “Temporary and Flagship stores: strategies on brand field to face crisis” - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

Crea international host to a Travel Lab event, a symposium on “Temporary and Flagship stores: strategies on brand field to face crisis”

An event where Marco De Carli, strategy director of the physical-brand-design company, gave a speech with a special spotlight on some distinctive examples

Service design is one of the most important aspects on which companies have decided to invest as the key marketing tool in retail field, contributing to brand equity and customer loyalty.More and more brands should think about the physical space, working on an appropriate physical brand strategy to be declined on several physical touch points on territory in retail field, such as retail networks, temporary or flagship stores, according to the brand strategy of the company.

On this basis Crea International has been invited to the event to support the importance of Flagship stores as tools for retail positioning, to implement the customer relationship and loyalty, to centralize the flows and sales, and give awareness and local presence to the brand.

In Hotelplan’s headquarter in Milan, with a dynamic and interactive audience composed of top managers and entrepreneurs from the tourism industry and with, among the speakers, the direct store manager of Illycaffè – Elodie Horaist - and the holder of an important network of temporary stores - Paolo Comini of Sidecar Group - De Carli’s presentation has focused on Physical Brand Design’s way of approaching projects, starting from the brand identity, going to developing the design concept, always shaping signs and codes consistent with the brand, to get to the service design aiming to enhance brand positioning.

Talking about Flagship store, the presentation has explored, among the others, one of the most distinctive of the italian brand design company: Wind flagship store. The aim was to create a flagship able to make the successes of the company over the years touchable to customers, with an upgrade of image to make the brand more fashionable and cool.

Everything supported by a physical brand strategy due to the biosphere as distinctive sign of an innovative design, sensitive to the balance of different chromatic and morphological elements, perfect habitat for a new empathic community in a totally new landscape.A work that led to the opening of the two Wind flagship stores, one in Milano (C.so Matteotti) and the other one in Rome (P.za di Spagna).

He has also shown how the Physical-Brand-Design methodology applied to a project as Welcome Travel has led to the creation of a totally new design concept of the retail-travel-agency and can be used flexibly by the network to give to customers a new place of meeting and sharing where the purchase experience and concept within the agency are redefined.

Present to the explanation of the retail travel project Gian Paolo Vairo, Ceo of Welcome Travel, who has explained how this physical brand design project is perfectly integrated in a a new company vision which joined the retail travel agency with web and mobile areas. The new Welcome Travel aspires to propose to customers new standards of services which are lined up with those of the main European markets: quality, training, efficiency, technology and customer service in order to renew the methods of distribution of the tourism product and create a benchmark for the whole italian market of travel agencies. He has declared to be extremely satisfied of the work and the Group aims to join new satisfactory results thanks to this new store design innovation

De Carli’s intervention has then analyzed some other important cases starting from Tim retail network where PBD strategy has contributed to renew the whole network and distribution channels, in a consistent view with the historical values of the company of reassurance of the customer to reinforce brand identity and positioning; going to Lavazza coffe shop an international coffee chain supporting brand’s internationalisation, where the major challenge was to create a a service design concept which could be adapted to the international expansion of the company.

And finally in Air Bank branch project he has presented to the audience a bank model where service design and customer experience within the branch play a central role in the start-up asset of the whole project.

An intervention that certainly showed how Physical Brand Design strategy can be declined to different fields, with different values and expectations but all with the same objective to give distinctiveness and uniqueness to the brand, in a market that is becoming more selelective and where consumers, despite the crisis, are paradoxically getting more and more demanding.

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Crea international host to a Travel Lab event, a symposium on “Temporary and Flagship stores: strategies on brand field to face crisis” - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

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

Bocconi University hosts Crea International in a workshop on service marketing - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

Bocconi University hosts Crea International in a workshop on service marketing

Service design concept within retail design showcased in financial and telecommunication services

On 3rd November the italian-retail-design company will give a company testimony on a workshop for the last year students of Bocconi University, talking about the importance of services in a more and more modern and sophisticated world. A big opportunity given by the renowned milanese university through prof. Antonella Caru’ who has structured a master’s degree of know how exchange between university world and company one.

Marco De Carli, strategy director of Crea International, starting from Physical Brand Design approach, will present a case history on Air Bank, CheBanca!, Tim and Wind to show how service design can fully express a brand identity and strengthen a company’s competitiveness.

An interesting participation by the interior design company to explore how interaction between space and people can have an emotional and functional role able to give value not only to the company but even to the client.

Bocconi University hosts Crea International in a workshop on service marketing - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

A new air flowing into Czech Republic’s retail banking market : Air Bank. - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

A new air flowing into Czech Republic’s retail banking market : Air Bank.

Discover the ambitious and new bank in central Europe designed by Crea International

Air Bank, just inaugurated in Prague, represents one of the most innovative and interesting retail-banking-design project conceived by the Physical-Brand-Design company in a country still attached to the traditional idea of bank.

The brief assigned by the client was to become brand of choice in retail banking that customers will talk about with enthusiasm and passion and to propose a new environment searching for new solutions, steping out from “banking routine”.

An innovative and interesting bank, introducing retail store coding rather than banking one, supporting selling process and dialog in a peer to peer relation with the bank. The final result is not a traditional bank but a real store that firmly wants to know its customers’ wishes and feelings, in a sort of community atmosphere of relationship and interaction, to invoke positive mode for satisfied customers.

Design innovation and return to ancient times harmoniuously blended in the metaphor of “Agorà” landscape, in ancient Greek an open “place of assembly” ,to create an opened bank where been really involved into the experience of freedom to browse by oneself or to be assisted if desired.

