@ CBA B+G + Luis Gustavo Bartolomei, Ricardo Oliveira, Luciano Semeria, Carina Benitez, Felipe Takashi, Ana Paula Moreno, Giuliana Sanchez, Gabriela Costa, and Barbara Almeida. © 2017. All rights belong to Braskem and CBA B+G.
Braskem.
Passion to transform.
Building a strategy for the globalization of Braskem brand
Originally born in Brazil in 2002, Braskem, a company for chemistry and plastic sustainable solutions, carved out a growing and settling pathway within the country’s petrochemical industry. Throughout its evolution, Braskem internationalized and became one of the world’s greatest thermoplastic resin producers. After going global, exporting to around 100 countries and having 12 of its 41 plants abroad, Braskem naturally felt the need of also being noticed as a global brand.
For facing this robust and challenging task, CBA B+G, also an originally Brazilian company with expertise on acting globally, was invited to support Braskem on its strategic repositioning and the brand’s evolution.
Diversity of origins
As an effect from the several acquisitions it underwent over the years, Braskem was experimenting a great variety of origins and the big one challenge was the settling of the strategic bases to support its transformation into a global brand. A brand that could symbolize a single identity whereas representing a group of people who come from different organizational cultures.
Both the company and our staff realized that the greatest strength were the people: the inside people, for their rich and diverse origins, and the external stakeholders, clients or partners spread throughout the world. We started off from this reality to redefine the brand’s positioning, in a way we could go along with the company during its evolution and expansion pathway.
Rethinking the brand strategy
We went down an extensive road to build its repositioning. We started by studying the brand’s current context, understanding its relevance within different markets, analyzing the category while identifying the sector’s trends in Brazil, Americas and all over the world. This step resulted in defining the expression of Braskem’s purpose – the passion for transformation, which is comprehensive and truthful enough to include not only the principle of making people’s lives better, but also changing the world through sustainable solutions. The outline of Braskem’s redefined platform and its new value proposition, also globally relevant.
The B way
The brand’s platform is no less than its greatest and primary strategy. Starting from the purpose, we got to its essence: being a brand that is human-oriented with its look towards the future, always cultivating solid relationships and providing value to everyone around. This approach also inspired what was named as “the B way of being”, a guideline to be internally used together containing Braskem’s way of being, its culture and behavior.
As of the conception of the brand’s repositioning, we developed the expression of the brand’s new identity. The logo was reformulated to reflect the company’s pledges through its new colors: the blue symbolizing the rescue of its primary values and the commitment with the planet sustainability; as for the yellow, the energy and orientation towards people. Together, those two colors transmit strength, movement and resilience, materialized in the “B”, symbol that projects itself in front of the name that brings the arrow in its counter shape, representing the positive attitude and the look to the future.
Total alignment
The strategic work behind Braskem's new positioning guaranteed a highlighted spot within the category, increasing the recognition of an innovative and human company. However, another demonstration of the awareness in its repositioning was the alignment of everything around – from the brand’s implementation through all the organization’s levels to the guiding of its communication tools.
All of its portfolio of products adopted a new identity; the central office and the factories had the brand concept applied as well (we call it ‘branded environment’); a Brand Center was created, and the employees’ value proposition was aligned to the new platform just like the events and training sessions for spreading the brand’s culture.
The great impact from the repositioning work was the creation of a single and different territory for the brand, which represented an important forward step to Braskem: besides positively energizing the entire public, it brought up clearness on what the brand truly is and what the core values are. Both internally and within the entire market.
The disclosure of the new positioning and identity had a worthy launching: it happened on the company’s 15th anniversary in 2017. At the same time a celebration and a gift to the whole organization, now unquestionably global.
This project won one of the seven awards we have earned in the Brasil Design Award 2019, a homage promoted since 2009 by ABEDESIGN (Brazilian Association of Design Companies) to acknowledge and highlight the creative and innovative capacity of design in the national economy. We won bronze in the ‘Branded Environment’ category, subcategory ‘Corporate Environments’.
The project also won the 2nd Abigraf SP Award (Brazilian Printing Industry Association), a prize we have been awarded three times in the category of Best Design and Innovation. Braskem received a prize for Visual Communication – creation and application of visual brand identity in corporate environments.
It also won one of the two prizes we have received at the Lusófonos Creativity Award 2019, an international award open to competitors of Portuguese speaking countries. Braskem won silver in the ‘Corporate Image’ category.
