The challenge
How can we help a successful news platform that’s long outgrown its children’s shoes to prepare for continued and even more ambitious growth in the future? This was the key question when we started working with electrive, which began covering the topic of electric mobility in the German market with a daily newsletter and blog over a decade ago. Since then they have added an international counterpart, several newsletter verticals, a daily video update and a series of events and conferences both offline and online. In short, electrive became the platform for the emobility industry, covering individual transport, fleets and industrial vehicles.
Our impact
After a long period of organic and largely unplanned growth, almost every conceivable aspect – internal and external – was in dire need of a zoom-out and re-evaluation. Working closely with the electrive leadership and team, we covered all these aspects in a structured and focused process – (re)creating a solid strategic foundation, a reinvented brand identity and a thoroughly refreshed product experience across newsletters, web, video and events.
Client
Rabbit Publishing
Industry
publishing and media
Year
2023
Topics
eMobility, Journalism, Brand Strategy, Brand Design, Concept, UX Design, Facilitation, Design System
From the website and a family of industry-defining newsletters ...
... to motion design, podcasts and conferences.
Sensemaking and strategy
Is the team still structured and set up for success? Does the evolved family of brands and products still make sense? Is the Design still up-to-date and representing the brand’s values? Is the technical infrastructure still appropriate for the needs of a matured brand? What’s the vision for electrive going forward?
We tackled these and many more questions in a series of workshops with experts from all electrive departments before diving into a brand and product strategy phase, defining the precise purpose, target group and future vision for each platform, product, and service and their relation to each other.
Brand and design
With this strategic foundation (and thanks to a delightful collaboration with the excellent Amira Prescott), everything else fell into place: A consistent naming and logo family, a fresh design language covering all touchpoints from Digital to Motion and physical media. Key factor: the #onebrand approach that transforms previously inconsistent design and naming patterns into one logical system – reducing complexity, friction and establishing a strong system that can scale and won’t be outgrown again so easily.
The new electrive logo family
“When we started working with Ponder, we had absolutely no idea, how deep we would have to dive into the electrive DNA. But we trusted their experience and that worked out very well.”
A rare occasion for the usually remote-first company: Bringing together all electrive team members in one room for a workshop.
Product design and implementation
As the team at Sitedock, the project’s development partners, were rebuilding CMS and frontend mostly from scratch, we seized the opportunity to challenge existing content structures and editorial workflows. For the main website, this led to a simplified yet flexible overall structure that also gave way to a more refined design of various editorial formats. This way, electrive’s quality content finally got the presentation it deserved.
Empowering the editorial and sales teams
The relaunch project was a big step forward for the electrive brand and products – but also for the electrive team. Touching almost every aspect of the product meant that things behind the scenes would change, too. In order to enable the smoothest possible transition, we have been conducting regular team workshops and retrospectives since the relaunch – and very are happy to see the momentum is still strong.
Not just a project but a long-term partnership
We are particularly happy that we can continue supporting electrive’s transformation beyond the initial relaunch. Building on the new brand and product platform, we are now supporting the entire team to jointly reflect on what has been achieved so far and continuously develop future perspectives.
“To make this project a success we had to untangle many layers of complexity – but collaborating with the highly motivated and smart people at electrive made that task feel almost playful.”
“This project is a great example of how much more cohesive results will be if we think brands experience holistically from day one, rather than designing individual touchpoints one after the other.”