An opened squared place with a multifunctional central area to make the space fruition free, without frills, using modern technologies on a new service model, paperless, with outstanding services, speaking of semplicity and transparency in a friendly, enjoyable and pleasant space. All surrounded by an amphiteater with a stair system looking towards the center, where customers can choose the seating on different levels.

Finally a revolutionary project speaking a new language,which sets the mark of a really different bank which does not intend to astonish and confuse, but innovate to create value.

Massimo Fabbro, founder and ceo of Crea International, comments below the project result : “I guess Airbank concept represent a breakthough within european retail banking scenario: a fully peer-to-peer, simple and no-frills banking store, that welcomes customers into an unexpected and friendly enviromment. Thanks to PPF group that challenged us to create a concept whose we are deeply proud of."

A new air flowing into Czech Republic’s retail banking market : Air Bank. - crea news - CREA International - italian retail design

La società italiana di physical-brand-design firma un nuovo importante progetto nel retail banking: Air Bank

Commissionata da PPF, uno dei più importanti gruppi finanziari e di investimento in Europa centrale e dell’est, Crea International, la società italiana di retail design, è stata coinvolta nella progettazione di un nuovo standard bancario unico, innovativo e del tutto nuovo.

Un vero e proprio store bancario che trasgrediscei temi progettuali tradizionali e che porta un’aria nuova nel retail banking del centro Europa, un mercato ancorato tutt’oggi a stereotipi tradizionali.

Le direttive fornite dal cliente sono state quelle di creare un nuovo modello di servizio che potesse diventare un vero e proprio marchio di scelta nel panorama bancario, che i clienti potessero raccontare con entusiasmo e passione.

Un innovative concept che fa chiaramente intuire di volere conoscere i desideri e le aspettative dei propri clienti, che li può far sentire a loro agio e sicuri di come potersi muovere e cosa fare, in un ambiente amichevole, familiare fatto di rapporti tra le persone, di interazione e condivisione, per poter vivere la banca in un clima sempre positivo.

Air Bank nasce proprio da questi valori con l’intento di essere notata ed ammirata.

Un negozio più che una banca dove trasparenza, eleganza e semplicità coesistono armoniosamente per creare un design concept dove potersi muovere in libertà.

Un “bank store” di consulenza più che di transazioni, dove la tradizionale esperienza del correntista all’interno dell’istituto assume nuove connotazioni: il cliente protagonista di un viaggio dove potersi sentire libero, sempre con la consapevolezza che la banca si muove per lui, con lui.

Approcciandosi alla realizzazione del progetto con la metodologia di Physical-Brand-Design, il team creativo è partito dall’analisi del mercato, in uno scenario sempre più digitale dominato dalla continua crescita di nuove tecnologie atte a sviluppare nuovi linguaggi per banche sempre più tecnologiche ed informatizzate a discapito delle relazioni con i propri clienti. Questa tendenza ha creato una crescente perdita di fiducia nella banca come istituzione.

È nata così l’esigenza di creare un design concept senza fronzoli ma essenziale dove poter rendere più facile il dialogo tra la banca ed i suoi clienti.
Un nuovo modello di servizio, aperto, libero dalle costrizioni della banca tradizionale.

In Air Bank il cliente può decidere l’esperienza che vuole vivere : sedersi, consultare i servizi offerti e chiedere se lo desidera un aiuto ad un addetto, seduti fianco a fianco, di fronte al pc, proprio per enfatizzare il rapporto alla pari con la banca.

Un innovative thinking totalmente focalizzato alla relazione e non alla transazione, dove il cliente può sentirsi rassicurato.

All’interno della banca tutto è semplificato con l’utilizzo di moderne tecnologie, con una fruizione all’interno dello spazio snella e libera, di facile intuizione seguendo proprio quei valori che Air Bank conclama, seppure in modo discreto: semplicità, trasparenza, familiarità con il coraggio di offrire al mondo uno straordinario modello bancario, mai visto prima.

Caratteristiche visibili anche nel logo stesso della banca, pulito, essenziale in un mix di colori dal verde al nero che creano una decisa alternanza tra vitalità, freschezza, rigore e sicurezza.

Questo nuovo interior design prende ispirazione dall’”Agorà” , nella Grecia antica una piazza di aggregazione, dove lo staff e il cliente possono stare fianco a fianco.

Un negozio dove poter decidere se operare autonomamente, sedersi e rilassarsi nella consultazione e o affidarsi al servizio di personale qualificato.

Ne risulta così un ampio spazio aperto con al centro un’area multifunzionale con sofisticata tecnologia interamente circondato da un anfiteatro multigradino con postazioni su vari livelli, tutte affacciate verso il centro.

Gli spazi chiusi e privati sono ridotti proprio per distaccarsi dalla vecchia icona bancaria, perché lo spazio è tutto per il cliente.

Finalmente una nuova banca, che parla un nuovo linguaggio, che pone un fermo paletto per una banca davvero innovativa che non vuole sorprendere o confondere, ma porre l’attenzione al cliente e l’innovazione come saldi valori per una nuova era bancaria.

Massimo Fabbro, cofondatore e CEO della società milanese, commenta così l’amizioso progetto: “Credo che il concept di Air Bank rappresenti un nuovo inizio nello scenario del retail banking. Un negozio vero e proprio dove potersi sentire alla pari con la banca, semplice e senza fronzoli che accoglie il cliente in un ambiente inaspettato e amichevole.Un ringraziamento speciale a PPF che ci ha dato l’opportunità di creare un concept del quale siamo profondamente fieri”.

Per maggiori informazioni:

www.creainternational.com

francesca.soffici@creainternational.com

mattia.stabile@creainternational.com