Ellaycom brand strategy - a premium omnichannel retail brand specifically for Saudi women.

Ellaycom

A new retail brand for Saudi women

HSE 24, a global multi-channel shopping network based in Germany saw the opportunity to open a TV retail brand for the GCC market with a focus on Saudi Arabia. BOND was tasked with developing a new brand for this omni-channel shopping experience.

Research carried out in the years before launch identified a potentially large under-served market here. So our aim was clear – to build the premium omnichannel retail brand specifically for Saudi women.

More Info

client:

Ellaycom

website:

ellay.com

contributions:

Brand strategy

Brand architecture

Brand identity

Art direction

Naming

Logo design

Motion graphics

awards:

Transform Awards MENA, Gold Award, 2019

Transform Awards MENA, Silver Award, 2019

Transform Awards MENA, Bronze Award, 2019

sector:

Retail

“WE BUILT A PROFILE USING IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS AND ONLINE RESEARCH”

Anthony Miles

Head of Strategy

After years of research, we identified a potential large under-served market. Saudi women with disposable income but lacking an easy access to quality physical retail destinations. From strategy to creative, we kept the Saudi woman at the heart of the project. It was important to understand their ambitions, frustrations and how they are redefining their role and boundaries in the changing world around them. Through the research and in-depth interviews, we built a profile of the modern Saudi woman. By creating different profiles for our target audience, we gained insight into the values that drive them and built a brand based on that.

Discover Happy.

With the many misconceptions about life in Saudi as a woman, it was important to dive deeper and understand their ambitions, frustrations and how they are defining their role in a world changing around them. What we found was that our customers are: 1. Educated, ambitious, optimistic and searching for the new 2. More individualistic yet still rooted in family, culture, traditions 3. Key buying decision-makers but looking for validation for those decisions In short, our customers are "Progressive yet Responsible". From here, we developed a brand strategy built around allowing our customers to discover their own happiness, offering them a place where they can spend time and find the unique, new relationships and moments of peace in a busy and complex world. We encapsulated this in the concept "Discover Happy".

Name with a double meaning.

The next challenge was to create a name. An Arabic name that was phonetically strong in English, represented well the brand, and importantly, had an available .com domain. After 3 months and 1,100 name candidates, the final name was agreed as 'Ellaycom'. In line with our 'Discover Happy' strategy, the name has a simple double meaning in Arabic. 'Ellay' meaning 'for me' and 'Ellaycom' meaning 'for you'. The customers promise to provide them with the perfect shopping experience - From us to you. The name not only reflected our strategy but could be used with the full name as the brand URL.

The final creative was built on "moods and feelings".

Next we designed three creative concepts that stemmed from the 'Discover Happy'. In partnership with a market research firm, we went into Saudi homes and tested which one they felt more connected to. The final creative route was built on the idea of 'moods and feelings'.

Bold and distinguishable.

The chosen logo is a hand-crafted Arabic brandmark based on simple geometric shapes. This gives a bold and distinguishable marque that suits the client's brief. A key consideration is for the logo to be instantly recognisable when a viewer is channel surfing. In time the aim is for the icon to stand alone. For now we lock it up with the latin url while brand recognition is built. We added the secondary colour palette of gradients to represent the different moods of our target audience. Next we brought the brand to life through the packaging design and unboxing experience, TV idents and other digital assets.

It is early days, yet the data is promising.

Certain early adopter customers are buying items almost every day. We know of viewers already able to roll off the names of the various hosts. The brand was launched internally to great fanfare. Already a team of 50 people and growing quickly, 2019 will be a year of growth.